Suburbs boom across Texas

TEXAS – By now, Texans may be getting weary of the constant stream of growth superlatives.

The state and its major metro areas routinely top lists of the places attracting companies and new residents, both from abroad and from other states.

And census population data released this week doesn’t do much to buck that trend: Houston, for instance, was second only to New York City in terms of the raw number of residents it added from July 2014 to July 2015.

But while Texas’ largest cities continued to add tens of thousands of residents last year, it’s the suburbs that are seeing the most marked transformation.

Georgetown, one of those I-35 corridor cities outside Austin, was the fastest-growing city in the country with a population of 50,000 or more. Its population rose by 7.8 percent to 63,716, from July 2014 to July 2015.

It was followed by New Braunfels, also located along I-35, but south of Austin toward San Antonio, which grew by 6.6 percent.
Frisco came in fourth, growing by 6.3 percent in one year, to 154,407.

Meanwhile, during the same time period, the City of Dallas grew by 1.5 percent—less than the state overall—despite adding 19,642 residents.

Over five years, the difference is even more pronounced, with Dallas growing by 8.5 percent from 2010 to 2015, compared to say, Frisco, which grew by 32 percent over that time period. Dallas also trailed the state, which grew 9.2 percent during that time.

Georgetown grew by 34.4 percent over the five years.

Economic development is one of the biggest drivers of the state’s population growth; people tend to follow jobs, economists say, and Texas cities—particularly suburban ones outside Dallas and Austin—are adding lots of those.

And as employers move into those areas, developers are buying up available land for homes. 

Texas is still roughly on pace with projections that the state will double its population from 2010 to 2050.