This Is the Fastest-Growing City in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 16, 8:00AM EDT · Published Aug 15, 10:33AM EDT

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This Is the Fastest-Growing City in America — © Michael Warren / iStock via Getty Images

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released some of the results of the 2020 Census and compared them to figures from 2010. Among the sections of the documents, one was named “Around Four-Fifths of All U.S. Metro Areas Grew Between 2010 and 2020.” One of its primary conclusions was that the population of America grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s. The data also show that there is a wide contrast between the growth rates (or the rate at which the populations in some cities fell) among metropolitan areas.

The analysis of metros covered America’s 385 largest cities based on population. Among the reasons the data are useful is that 86% of the American population live in these cities. In aggregate, their population grew by 9%.

Many of the fastest-growing metros were in the fastest-growing big state–Texas. Austin ranked fourth among all metros, up 34% to 2,295,303. Midland ranked 7th, up 30% to 183,679. Odessa ranked 20th, up 22% to 167,701.

The huge cities in Texas also posted rapid population growth. San Antonio ranked 25th among all metros, up 21% to 2,590,732. Dallas also grew 21% to 7,694,138. Houston’s population was up 21% as well to 7,154,478.

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The fastest-growing metro among all 385 in the U.S. was The Villages FL. Its population rose a remarkably 49% to 139,018. Based on the growth rate, the second metro was well behind it. The population of Myrtle Beach rose 37% to 514,488.

Fox Business reported on the surge: “The Villages is a 55-plus master-planned community north of Orlando seeing rapid population growth.” The Villages sits in parts of three counties–Sumter County, Lake County, and Marion County. A look at a map of the metro shows it is actually well northwest of Orlando.

How does the area describe itself?

The Villages is a collection of quaint retirement neighborhoods located in the heart of Florida nestled between two beautiful coastlines, ports of travel and theme parks. Each neighborhood is unique in its charm and personality and connected in ways where all the lifestyle here for you to enjoy is just a golf car ride away.

Florida has several other cities near the top of the list of metros by the change in population between 2010 and 2020. Fort Myers grew by 28% to 790,767, which puts it 9th among the 365 metros. The population of Lakeland grew 24% to 744,552 which ranks it 15th.

Click here to read about the fastest-growing state in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.