Quote:
Originally Posted by Tech House
Interesting, I had been told by a couple people from the Midland-Odessa area that Odessa was the blue collar bedroom community for jobs in Midland but apparently that's more of a perception than a reality.
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No, they're pretty distinct cities even though the public perception is that they're closely tied together. If Midland and Ector counties continue to grow at the rate they are currently (Ector has already almost surpassed it's whole last decade growth rate in the first four years of this decade, and Midland county's rate so far has been even faster - though with more of a slow down from last decade), they'll be over .5m together by 2030, which would definitely imply a single metropolitan area by then given the small geographic area that growth would likely be within.
If their growth slows down slightly to be the average over the past 14 years, they'll be at just under 440k by 2030, still likely a single MSA by then. However, if they slow down more to their average growth over the last 24 years, they'll be at just under 400k by then. That's maybe still good enough to have enough commuter exchange for a single MSA (the reason this is the case is because as areas gain more population, there are greater numbers of people located at the periphery who then experience relative cost to travel to the next county over for employment, rather than traveling an essentially similar drive into the center of their own county), but not a sure thing. The wild card, of course, is whether all of this growth will occur within the counties themselves or without adjacent counties (thus pulling the adjecent
I think we'll see the tipping point at around 400-415k for consolidation into a single metropolitan area. Currently they're at just under 310k.
For a little bit more fun, if they pick up growth a bit more (which isn't unreasonable as a projection possibility given that the economy has been growing fast more recently than it was at the beginning of the decade), they'll by at just under 610k by 2030.
Just because I love doing this stuff, here's the 100k benchmarks under each scenario. Some of these become unrealistic as time passes, of course, as growth patterns do not remain static over time. The area will probably experience patches of each of these growth rate categories. I think the faster growth rate is probably the one to watch over the next two to three years, followed by the fast rate in the couple of years after that, and a settling down into the mid-level growth rate for the couple of years after that. After that who knows.
Current (fast) growth:
400k - 2022
500k - 2029
600k - 2035
700k - 2040
800k - 2044
900k - 2048
1mil - 2051 (totally unrealistic long term)
Mid-level growth:
400k - 2026
500k - 2036
600k - 2045
700k - 2052
Slower growth:
400k - 2031
500k - 2045
600k - 2056
Faster growth:
400k - 2020
500k - 2026
600k - 2030
700k - 2033
800k - 2037
900k - 2040
1mil - 2042
etc. (totally unrealistic long-term)