Small Austin burbs begin to flourish with residents

​​​​​​AUSTIN AREA SMALL TOWNS - There is simply no city in the Austin area growing as fast as Buda.

T​he U.S. Census announced Georgetown to be the nation’ fastest-growing city with more than 50,000 residents.

But when you include all of Austin’s cities, no one can hold a candle to Buda. The Hays County city’s population rose by 19.8 percent between 2014–2015 to 13,705 with the addition of 2,263 residents, according to the Census.

Austin, in contrast, grew by about 2 percent during that time and Georgetown’s population spiked 8 percent.

Over the past five years, Buda has grown an astounding 81.4 percent—rising from a population of 7,556 in 2010 with the addition of 6,149 new residents since then.

It’s not surprising that the most rapid municipal growth in the Austin region is in the city’s smaller suburbs. Certainly the very nature of percentage change makes it easy for cities with smaller populations to expand dramatically on paper. But 2,260-plus new residents over the course of one year is nothing to sneeze at.

Meanwhile, tiny Dripping Springs—population 2,483 in 2015—also grew at a considerable clip, expanding by 11.2 percent with the addition of 250 new residents. ​

Pflugerville, the 11th-fastest-growing city with more than 50,000 residents, attracted only slightly more new residents than that in the same time period with the addition of 2,450 residents.

Meanwhile, Manor grew by 9.6 percent between 2014-2015 with the addition of 666.

Hutto, the largest of Austin’s small suburbs with a 2015 estimated population of 22,722, grew by 7.3 percent with the addition of 1,542 new residents between 2014–2015.