Population Growth Shifts to Urban Virginia

Hamilton Lombard reports on a reversal of long-standing trends in Virginia's population growth. "Population growth in Loudoun [County], as in much of Virginia during the two decades [of the 1990s and 2000s] was fueled by people moving out to newly built subdivisions on the edges of the commonwealth’s largest metro areas," writes Lombard. "Though Loudoun remains the fastest growing locality in the state, according to the 2015 population estimates released today by the Weldon Cooper Center’s Demographics Research Group, its growth has slowed considerably."

The article includes population heat maps for the state's counties as well as a series of Google Streeview screengrabs to show the development that has followed the state's growth in recent years.

The jist of the data reported by the article, however: growth is accelerating closer to Washington D.C., and slowing farther away from the District. In fact, "seven of the ten fastest growing localities in Virginia since 2010 have been urban localities, a noticeable change from previous decades when most of Virginia’s cities had stagnant or declining populations."