Which US small town(s) do you think it will grow into large cities one day?

[CrazyAboutCities]

Which US small town(s) do you think it will grow into large cities one day?

These US small towns I think it will grow into large cities one day:

Bend, OR
Walla Walla, WA

What about you?

[CrazyAboutCities]

Anyone?

[blakeaustin]

No thank you. (:

[Manitopiaaa]

What do you mean by small town and what do you mean by large city? I'm guessing most small towns that will boom will be ala Frisco, Texas: small exurban towns that boom once the metro boundary reaches them. Fargo, Sioux Falls, Missoula, Bozeman, Northwest Arkansas are other good picks.

[hudkina]

The MSAs that will almost certainly hit the 1 million mark by 2025:

1. Tucson, AZ - 2013
2. Honolulu, HI - 2016
3. Fresno, CA - 2017
4. Tulsa, OK - 2018
5. Albuquerque, NM - 2020
6. El Paso, TX - 2020
7. McAllen, TX - 2021
8. Omaha, NE - 2022
9. Bakersfield, CA - 2024

After that, the likely cities are:
Colorado Springs, CO
Boise, ID
Albany, NY (primarily by absorbing more counties into the MSA)
Baton Rouge, LA
Grand Rapids, MI (primarily by absorbing more counties into the MSA)
Columbia, SC
Greensboro, NC
Knoxville, TN

Several of the Florida MSAs will likely merge. For example, Punta Gorda could merge with Bradenton-Sarasota (and possibly drag along DeSoto and Hardee counties). In 2010, the five counties had a population of 924,852 and will certainly see 1 million in the next several years. Another example would be Fort Myers and Naples (dragging in Hendry county). Combined the three counties had a population of 979,414 and has likely already passed the 1 million mark. Lakeland may eventually merge with Tampa.

Bridgeport and New Haven will eventually be absorbed into the New York MSA before reaching 1 million. Oxnard will eventually be absorbed into the Los Angeles MSA before reaching 1 million.

[miami305]

Miami, Florida.

[bozenBDJ]

Spokane, WA
Savannah, GA
Wilmington, DE and NC
Charleston, SC
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Waco, Irvine(near Dallas), and Galveston, TX

anything else/more?.

[xzmattzx]

I think we might see one of the cities in North Dakota become relatively significant if the shale oil industry continues to grow and dominate domestic production. A place like Williston, Minot, or Bismarck could grow to the size and importance of other current Great Plains cities like Lincoln or Wichita, or even an Omaha.

[diablo234]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I think we might see one of the cities in North Dakota become relatively significant if the shale oil industry continues to grow and dominate domestic production. A place like Williston, Minot, or Bismarck could grow to the size and importance of other current Great Plains cities like Lincoln or Wichita, or even an Omaha.

Billings, Montana has a strong chance of reaching one million thanks to it's proximity to the Bakken Oil Field (especially since more and more fracking is also taking place on the Montana side). However I don't see any city in North Dakota reaching 200,000 people let alone one million people.

[hudkina]

Fargo is already over 200,000 and is growing at a very steady pace. Sioux Falls in South Dakota is well over 200,000 and is growing at a rapid pace. I could easily see either becoming another Omaha. Hell, at the rate that Sioux Falls is growing, it could be rivaling Denver before we know it.

[weava]

Branson, MO. I don't see it becoming a major city but I could still see it going from 3,000 in 1990 to 100,000 by 2040. The largest house in the US is under construction not to far outside of Branson and its becoming more of a retirement area I think.

[hyrule-mpls]

I feel like Des Moines will just continue to grow and could potentially reach 1 million within the metro.

[NorthDallas]

Def not Bend!

I live full-time between Bend, Dallas and Austin and Bend was hit almost harder than any other location in the country during the recession!! It will take years for Bend to even be somewhat close to the growth machine that it once was. It was growing very unhealthy as well. Marketing to people via- false/exagerated weather facts, housing stats, so on. We have recently had a few years were there was actually an amount of people that were moving OUT of Bend, that was a first in a few decades.

Its becoming more stable now and we are starting to see a few housing starts here and there. There were just tracks and tracks of new homes built that have just sat empty over the last few years. No new restaurant/retail growth at all. I see Bend topping out around 100,000 people anyways. For example the city/state had our population signs up before the 2010 census(was the count for 2009 I believe) and it had just over 80,000 people for the city of Bend. When the official 2010 count came out there was only 76,000. So kind of an idea of what I mean by way over estimating what was going on here.

My other homes, Dallas and even Austin are completelt different monsters. I mean I can go back to Dallas, which doesnt even look like it was hit by ANY recession, has grown and built more in one tiny area(but all over the Metro) than anything Bend will ever see. Austin is the same but on a smaller scale. It blows my mind the difference between the two states(Oregon and Texas)!!

I do see Omaha, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Spokane, Boise, Fargo, and a few other areas growing a lot over the next few decades!

[redbaron_012]

Jane Lew, West Virginia. Just a guess ? I bought a hot dog and coffee there during it's Centenary Celebrations on 2nd Sept. 2007 : ) It was good...............the hot dog and the town

[Somnifor]

I think the smaller cities that still have relatively large hinterlands are the ones most likely to continue to grow and eventually move up a tier. I'm thinking of places like Des Moines, Omaha, Albuquerque and Boise.

[desertpunk]

Small cities? Or medium-sized cities? I don't consider cities or metros over 500,000 as "small".

Here's some small cities (not suburbs) that are set to explode in this century:

St. George UT
Las Cruces NM
San Marcos TX
Boise ID
Killeen-Temple TX
Laredo TX
Kingman AZ
Provo UT
Ft Collins CO

Plenty others, of course, but many of the fastest growing cities will be suburbs like Lafayette CO or Peoria AZ. I wouldn't predict very many breakout growth stories due to the trend of major cities grabbing a larger share of future growth. After 60 years of an exurban dispersion model fueled by cheap gas and interstate highways, we're going back to the urban concentration model that existed before WW2.

[Middle-Island]

Possibly some of the satellite cities around the mega-plexes deserve mention, too, considdering their growth.

Frisco, TX is actually a suburb north of Dallas

1990 -- 6,100
2000 -- 33,000
2010 -- 116,000

I remembered seeing a few other "sunbelt bombs" in the census, but I think Frisco was the most impressive.

[desertpunk]

Originally Posted by Middle-Island

Possibly some of the satellite cities around the mega-plexes deserve mention, too, considdering their growth.

Frisco, TX is actually a suburb north of Dallas

1990 -- 6,100
2000 -- 33,000
2010 -- 116,000

I remembered seeing a few other "sunbelt bombs" in the census, but I think Frisco was the most impressive.

Frisco grew so fast they actually had to go back and build a new downtown:

image hosted on flickr

City of Frisco Main Street Pic by JeffCheney, on Flickr

Another city like that is Rio Rancho NM which began as a land scammer selling plots to people thousands of miles away, to a notorious federal witness protection program hideaway, to a typical suburban bedroom community, to a sprawling city of 90,000...without a downtown (there's one on the drawing board).

[Middle-Island]

That's funny, I do remember the Rio Rancho commercial in the early '70s that ran frequently in the New York market. Woman talking on a phone to a relative back east... telling about the mountains turning colors at sunset. LOL
----------------

On thread subject in general, article from last year. This town in Florida I personally know is getting a lot of attention from retirees up here:

America's Fastest-Growing Small Towns

....Retirees are swelling some communities quickly, like The Villages, a planned retirement haven in central Florida. The population of The Villages and its surrounding suburbs ballooned 29% to 93,420 between 2007 and 2010, according to the U.S. Census, putting it at the top of our list. Some 87,000 of them live in the retirement community at the area’s core, a spread of tidy single-story homes clustered around two “town squares” with shops and restaurants. The retirement community’s population is up from 68,000 in 2007, according to Villages spokesperson Gary Lester, and it’s aiming to reach 110,000 residents by 2016. With the baby boom generation reaching retirement age, that looks like an attainable goal.

[....more in link:]

Forbes

[Middle-Island]

The Villages -- one of the town squares. Don't know about sharing the road with golf carts. So why do I suspect the speed limit is probably 15 mph in too many places?