That's the problem with annexing. Sure, you gain some population, but each time you do it you're lowering your density level. And it's unreasonable to think, at least for now, that you can add density on the fringe's of the city that are going to affect the density level overall.

A relative in Denton County emailed me an article from the local Denton paper. It touches on the extreme growth of DFW and makes a few good mentions of the Austin and San Antonio areas as well.

http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/l...ssStory2306939

Although it may decrease density, doesn't annexation allow for the city to have greater jurisdiction over the manner in which development takes place in those areas? That seems like a worthy objective. And stats about density are mere indicators, no substitute for the reality they represent.

Travis County is vastly superior to Snohomish Co. in its development policies. At least you can make a modicum of sense of the way Austin's suburbs develop, whereas Snohomish is a completely discombobulated hodge podge, where every large lot becomes its own unique subdivision and there is little or no infrastructure development to compensate for the increased density. My sister's place is one of the remaining older houses with enough yard (quarter acre, maybe) to have a nice garden, but developers will eventually snatch it, add the adjacent half acre, and then build 10 crackerbox houses on their own private street. It really makes the Austin metro look positively brilliant.

The City of Austin has been growing fast for a long time due to the influx of new residents much more so than by annexation. But the Lost Creek MUD is being annexed this year. Does anyone know the population of that area? I'm guessing it could be around 3K.

:previous: This looks to be old, because it shows Austin's population as 836,800, but whatever year it was for, it shows Lost Creek as 4,458.

http://statisticalatlas.com/place/Te...eek/Population

That's good because it means the Lost Creek population is probably much higher now.

Edit: That's a cool website by the way LSM. Thanks for the link.

That sounds about right. Lost Creek's population has mostly remained the same over the past few years, I suspect. There has been a little bit of new construction, and some new condos, but in general it has been completely built out for a while. It's a big annexation, though -- like annexing 3 Rollingwoods.

In all likelihood the metro has already surpassed 2 million.

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/ne...t-growing.html

Most likely it has. I say it's near 2.1 million now. :)

This data actually came out months ago.

In any case, if you take the estimated annual growth pattern from the July 1, 2010 estimate to the July 1, 2014 estimate, the Austin metro area was at 2,003,898 as of July 1, 2015. So, Austin was estimated to have surpassed the 2,000,000 mark in early June 2015.

We can all say that Austin has officially joined the 2 million club. It is now on par with the rest of the 2+ million cities.

Right. I can't figure out why this is news again.

My math also had the metro reaching 2 million around July 1st. But the population might not show up as two million in the 2016 census release since it may have happened after the date census uses for their annual estimates.

This is why I don't put a a lot of emphasis on the official census numbers because they tend to be behind the current reality by 1-2 years. There's no doubt that the Austin metropolitan area has over 2 million people. There's little doubt that Austin itself will have 1 million people by the end of this year if it hasn't reached it already. Sure they probably have fairly accurate numbers, although they may under count sometimes, but their numbers are already outdated when they are released for cities like Austin that are growing very quickly.

The only 1 million metro in Texas is El Paso/ Las Cruces . Still can't believe Austin is a 2 million metro. When I moved to Austin back in 1997, the metropolitan just hit 1 million people. Now 18 years later it's twice the size.

-Austin's metro hit the 1,000,000 mark during fall 1995.

-Austin's city proper population is expected to surpass the 1,000,000 mark in summer 2017. I have a July 1, 2015 population estimate of 940,091 (when taking into account the July 1, 2010 thru July 1, 2014 annual growth estimations provided by the census bureau).

Point of fact: El Paso / Las Cruces is not a metro. It's only El Paso. Ergo, there are no 1 million metros in the state.

Ok, I stand corrected.

It may be close race as to the next Texas metro to hit that 1 million mark. El Paso and McAllen are at ~837,000 and ~831,000 respectively. But the McAllen metro is growing faster.

The Rio Grande Valley is growing significantly. I've got some extended family down there - always amazing to see what is happening, though unfortunately a lot of it is sprawl.

El Paso metro actually isn't growing at all. There was a year in the past five where it actually lost population according to the estimates.