Urban areas pace state growth
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff The
Big Sky still covers a lot of wide-open spaces, but the latest U.S.
Census Bureau figures show Montana is an increasingly urban
state.
Lora Mattox, a neighborhood planner with the
City-County Planning Department, said she and her colleagues were
somewhat puzzled when the most recent population estimates were
released by the Census Bureau in late March.
According to
those figures, the population of Yellowstone County had grown only
6.9 percent between 2000 and July 1, 2006, for an annual growth rate
of a little more than 1.1 percent. That didn't seem to make sense
because for years planners have estimated the growth rate for the
city of Billings at 2 percent a year, or slightly more than
that.
Digging around on the state Department of Commerce Web
site, they found a map that seemed to explain what was going on.
That map showed the fastest-growing counties in Montana from 2000 to
2005, and it also showed how fast incorporated areas in each county
were growing compared with unincorporated areas.
In Yellowstone County, for example, the map showed a growth
rate of 9 percent in Yellowstone County's incorporated areas, paired
with a 5 percent decline in unincorporated areas of the
county.
Part of that is attributable to annexations in recent
years, with the city of Billings expanding to take in already
established residential areas or subdivisions that have grown
rapidly since being annexed. In 2002, the city annexed the Briarwood
and Cedar Park subdivisions - with 500 people between them - south
of the Yellowstone River. The Yellowstone Club Estates, with 300
households, was also annexed that year.
During one City
Council meeting in 2002, the city annexed another four parcels
totaling 558 acres on the northwest edge of the city. The largest of
the parcels was the Ironwood Estates Subdivision, which was vacant
when it was annexed but whose population has increased steadily in
the past five years.
Larry Swanson, director of the O'Connor
Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana,
said there has been a lot of talk about growth in a few energy-rich
counties in Eastern Montana, but the real story is the continued
growth of the "urban counties."
He said the seven urban
counties in Montana - Yellowstone, Missoula, Gallatin, Flathead,
Cascade, Lewis and Clark and Butte-Silver Bow - have accounted for
92.5 percent of the growth in the state's population since 2000.
That population increased from 902,195 in 2000 to an estimated
944,632 in 2006. Of that increase of 42,000 people, 38,000 lived in
the seven urban counties.
Year in and year out, Swanson said,
more people are moving to those cities, not to the open
countryside.
"It's a different kind of urbanization process
than we've talked about in the past in other parts of the country,"
he said.
In some counties, the population figures for
incorporated and unincorporated areas were even more lopsided than
in Yellowstone County. In Flathead County, incorporated areas saw a
growth rate of 31 percent between 2000 and 2005, compared with 3
percent in unincorporated areas, while in Gallatin County the ratio
was 20 percent to 9 percent, and in Ravalli County 19 percent to 9
percent. Missoula County was very close to Yellowstone, with 9
percent growth in incorporated areas and a decline of 4 percent in
unincorporated areas.
Swanson said one obvious reason for the
differences is that county boundaries don't change, but cities keep
expanding. People want to live near mountains, rivers and other
natural attractions but still have the benefits of urban living -
mainly sewer and water service.
The trend should become even
more pronounced in the coming years because the average age is
steadily increasing in Montana, and older people as a rule tend to
live closer to health care and other services that are concentrated
in urban areas, Swanson said.
Whether you look at the growth
rate of the county as a whole or just the city of Billings, this
area continues to have a steady, manageable increase in population,
Mattox said. Swanson agreed, saying Yellowstone County's growth rate
of 1.1 percent is "pretty healthy."
In Gallatin County, by
contrast, which is the fastest-growing county in the state, the
growth rate has been over 3 percent a year since 2002. That kind of
growth, Swanson said, "is almost incapacitating for
planners."
Contact Ed Kemmick at ekemmick@billingsgazette.com
or 657-1293
Published on Tuesday, April 10, 2007.
Last modified
on 4/10/2007 at 12:13 am
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee
Enterprises.
|
 |
 Click to enlarge
|
|
Contact Us |
Subscribe
