Quote:
Originally Posted by wwmiv
I give up. The moment someone pops up with an equation that is applied to every city equally that can show me that San Antonio can hit 24th within five years, I'll return and congratulate them and concede. However, anecdotal evidence and things like "Las Vegas won't grow" and "Cincinnati will soon be passed by San Antonio" (despite the fact that even Cincinnati - think about that for a moment - had a higher growth rate than San Antonio this past year in the midst of the worst downturn in 80 years) and "Charlotte and Austin aren't growing anymore" (despite Austin being only one of two metropolitan areas over 1 million with growth > 3%) and "Portland will be passed by San Antonio soon as well" etc etc etc don't prove anything to me.
Trae is correct. San Antonio's numbers have dropping for awhile. The only reason people come here is because the economy is good. This place has nothing else to offer. Downtown is built and organized around the tourist industry, the inner city neighborhoods are typically downtrodden, city planning is skewed towards suburbia because the city is too expansive to handle itself, no truly great public universities, etc. Most of the growth here is because low income families don't have good access to family planning. Is that really the kind of growth that is going to lead to a prosperous society? I think that that is the real argument that we should be having. Good growth v. bad growth.
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Anthing else to get off your chest?
Just adding to the discussion:
The problem is that your equation is just that;
your equation. There is no single equation that holds true for ALL cities. There are so many more variables than just the last two years of growth. Your equation isn't the "end-all" for all future assumptions.
That being said though,
your guess is as good as any on this forum as it is all up in the air until hard numbers are shown. Could we be 25? Yes. Could we be 22? Who knows? We could also stay still or drop a couple. Did anyone see Raleigh jump 10 spots in 10 years? What about McAllen possibly passing El Paso in the next few years; did anyone see that happening 15 years ago?
Based on the
1990 census, the Census Bureau released projections for the next 35 years and in it they estimated that in 2015 Texas would have 24 million and California would have 41 million. The problem is that we (Texas) hit 24 mil (est.) in 2008 and California has struggled to get to 36 mil since hitting 33 million in 2000. It is possible, but it is highly unlikely that they will shoot up 5 million in the next 5 years to meet that estimate. However, Texas looks like it will hit 27 million in the next couple of years, a number that the Census Bureau said we wouldn't get to until 2025. So the equation they used, which was the latest growth stats for the time, was wrong.
I feel the need to defend my city (but not at the expense of putting down another.)
Based on tourism numbers, it seem that lots of people that choose to live in other cities, decide at some point that their city doesn't offer their family enough entertainment that they then choose to spend the weekend or a family vacation here. I guess this city does have something to offer after all.
What is your eqation for Good growth v. bad growth? Is San Antonio the only city that has low-income people procreating? Is every birth in SA a bad one?
I say that bad growth has somewhat been shown to us by the number of foreclosures in a city or state.
We will continue to have a large number of retirees and especially military retirees moving into the area since we have the amenities offered to this bunch (PX, commisary, VA and healthcare facilities, Air Force Village I & II.)
In the past few years, we've had alot of wounded warriors stick around permanently since there aren't too many places around the country that offers them the convenience and expertise to better their recoveries.
In the upcoming year, we will have 12,000 more jobs at Fort Sam Houston alone, not to mention all the jobs that will follow that DOD $$.
San Antonio is slowly becoming a major player in Cyber Security; the potential for growth in this field is not known but it could be pretty sizeable, especially with the NSA, and the AF Cyber Command here.
Tacoma production will start up soon and the CAT plant will be up and running by next year, both offering thousands of new jobs.
It may not be your definition of good growth, but it seems that there might be numerous reasons to believe that SA will fare better than some (not all) cities.
There is no way of knowing what the numbers will show in 5 or 10 years; who knows where the next Detroit is, which city will follow Pittsburghs' trends, or what cities are meeting a bit of a threshold, as one can assume happened to cities that hovered around 5% growth in 10 years. To me that is smart, controlled growth. Any guess or assumption is as good as any other.
Just to pick one out of the bunch though: Cincinnati had 1.4 million in 1970; that new 400K in 5 years your eqaution inputs in there seems like a bit of a stretch when you take into account that it took them 40 years to increase by 700K.
I don't think that SA is better than any other city; every city has a place in the National and in some cases, International picture. The defintion you gave of SA is/was mostly every large city in the US at some point or another. Suburbia? We're not the only city with that. Run down inner city? Mostly every city had that happen since the Great White Flight, Interstate Highway construction and the introduction of suburbs; some never recover from it. Like I said before, all we can do is speculate; the numbers will show what they show.