South side of the freeway in particular, but some to the North as well. The explosion of corporate headquarters-looking buildings, and apartment/condo buildings has been amazing in this particular area of Tempe. SOOOO many more 10-25 story buildings cropping up it's crazy.

I assume people are moving here to fill these jobs, but I'm not seeing quite as much housing being built as I'm seeing office space. But I stick to a particular route most of the time. Could be a lot of suburban growth I'm not seeing.

over 25 years. Last time I drove through Superior, it still looked like a run-down old mining town. I suppose it's a little too far away to become a suburb, although you never know.

see the housing.

Here in my area, most of the transplants seem to be from other southern states. My region is behind the rest of the state in non-government employment and business development. The biggest non government industry seem to be hospitals and home nursing companies.

It's been a massive success.

My in laws moved to Sun City Arizona 25 years ago. Every year I go to visit I am amazed at the growth in all those areas. Between Surprise, Glendale, Peoria and Tempe I don’t recognize it as much!

But I just can’t deal with the heat out there. And wonder about the sustainability with so many people and the water issues.

What, with Mead and Powell at historic lows.

I'm trying to time it right ... I wanna get out when my house is worth as much as possible, before heading back home to California ... where my parents own 3 properties outright ... and I'm the only child. Or, of course, as soon as they NEED me to come home ... whichever comes first

But yeah, I have strong inclination towards thinking that in the not too distant future ... this whole Phoenix experiment will come to be seen a massive human folly, 2nd only to Vegas.

Between Arizona and the Las Vegas area they are going to run into hard times.

I am a native Californian who still lives in SF. Everytime I go to Arizona I get kind of envious of the big homes compared to my small home in the city. And my PG&e bill is minimal as compared to my husband’s family in Arizona. We get asked why we don’t move there and the two reasons are water and the weather. Plus the homes are bland compared to colorful SF!

I lived in Austin for 34 years. I witnessed its transformation from a sleepy little college town (1980 population 325,000) to a sizable city (projected population nearly 950,000 in 2020). The freeway infrastructure and public transportation did not keep up with the population growth. The housing became less affordable.

I moved away and I have no regrets.

And yeah, nothing but steady growth here for 20+ years.

The gaps between towns on I-35 are getting smaller and smaller.

Why didn't you ask about FL since it would seem to fit in with your states? Was it because you knew that people are still moving here, without having to ask? FL is definitely still growing and this occurs strongly around the bigger cities. Unfortunately, it's mostly residential development with only small businesses included in this part of the state, anyway. Amazon opened up a fulfillment center near here a couple of years ago and that's the last good sized employer to relocate here.

That area has also become bluer as it has grown more. First Disney moved in there, but there now is a lot of non tourist related business development in that part of the state. My county is in the Orlando influence zone news wise, but we have a closer relationship with Alachua County. I am a bit disappointed with the University of Florida, it grows well organically, but does not seem to do a good job of spinning off new industries around it like biotech and advanced materials, AI and robotics. The UF will never have the business spurning footprint of a Stanford, MIT, Harvard or CalTech, there does not appear to be that type of focus in the UF.

does have a self-supporting economy. I don't pretend to understand why, but even during the Great Recession, it hardly seemed to make a dent in Texas' economy, and certainly not the DFW Metroplex.

People... It's the same for all the suburbs here...

Even the burbs are slowly turning blue here.... Collin county was only -5 in the last election.

of people moving to the state. I also think (hope) that many of those new residents are coming from more liberal states. Which might explain why some of those states that surprised us in 2016 did so - by voting for the RED RUSSIAN PARTY.

from Maryland. Two more blue votes for Texas!

It's that Texas Triangle you keep hearing about...

I was part of the group who tried to recruit one of the Castro brothers to run for governor but we were unsuccessful. With a strong candidate at the top of the ticket, we can turn Texas blue

The party is looking at Wendy Davis, one of the Castro brothers or perhaps Beto for Senate (Beto would have until mid December to file for Senate).

We have the advantage of no natural boundaries, unlike places such as San Francisco, New Orleans or Chicago. Traffic has increased along with the expansion, and the highway system, while built anticipating serious growth, never anticipated the growth that ultimately occurred. It's not yet as bad as places like Atlanta or DC, but it gets pretty clogged all the same.

An advantage, of course, is that you can fly nonstop to Dallas from almost anywhere now (unfortunately not Düsseldorf--yet!), and no matter WHAT kind of food you like, it's there.

I went to Oregon.

Regions that are growing generally do a poor job of housing stock planning until it is too late. For example, in my start the Orlando Area is expensive to live in, but it also has lots of business activity there, in addition to tourism.

Florida and Georgia came close to electing African American Governors, and flipped some seats red to blue. Texas had some red to blue flips.

We had the able Martin Frost for 13 terms until DeLay's gerrymander, and then we had the awful Pete Sessions for almost as long. But now we have Colin Allred--finally!

It used to be far more conservative than Houston, and Houston didn't really seem to start changing until the early 2000s (an outsiders perspective). Now, if I understand right, every major city in Texas is bluish, with Austin and Houston shining blue.

Martin Frost represented us for 26 years, and got Gerrymandered out only during Clinton's first term. Also we had Ron Kirk as mayor of Dallas and Bill White as Mayor of Houston around that time, too. Only because DeLay's gerrymander added some rural Bible Belt country outside Dallas to our district were the Republicans able to vote Martin out. After 13 terms, we were perfectly happy with Martin, believe me! Dallas has seen a HUGE transformation in the last 30 years. My housemates in Dallas (both born in New England) are big supporters of modern dance projects, which attract a lot of the LGBT community. You hear more and more local accents among them these days, where in the beginning there were mostly northern accents in such groups. But Dallas sometimes feels like West Berlin used to--go outside the city limits, and you feel like you have crossed into a very different, very oppressive society, where you are closely watched and definitely not welcome.

El Paso is now also solidly Beto country.

move there from other places.

And it shows few signs of slowing down anytime soon.

But I'll say this. When my parents moved from North Carolina (1 hour North of Raleigh) to Central Florida and built their home Southeast of Cypress Gardens tourist attraction, they were surrounded by Citrus Groves. Literally, when Orange Blossoms bloomed, it was as if everyone was baking an Orange Pound Cake.
They just had visitors from Washington DC area who commented "I couldn't live with all of these people around me" All of those Citrus Groves? Now houses as far as the eye can see. In fact, so many developments, there are TWO elementary schools, and a planned Junior High in the works.
No idea if all of these homes belong to year-round residents or Winter Visitors. Do know that the back to back freezes in late 80's, early 90's had Grove Owners selling their land instead of replanting and having to pay property taxes.
Visited my Sister in Youngsville, NC several times last Summer, everywhere you look, those old two-lane roads I used to drive from Henderson, NC to Raleigh when we wanted to go 'shopping at the Mall' are now 4 and 6 land roads with housing developments and strip centers everywhere.
If these two areas are any indication of the States listed....WOW!

...until Houston expands to all of Harris county.

Although, the growth rate of my little exurb of nowhere is hardly stagnant.

Cary NC (next door to Raleigh) had 43,858 in 1990, 94,536 in 2000, 135,234 in 2010, est 165,904 in 2017. It's nickname is containment area for relocating yankees. Raleigh in 1990 had 212,092, in 2000 it had 276,093, in 2010 it had 403,892, and in 2017 an est 479,332. That is huge growth and much of it is immigration from other states and/or countries. Another item, I am in a gay men's chorus based in Raleigh which pulls from much of the Triangle. Less than half of that chorus was born in NC.

When I was in college at State a million years ago (1983 - 87), Cary was the “bedroom community” where people lived when they didn’t want to live in Raleigh. Now, it has its own bedroom communities! Since 540 has been finished around the northern side of Raleigh, some of the small towns there have exploded in population and it’s not slowing down. Wake County will soon catch Mecklenburg with over a million people in each county.

I wonder if we have any mutual friends, dsc? Even though I haven’t lived there in almost 32 years I still have my Raleigh gays! 😁

I know quite a few gays who have been here for decades.

since then. I now live in a rural area about 45 miles from Austin and even these areas are becoming more and more progressive. That is saying a lot because for decades most of the rural areas have been dark red. It is not a fast change but definitely a change as more people leave Austin for affordable housing. The growth in Central Texas is non-stop.

Texas will turn blue. There are a large number of real democrats working hard to turn Texas blue. The major cities have been blue for a while and now the suburbs are flipping. This makes me smile https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/03/texas-gop-races-2020-1202205

Houston is like Los Angeles. It's always been spread out. It's over 600 square miles, but what used to be small towns on the outskirts have become bedroom communities. School districts that were once rural have become suburban. Most of the gaps between the towns have filled in. More and more concrete means less absorbent soil (which wasn't that absorbent to begin with) and Houston is flat as a pancake, so when we have our toad stranglers the water simply can't move downstream fast enough. There are thousands of homes on the west side of town that never should have been built because we were supposed to have THREE levees on the west side. Developers greased some palms on city council and got them to abandon the plans for the 3rd levee. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Chicago is shrinking and at the rate Houston is growing, we'll be as the 3rd largest city in the US in less than 10 years.