Hopefully this image attachment works. If not, here's the link. https://www.census.gov/library/visua...opulation.html It appears more and more counties in the state are experiencing growth. The biggest exception being across the western part of the state.
Thank you, appreciate the link. Let's hope this latest trend continues.
Many of the metropolitan areas have leveled off or peaked to a point. Salt Lake City only showed about a 1,200 increase; Tulsa BTW showed an impressive 10,527 increase. Oklahoma's two largest MSA areas are the pillars of Oklahoma's growth.
Good to see more than half the state showing growth. Interesting to see the Texas “donuts” with the urban county leveling off and the suburban counties still booming
The Lawton and Woodward areas need to get growing. If that can happen, then all of the major population center counties in the state will be experiencing growth. Along with numerous rural counties.
Unfortunately, I think most of rural Oklahoma, especially the western half, can be written off for future growth. Some of the towns are turning into ghost towns. At least some of them with a state or federal institution will eventually see a stopping point in the decline. Others, such as Perry have a large company going for them. Most of the towns along the Interstates will probably never quite go away. Oklahoma will have to be happy with most of the population growth taking place in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metros. People move to where the good paying jobs are and it's not in rural Oklahoma. A number of the towns have been declining ever since the Dust Bowl. For the eastern half of rural Oklahoma, you have to hope growth turns out to be long term rather than short term.
Growth in the outer suburbs, with the core city/suburbs either lower growth or decline has pretty much been the trend since WW2. There are several other areas where can see this, alternately showing up as low decline in core and low growth around the core. If anything what is unusual in Texas cities and OKC is it is happening in most directions around the core, it tends to favor one direction, sure this can be influence by geography but still happens in many with less physical limits like Tulsa.
The DFW explosion will start spilling over into southern Oklahoma during the next 20 years. That's already happening to some extent.
Seems like Oklahoma is picking up some steam on the population growth. It's fortunate that OK has two cities that are both growing steadily, instead of relying on one city to pull all of the weight.
OKC (17,969, 1.23%) ) + Tulsa (10,709, 1.04% increase) = 28,678. Don't have the total state numbers up to see what the state as a whole grew.
DFW growth is incredible.
Eastern Canadian County is moving the needle.
I'd love to see a heat map of growth for the past two years. I have a feeling that besides the two big metros, it's the southern counties that are really picking up. Like you guys have pointed out, over the next decade I think we'll see an explosion of growth around Texoma, Ardmore, Durant, etc. Lots of retiree's that want to be semi-close to Dallas - or perhaps that's as close as they can afford with a comfortable lifestyle. South Oklahoma is already a poor man's north Texas, and pretty soon it'll be a poor man's greater Dallas area.
Edit: doh! The heat map was right there this whole time, and besides one county on the texas border it's much lighter than I thought. That'll probably change by 2026... I guess the center of the state is filling in more since that's some of the last "cheap" land. Panhandle next?
Denver's growth really cooled off post pandemic
To put this into perspective, the OKC metro is the 12th fastest growing metro area since 2020. Out of the top 50 largest metro areas in the US.
Was hoping to break the top 10, but Raleigh and Jacksonville won't let us get there, lol.
Maybe people finally reached their breaking point with the cost of living there.
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