http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600181.gif

Sprawl sucks.

Mostly suburbs in Sunbelt states. Yep, sprawl sucks.

I heard about this on the radio. The good thing, is that especially with energy prices being what they are (and what they're going to be), this is definitely not sustainable. I think within the next 10 years or so statistics are going to show that we're going to hit an equilibrium and then we're going to see things start shifting slowly back in.

Unless these sub- and ex-urban counties start supporting job bases of their own, of course; which is increasingly possible.

just because these counties have seen the highest growth doesn't mean they're filling to the brim with people. 7 out of the 10 counties have populations at or under 60,000 for the entire county (flagler, lyon, kendall, rockwall, nye, king george, and caroline). washington county has a populations at around 90,000, and pinal and loudon counties have populations under 200,000.

so what's worse? a growing, "sprawling" county in the sunbelt with 50,000 people, or an already-established, "sprawling" county in the northeast or midwest with over 500,000 people?

Yeah, those are small counties so growth rates will be high. What would be more interesting is the Counties that had the highest growth in raw numbers.

Loudoun is no longer a small county, it has exploded in the past several yrs. Its population is at 255k and will hit 400k in no time.

And no one ever said they were filled to the brim, filled to the brim counties simply can't grow much more, it does however show trends which are interesting to their respective metros. It wasn't all that long ago Fairfax Co. was on this list and now it has more than a million people.