Columbus is the Only Midwest City in U.S. Census List of the Top-15 Fastest Growing Cities

Columbus stays winning.

The city's growth last year helped maintain its position as the 14th-largest city in the nation, holding off Fort Worth, Texas for the honors.

Columbus had a growth rate of 1.8% — the fastest growth since 2000 — and added the most people of any city in Ohio with 15,429 people relocating to the Discovery City between the summers of 2016 and 2017. The census estimates the total population at 879,170.

WBUR spoke to Derek Thompson, senior editor at the Atlantic about the country's fast growing cities and what, if anything, surprised him.

“I mean there's not a lot of surprises to me at the top of the list, except for two things: You've got Seattle, which is by far the fastest-growing dense urban area in the United States,” Thompson said. 

“And then second, Columbus, Ohio, I think is going to surprise a lot of people. A lot of people don't realize that Columbus, Ohio, is secretly becoming the second Chicago of the Midwest. It has been growing really quickly for the last few years. And so those are really the two exceptions to this general rule of hot [weather] cities crowing quickly – it's Seattle, and it's Columbus.”

Thompson's insight is no surprise to anyone who's driven down High Street in the last year or found themselves wondering where all of the traffic was coming from all of a sudden.

The 15 Cities with the Largest Numeric Increase in Population (July 2016–July 2017)