Man, I remember the first time I went through Austin on my way to South Padre in the summer of 89, and how boring of a skyline it had. Very little changed when I visited a friend who relocated there on 3 different occasions back in the late 90s. Now, if I were to visit there, I would think I'm in a different city. It might as well be, since the population was a little over 500,000 back then. It's likely to double from that number in a few years.

It's close to 1 million today... give it 12 years and it will likely double.

.....and the latest 2017 metro population estimates recently released is above 2.1 million. At the current rate of growth, the 2018 estimates should be close to 2.2 million.....crazy whats happening here.

Seems like I saw an estimate recently that the city itself is already at about 1 million. Don't remember where I saw that. Kevin would probably have a source.

I saw that too. Austin metro is around the population of Tarrant County. Are they growing at similar rates? It would be interesting to see how they progress.

The Austin Metro is a little larger than Tarrant County's population. Regarding average annual growth rates, Austin's metro has a positive growth rate of ~3.3% and Tarrant County has a positive growth rate of ~1.6/1.7%.

Good info!

Although, in city proper US Census, Fort Worth added (18,664) more than Austin (12,515 between 2016-17, I wouldn't be surprise if soon Fort Worth would overtake Austin. Fort Worth continues to annex land and has a much lager area for growth than Austin. Also, to my surprise the Dallas suburb of Frisco added (13,470) slightly more than Austin.

It's dangerous to assume something from a single data point!

According to the U.S. Census (estimates), Austin's city proper has grown by an average of 2.9% per year since 2010 - Ft. Worth, 2.56%. Also, raw growth also favors Austin during this timeframe: 160,325 vs. 132,962, respectively. So, no, Ft. Worth will not overtake Austin, in city population, anytime soon.

Fort Worth has plans to annex about 1,500 acres or 2.34 square miles between 2018 and 2022. There are approximately another 1,000 acres of land where developers have requested annexation into the city of Fort Worth. Some of these requests will expire during that same time frame. In short, the days when Fort Worth was doing large scale annexation may be over. The new state laws governing annexation are also having a significant impact on future annexations. Fort Worth does have large swaths of undeveloped land already in the existing city limits that are likely to be built out (especially in the northern and southwestern reaches of the city) in the coming years. I think Fort Worth will continue to lag behind Austin in population, but it could be close if current growth rates continue.

Interesting.. I did not know Fort Worth was that big... hardly ever hear of it... whats up with that?

Luckily, Austin also has significant amounts of undeveloped land, some of which is primed for denser development than single family homes. Austin also has way more infill development going on, so I can’t see Fort Worth outgrowing Austin.

You are probably right, but Fort Worth has been tagging right along with Austin for the past two decades. It's interesting that both cities are almost the exact same size in terms of area, roughly 300 square miles. FW appears to have slightly more undeveloped land available both in the booming northern part of the metro and also in the thriving and affluent SW quadrant. The latter area is served by a new toll road, the Chisolm Parkway. Hopefully the graph in this link will work, even though it stops with 2016. It tracks Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin growth rather well.

https://www.google.com/search?source....0.4wPfGxujpCc

Honestly I thought fort worth was already higher population, I guess in my mind I think of DFW and the massive metro population and just assumed.

Interesting... how can one add more cities to this list?

It was for a while, but Austin passed it sometime between 1980 and 1990. Fort Worth actually lost population during 1980 with a 2.1 percent drop, and Austin's population growth was double what Fort Worth's was from the 1990 and 2000 census. The 2010 census had Fort Worth nearly double what Austin's was. I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility of Fort Worth passing Austin again, but it'll be a while. The 2017 estimate has us growing a little less than 3 percent faster.

Of course, we're only talking about city populations. I think Fort Worth has always had a higher metro population.

The latest numbers from the U.S. Census has Ft. Worth-Arlington is 2.488 million and Austin-Round Rock at 2.115 million.

Isn't Dallas-Ft. W one metro? The two cities are only about 30 miles apart.

Yes, it's one metro. FW and Dallas share the same bedroom communities so it's really hard to divide it.The census used to acknowledge metro divisions with the one metro area to just gauge how much growth was on the West side or the East side of the metro, but I'm not sure if they are actively doing that anymore.

IIRC, the Census Bureau also briefly split DFW into to two Metros around the same time that Washington D.C./Baltimore and San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose were each split into two separate Metros. DFW became one again of course, while the other two still remain split.