The fastest-growing American city with more than half a million people is Ft. Worth., which added more than 20 percent to its population from July 2000 through July 2006, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The fastest growing of any of the cities of more than 50,000 population was McKinney, TX, which has nearly doubled (107,530) in size since 2000.
Other cities with rising growth rates are Gilbert, Arizona (73.9%), North Las Vegas (71.1%) and Port St Lucie, Florida (61.9%).
New York
Gotham added more residents than any city in the United States since 2000 with 205,750 new citizens. New York is one of the few major old industrial towns that have not experienced a substantial shrinking in the number of its core residents.
Old Times
Suburbs around the older cities are growing while they are losing population from their core areas. But even taking into account total metro-area growth, the newer sunbelt cities are growing at a faster rate than older, industrial towns. Each of the 10 biggest cities once lay within 500 miles of the Canadian border. Now, seven of the top 10 are sun-belt cities. Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city with 3,849,378 people, had a population of just over 100,000 in 1900. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego and San Jose, Calif. all had fewer than 100,000.
| City (pop. over 500,000) | Percent growth |
| Ft. Worth, TX | 4.8% |
| Phoenix, AZ | 2.9% |
| Austin, TX | 2.7% |
| San Antonio , TX | 2.6% |
| Charlotte, NC | 2.3% |
| Albuquerque, NM | 2.1% |
| El Paso, TX | 1.9% |
| San Jose, CA | 1.6% |
| Denver, CO | 1.5% |
| Jacksonville, FL | 1.5% |
| Source:U.S. Census Bureau | |
Source: CNN Money