Texas, the second largest state in the U.S., has four of the five fastest-growing cities in the U.S., according to new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau for the twelve months up to July 1, 2016.
Ten of the fifteen fastest growing large U.S. cities during that 12-month span were in the South, according to the Census Bureau.
Conroe, a Houston suburb in Texas, was the fastest-growing large city in the U.S. at 7.8 percent. The city's growth rate was more than 11 times higher than the nation's growth average of 0.7 percent.
Conroe was followed by two other cities in Texas - Friscoe and McKinney - with growth rates of 6.2 percent and 5.9 percent respectively.
Other cities in the top five were Greenville in South Carolina, with growth rate of 5.8 percent, and Georgetown, also in Texas, with a population increase of 5.5 percent.
Long associated with the image of cowboys, Texas' fortune changed in the early twentieth century with the discovery of oil. The state later developed a diversified economy and high tech industry, and it now has the second-highest gross state product.
"Overall, cities in the South continue to grow at a faster rate than any other U.S region. Since the 2010 Census, the population in large southern cities grew by an average of 9.4 percent," Amel Toukabri, a demographer in the Census Bureau's population division, said.
In comparison, cities in the West grew 7.3 percent, while cities in the Northeast and Midwest had much lower growth rates at 1.8 percent and 3.0 percent respectively.
Four cities in the West - Bend in Oregon, Buckeye in Arizona, Lehi in Utah, and Meridian in Idaho - were among the top fifteen fastest growing. Ankeny in Iowa was the only city in the Midwest in the top-fifteen list, while no cities in the Northeast were among the nation's fastest growing.
New York remains the most populous city in the U.S. with a population of 8.54 million, followed by Los Angeles with 3.98 million and Chicago with 2.70 million, respectively. Chicago remains the third-largest city in the U.S. despite a population loss of 8,638 during the period.
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