Texas Capital Ranks Second In Population Growth

Four of the 20 fastest growing metropolitan areas are in Texas, which leads the nation in population growth, according to U.S. Census data.

The state’s population increased 20.6 percent, or about 4.3 million residents, between 2000 and 2010.

The region around Austin, the state capital, led the state’s growth and ranked second nationwide, expanding its population by 3.9 percent to a total of 1.78 million people.

“It’s about the fact that when people move [to Texas], they're wanting to move into the heart of the metropolitan region, and the reason they want to do that is I think the vibrancy, the quality of life, the overall culture," Ryan Robinson, the city’s demographer, told the Austin American-Statesman Thursday.

The other three top-growth centers in Texas were San Antonio, which ranked sixteenth nationally in population increases, Dallas-Fort Worth at seventeenth, and Houston with a ranking of eighteenth.

“Growth has continued to be centered in the Texas Triangle, the area from Dallas-Fort Worth, down to Austin and San Antonio, and on to Houston and Galveston,” Steve Murdock, director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University, told the newspaper.