The US Census Bureau thread

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I consider myself quite knowledgeable and I am a geography/population nerd.

I have never heard of any of these places.

I had a pretty low score of 1/15 without cheating (Leesburg is in central FL outside Orlando).

As Trae points out, when you learn of any Texas town with explosive growth that you had never heard of, you can assume it’s somewhere around Dallas.

[UrbanImpact]

Originally Posted by lio45

I had a pretty low score of 1/15 without cheating (Leesburg is in central FL outside Orlando).

As Trae points out, when you learn of any Texas town with explosive growth that you had never heard of, you can assume it’s somewhere around Dallas.

And with Florida you can assume it's Central Florida as there is no more land in South Florida.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

My wife's family is from Forney, TX and the amount of growth just since I've known her is off the charts. Her cousin recently sold their property for millions to the local school district and everything around it has been built up. 20 years ago, it was all ranch land in every direction. Crime has gone up exponentially as well. Rapid growth is not necessarily a good thing. Glad Houston has slowed down somewhat.

Quality of growth >>>>>>>>> quantity of growth.

Seeing the great Chicagoland cornfield-gobbling sprawl machine finally get kicked squarely in the nuts was by far my favorite aspect of the great recession.

We don't need one more single fucking gram of that endless stroad & cul de sac bullshit around here.

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Never thought I'd see the day that Birmingham would be the FOURTH largest city in Alabama, but here we are...

Census numbers might show Mobile as below 200,000, but recent annexations place it at number 2 right behind Huntsville.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Quality of growth >>>>>>>>> quantity of growth.

Seeing the great Chicagoland cornfield-gobbling sprawl machine finally get kicked squarely in the nuts was by far my favorite aspect of the great recession.

We don't need one more single fucking gram of that endless stroad & cul de sac bullshit around here.

But I thought you wanted to raise your kids in ...Bolingbrook. No, Elgin...No, Aurora would be perfect!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by DCReid

But I thought you wanted to raise your kids in ...Bolingbrook. No, Elgin...No, Aurora would be perfect!

Schaumburg, dude.

Fucking Schaumburg.

Always.

[Trae]

Originally Posted by JManc

My wife's family is from Forney, TX and the amount of growth just since I've known her is off the charts. Her cousin recently sold their property for millions to the local school district and everything around it has been built up. 20 years ago, it was all ranch land in every direction. Crime has gone up exponentially as well. Rapid growth is not necessarily a good thing. Glad Houston has slowed down somewhat.

Houston hasn't really slowed down. Actually last year was the fastest it grew since 2016. Houston is typically in the 85k-120k range. DFW is just growing a bit faster now thanks to years of planning among that group of cities which is coming together currently, in what's probably DFW's golden age. I think with being the last affordable 5M+ metro that Houston will continue to see an increases moving forward.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Quality of growth >>>>>>>>> quantity of growth.

Seeing the great Chicagoland cornfield-gobbling sprawl machine finally get kicked squarely in the nuts was by far my favorite aspect of the great recession.

We don't need one more single fucking gram of that endless stroad & cul de sac bullshit around here.

Houston isn't getting that quality of growth because there's so many unincorporated areas, which account for the bulk majority of the Houston metro population. Many areas just lack the basic things like sidewalks. If Houston had DFW like planning metro wide it'd be growing much faster right now. I envy the old downtowns places like DFW has throughout their suburbs. Houston either paved over them, they were turned into reservoirs, or the city annexed so much land around these towns that they decided to disincorporate because there was no tax base. Kind of amazing Houston is growing like it is considering these major flaws imo

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

I flew into DFW for the April eclipse and approach was right over Collin County. It looked like the McMansion suburban version of Coruscant. A circuit board of cul-de-sacs and stroad strip malls between the reservoirs to the hazy horizon -- and clear construction on the next fringe underway opening up the red soil to the sky.

i just don't understand how anyone could live like that. i really don't. cities and rural i get, even inner burbs, but that kind of suburbia is a mystery.

[Chisouthside]

Bang for your buck . people love big houses and alot of space and are willing to drive everywhere for this.

[Steely Dan]

Yep.

Big house with a big yard for small(er) money.

And a significant percentage of Americans aren't even capable of noticing or caring about the fact that their subdivision is literally surrounded by the stroads to hell because that's all they ever known. that arrangement is their default.

[Trae]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i just don't understand how anyone could live like that. i really don't. cities and rural i get, even inner burbs, but that kind of suburbia is a mystery.

Several reason. Big house for multiple kids, big yard for multiple kids + pets, a place like Collin County has some of the absolute best public schools and AP/IB World programs in America, pretty good suburban amenities like walkable downtown districts, and less city crime.

[Crawford]

Birth rates & household sizes have never been lower, so it's weird that people still want bigger and bigger homes. How much does it cost to AC a 4,000 sq. ft. home in the summer TX heat? No basements, right? In the north, that would be a 6,000 sq. ft. house, functionally.

Crime rates are near modern-day lows, and I don't think there's any evidence that sprawl is statistically safer than non-sprawl. The opposite is likely true, given the stroads and extreme commuting.

And the highest performing schools are almost always in close-in communities, not sprawl. But those districts usually have much higher home prices.

[Trae]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Birth rates & household sizes have never been lower, so it's weird that people still want bigger and bigger homes. How much does it cost to AC a 4,000 sq. ft. home in the summer TX heat? No basements, right? In the north, that would be a 6,000 sq. ft. house, functionally.

Crime rates are near modern-day lows, and I don't think there's any evidence that sprawl is statistically safer than non-sprawl. The opposite is likely true, given the stroads and extreme commuting.

And the highest performing schools are almost always in close-in communities, not sprawl. But those districts usually have much higher home prices.

A/C bill will depend on a lot of things (shade, how much of the house youre cooling, etc.) so that's hard to say. Crime is at modern day lows sure but there are still levels to it meaning there will still be plenty of high crime areas relative to the low crime suburbs (and yes there's plenty of crime stats to back this up).

For schools, the big city districts typically have a handful of token very good schools and/or magnet programs but you're either buying in a high priced neighborhood or a higher crime/gentrifying neighborhood to get into those. This versus buying in a typical suburban neighborhood where everyone in your neighborhood goes to the school you're zoned to, which is typically higher performing than the same house in the inner city going to its zoned school.

Kind of separate but this is often why in gentryfying neighborhoods the elementary school will be highly rated but it drops significantly once you get into upper levels (parents sending their kids across town to better schools because they have the money). It hurts the community when a good bull of the kids don't go to the neighborhood schools

[iheartthed]

Sounds like Dallas is falling into a trap. If they're just copy and pasting McMansions into the horizon then eventually the core will start to erode. That's the type of cycle that Metro Detroit got into and has been fighting to get out of for decades.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Trae

A/C bill will depend on a lot of things (shade, how much of the house youre cooling, etc.) so that's hard to say. Crime is at modern day lows sure but there are still levels to it meaning there will still be plenty of high crime areas relative to the low crime suburbs (and yes there's plenty of crime stats to back this up).

For schools, the big city districts typically have a handful of token very good schools and/or magnet programs but you're either buying in a high priced neighborhood or a higher crime/gentrifying neighborhood to get into those. This versus buying in a typical suburban neighborhood where everyone in your neighborhood goes to the school you're zoned to, which is typically higher performing than the same house in the inner city going to its zoned school.

Kind of separate but this is often why in gentryfying neighborhoods the elementary school will be highly rated but it drops significantly once you get into upper levels (parents sending their kids across town to better schools because they have the money). It hurts the community when a good bull of the kids don't go to the neighborhood schools

I believe many of the newcomers to TX (I don't live there) are prime working age and/or middle class immigrants, especially from India. So I think they would prefer those big suburban homes with large yards because that means they have made it in America. They don't want to live in old inner city house.
I saw the demographics of those areas and many of them now have large Asian-American populations. Someone from Katy, suburban Houston told me years ago that his neighborhood was like 40% Asian-American, and I think those new Collin County suburbs outside of Dallas are 20-30% Indian-American. In other cities, like DC, the expensive suburbs like Fairfax, VA and Montgomery, MD also have larger Asian-American populations that average. They also have high quality schools, which I am guessing the new TX suburbs will have.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Trae

For schools, the big city districts typically have a handful of token very good schools and/or magnet programs but you're either buying in a high priced neighborhood or a higher crime/gentrifying neighborhood to get into those. This versus buying in a typical suburban neighborhood where everyone in your neighborhood goes to the school you're zoned to, which is typically higher performing than the same house in the inner city going to its zoned school.

I'm not talking about urban cores, I'm talking about outer sprawl vs. inner suburbia. I really doubt your average McMansion buyer is simultaneously considering urban living.

Is there a metro where the outer sprawl McMansion zone has better schools than the older suburbs? I doubt it. In Dallas, older suburbs like Frisco have much better schools than the newest sprawlburbs. And schools in the oldest suburbs like University Park/Highland Park are better still. In Detroit, the best school districts are all in fully built-out suburbs.

If you're building a McMansion in a cornfield, you're pretty likely to have inferior schools. IMO it's more of a more space/new construction thing.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Trae

Houston hasn't really slowed down. Actually last year was the fastest it grew since 2016. Houston is typically in the 85k-120k range. DFW is just growing a bit faster now thanks to years of planning among that group of cities which is coming together currently, in what's probably DFW's golden age. I think with being the last affordable 5M+ metro that Houston will continue to see an increases moving forward.



Houston isn't getting that quality of growth because there's so many unincorporated areas, which account for the bulk majority of the Houston metro population. Many areas just lack the basic things like sidewalks. If Houston had DFW like planning metro wide it'd be growing much faster right now. I envy the old downtowns places like DFW has throughout their suburbs. Houston either paved over them, they were turned into reservoirs, or the city annexed so much land around these towns that they decided to disincorporate because there was no tax base. Kind of amazing Houston is growing like it is considering these major flaws imo

Interesting, especially about the old downtowns. I thought maybe since Dallas was an older city, it had more old downtowns. Houston has been written off many times, and I would suspect it is doing well given its economic profile because it is in Texas. A joke in the 80s was that it was the next Detroit. Other oil towns have not done well - New Orleans is not really growing and Tulsa is an oil town that is overshadowed by OKC and growing much more slowly. I guess it also benefited because the industry consolidated there, and it also drew in international companies. Even the small metro next to it, Beaumont, is not growing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The opposite is likely true, given the stroads and extreme commuting.

"OMG, I would never take my family down into the city, it's WAY too dangerous!" says the suburban soccer mom, without the slightest hint of irony, as she buckles her brood into the back of the minivan to go careening down the high speed stroads of her world multiple times per day, every day.

People generally suck at risk assessment.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by DCReid

I believe many of the newcomers to TX (I don't live there) are prime working age and/or middle class immigrants, especially from India. So I think they would prefer those big suburban homes with large yards because that means they have made it in America. They don't want to live in old inner city house.
I saw the demographics of those areas and many of them now have large Asian-American populations. Someone from Katy, suburban Houston told me years ago that his neighborhood was like 40% Asian-American, and I think those new Collin County suburbs outside of Dallas are 20-30% Indian-American. In other cities, like DC, the expensive suburbs like Fairfax, VA and Montgomery, MD also have larger Asian-American populations that average. They also have high quality schools, which I am guessing the new TX suburbs will have.

My Brother-in-law lives in a new subdivision in way north of Austin and I'd say about 60-70% of the residents in his McMansion subdivision are Indian or South Asian in general.

[Chisouthside]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

"OMG, I would never take my family down into the city, it's WAY too dangerous!" says the suburban soccer mom, without the slightest hint of irony, as she buckles her brood into the back of the minivan to go careening down the high speed stroads of her world multiple times per day, every day.

People generally suck at risk assessment.

I recently visited friends from California that ended up east of Rockwall, which is east of Dallas, and they hate driving into Dallas because of all the accidents. They pointed out all the roadside altars in the access road from their subdivision to the main freeway and indeed there was alot of altars for people that have passed away on that particular stretch.