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San Antonio grows on pace to top San Diego
Lisa Marie Gómez
Express-News Staff Writer
If San Antonio continues to grow at the same rate it has been going since 2000, the city will leapfrog over San Diego by 2010, according to new Census data released today.
San Antonio had the third largest numerical increase in the nation when more than 22,000 people moved to San Antonio from July 1, 2003, to July 1, 2004, which has been a steady average since 2000.
“In a real sense, San Antonio is the fastest-growing big city in Texas,” said Steve Murdock, director of the Ins ute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research and the Texas State Data Center, both at UTSA.
If the trend continues, that's when San Antonio is expected to be the seventh largest city in the nation, pushing San Diego to eighth on the list.
Just last year, Census numbers moved San Antonio from ninth to eighth on the list when it bypassed Dallas.
Phoenix, with an increase of almost 30,000 people, came in first on the list and Los Angeles, with a little more than 26,000 people, came in second.
Las Vegas was fourth on the list with a 17,923 increase, and Fort Worth was a close fifth with 17,872.
Lt. Col. Kurt Pfitzner and his wife, Leigh, who just moved to San Antonio Saturday, see why people would want to live here.
“It's a very nice place from the job perspective,” said Kurt, as he took a break from unpacking dozens of boxes at his new home in a new neighborhood called Iron Mountain on the North Side. “It's a great place to live.”
His wife quickly pointed out how much cheaper everything is here compared to Montgomery, Ala., from which they moved.
“I had my cash register receipt from Montgomery and my receipt from San Antonio and everything is cheaper here,” said Leigh as she handed over an ice cold beer to her husband to help him stay cool.
And they couldn't believe how inexpensive their new house was.
“I bought our house in Montgomery for $105 per square foot and sold it at $110 (per square foot), and here I bought this one at $83 a square foot,” Kurt said. “I couldn't believe it.”
While cities like San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso and Austin seem to keep growing, several others are going the opposite direction.
Places such as Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco are all shrinking.
In 2001, Chicago's population was 2,896,304, but by last year, its population dropped a little more than 34,000 people.
And San Jose, Calif., bumped Detroit off the Top 10 Biggest Cities list. San Jose has been steadily climbing in population from 898,069 in 2000 to 904,522 in 2004, while Detroit's population numbers fell from 947,859 in 2000 to 900,189 in 2004.
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