S.D. Ranks High in Growth Report
San Diego’s population will swell by more than half a million people by the year 2000, a projection that ranks it eighth nationally on a list of regions expected to grow the most during the coming period, an economic forecasting firm has found.
In a study released Tuesday, the Washington-based NPA Data Services Inc., predicts that the Los Angeles-Long Beach area will lead the nation in growth by the turn of the century, absorbing 1 million new residents.
Two other Southern California regions--Anaheim and San Bernardino-Riverside--also are expected to gain more than 500,000 people by the year 2000. And of 40 metropolitan areas highlighted in the study, 11 are in California.
“The Sun Belt is still popular, as these figures show,” Chuck Coleman, a consultant with NPA, said, noting that communities in Texas, Arizona and Florida also are expected to undergo heavy population expansion. “The jobs are there, so they’re driving the growth rate.”
The study predicts that 558,000 people will move to San Diego between 1986--the most recent year for which detailed population estimates were available--and 2000. Coleman said the predictions did not take into account the possibility of a housing cap or other artificial slow-growth device. The impact of immigration also was not included.
NPA’s figures are slightly more conservative than those in a preliminary report by the San Diego Assn. of Governments (Sandag). Kim Buttemer , a Sandag spokeswoman, said the regional planning group has forecast population growth of 618,506 people during the same period used by NPA. By 2010, the number of newcomers since 1986 will be 1 million, Sandag predicts.
The numbers are likely to add fuel to the ongoing debate over how San Diego, which had a population of 2,327,684 on Jan. 1, can best grapple with an ongoing development boom into the next century. With two rival growth-control measures vying for voter approval this fall, population predictions are becoming the grist of household conversations throughout the community.
Tom Mullaney, co-chairman of Citizens for Limited Growth, a grass-roots group sponsoring one of the initiatives, sees only disaster ahead if the statisticians’ predictions come true.
“The development community has been very successful in stimulating new growth in San Diego,” Mullaney said, citing as an example a full-page advertisement in a recent issue of Forbes magazine, which touted the EastLake development as a good place to locate a business. “But in the ad they forgot to tell people that San Diego is running short of water, that traffic is becoming unbearable, that our air is polluted.
“Our initiative calls for taking a balanced approach to development, and only allowing as much development as we can provide roads, water and sewers for, and we think that’s considerably less than the half a million people that has been predicted,” Mullaney said. “But I guess if the developers, the banks and the Chamber of Commerce are allowed to use taxpayer money as they do now to push new growth, then San Diego will continue to grow at this hyper rate.”
Robert Morris, executive vice president for the Building Industry Assn., said the newcomers can be comfortably accommodated “if the city pursues an aggressive program of infrastructure improvements and land-use management.”
“As long as the economic health of San Diego is in good order . . . there will be a continual migration here,” Morris said. “To accommodate them, we need an intelligent, realistic plan that understands what growth creates in the way of demands.”
In other San Diego-related findings, the study forecasts a 29.4% increase in jobs between 1986 and 2000. The service industry is expected to create the most new opportunities, NPA predicts.
METROPOLITAN AREA GROWTH PROJECTIONS
Here is a listing of the 40 metropolitan areas expected to lead the nation in growth, and the total increase, in thousands, expected for each area by 2000. Metropolitan areas, generally consist of a central city and surrounding economically linked counties.
City Change 1. Los Angeles 1,017 2. Houston 791 3. Riverside, Calif. 724 4. Atlanta 617 5. Phoenix 594 6. Dallas 576 7. Anaheim 567 8. San Diego 558 9. Washington 550 10. Tampa 473 11. Denver 388 12. Oakland, Calif. 341 13. Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 339 14. Minneapolis 325 15. San Jose 322 16. Fort Worth 310 17. Sacramento 310 18. West Palm Beach, Fla. 305 19. Orlando, Fla. 294 20. Boston 277 21. Miami 268 22. Seattle 266 23. Philadelphia 208 24. Baltimore 198 25. Salt Lake City 192 26. Austin, Tex. 189 27. San Antonio, Tex. 187 28. San Francisco 187 29. Oxnard 186 30. Las Vegas 182 31. Norfolk, Va. 164 32. Tucson 163 33. Monmouth, N.J. 156 34. Nassau-Suffolk, N.Y. 148 35. Portland, Ore. 143 36. Raleigh, N.C. 141 37. Fort Myers, Fla. 139 38. Charlotte, N.C. 137 39. Vallejo, Calif. 133 40. Santa Rosa, Calif. 127
Source: NPA Data Services Inc.
