• Scott Cody, M.B.A

“What city is the fastest growing in Florida?” is a question often asked by reporters, students, and others. And the answer is simple: it depends.  Births and deaths, migration, annexation or de-annexation, are among the things that cause city populations to change.  However, the answer to the question depends first on the answer to another question: “What time span are you looking at?”  Are you looking at growth in the most recent year, or since the last Census or some other time span?  A one-year horizon is more current than a longer span, but can also be less accurate for making inferences to the future.  A one-year estimate compacts all the error of an estimate including data error and extraordinary events.  Use of a longer time horizon spreads out that error and may give a more accurate, but less timely estimate of growth.  The City of Worthington Springs provides a good example of the difference a time span and special event can make.  Between the 2013 and 2014 estimates, a Census correction to the city’s 2010 population significantly increased the 2010 population.  The percent growth from 2010 to 2013 was 116% before the correction and after the correction the 2010 to 2014 percent growth was only 2.7%.

Let’s say your time span is the time period from the last Census to the current year estimate date.  Using Bureau of Economic and Business Research data, that span would be from April 1, 2010 to April 1, 2014.  So which city is the fastest growing in Florida from 2010 to 2014?  The answer is still not totally clear without answers to the following two questions:  Are you interested in percentage growth or are you interested in absolute growth?  Are you looking at all cities (Weeki Wachee with a population of 5 or Jacksonville population 846,421) or at cities of comparable size?

There are two measures of population growth—percent change and absolute growth.  Percent change is the population change from the base year to the current year divided by the base year population.  A city that grows from 50 people to 55 people grows by 10% [(55 – 50) / 50 x 100 = 10%].  Absolute growth is simply the population change from the base year to the current year [(55-50 = 5)].

The list of the fastest growing cities from 2010 to 2014 based on percent growth will contain a significantly different list of cities than the list based on absolute change.  Only the City of Doral makes the top ten list for both percentage growth (Table 01) and absolute growth (Table 02).  The fastest growing place based on percentage growth is the City of Lake Buena Vista in Orange County at 120%.  The fastest growing place based on absolute growth is the City of Miami with an increase of 28,599.  However, Lake Buena Vista grew by a grand total of 12 people and Miami grew by only 7.2%.  Based on percentage growth, Lake Buena Vista grew at 16.7 times the rate of Miami but Miami added 2,383 times as many people (28,587 more people) than Lake Buena Vista added.

TABLE 01. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

TABLE 02. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Population Change, 2010 to 2014

Consequently, one of the first steps is to decide what you want to compare.   Do you want percent change or absolute change?  Then you’ll need to decide what categories of cities to compare – all cities or just cities of similar size?  Lazy Lake is the 95^th fastest growing city out of more than 400 cities.  It grew by 4.2% but added only one person (24 in 2010 and 25 in 2014).  Do you compare this to Miami or should you only compare it to other small cities like Weeki Wachee?  Can you even determine any meaningful population trend from the addition of one person?

To help with the comparison of the growth of Florida cities, we have constructed a series of six tables (Table 03 through Table 08 below) that compare the percentage growth in six size categories of cities based on their 2010 population.

Special one-time events can affect population growth, but may not necessarily be repeated in future years.  These can include annexations, or less frequently, de-annexations and special populations.  Most cities only occasionally annex small areas with small populations or large areas with very little population into their city limits.  Some cities regularly annex small areas, and some cities occasionally annex large populations.  These annexations of large populations can skew the growth trend of a city to be artificially high.  An example of this is the city of Sweetwater in Miami-Dade County.  Almost all of the 6,846 increase in the 2010-2014 population for Sweetwater came from a one-time annexation that is not likely to be repeated anytime soon.  This caused Sweetwater to be the second fastest growing city based on percent change at 50.7%.  Likewise, the City of Marianna in Jackson County was the 4^th fastest growing city based on percent change at 29.5%, but almost all of the growth came from the annexation of a prison. Often special group quarters populations increase or decrease by large amounts between one year and the next.  Prisons and college dorms are good examples of these changes.  The opening or closing of large buildings containing these populations can cause a large one-time change.

The bottom line is that a simple question is really not all that simple. To arrive at an answer to “What is the fastest growing city?” you must first answer some follow-up questions to determine exactly what it is you want to know. Otherwise, the answer you get may provide something other than the information you want to know.

TABLE 03. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Greater or Equal to 50,000

TABLE 04. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Greater or Equal to 10,000 and Less than 50,000

TABLE 05. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Greater or Equal to 5,000 and Less than 10,000

TABLE 06. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Greater or Equal to 1,000 and Less than 5,000

TABLE 07. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Greater or Equal to 500 and Less than 1,000

TABLE 08. Rank of the Top 10 Cities in Florida by Percent Change in Population, 2010 to 2014

2010 Population Less than 500

POSTED:  January 6, 2015.