ARC: Atlanta boomed between 2015 and 2016, adding nearly 8,000 new residents
Apparently people are filling those new high rises
Judging just by the number of of new high- and mid-rise developments sprouting from the ground, the city is growing. Now we have a better idea of how many people are moving into them and elsewhere in the city.
According to new data from the Atlanta Regional Commission, the city grew by 7,900 residents between April 2015 and April 2016. Compare that to adding 4,800 residents the year before and 4,100 residents in 2014, and just 1,200 residents in 2013.
The city’s growth, the planning behemoth says, can be attributed to a “surge of multi-family housing units.”
The rest of the 10-county metro Atlanta region grew by 1.6 percent, faster than at any time since the Great Recession, the ARC says. Gwinnett County led the region by adding nearly 17,300 new residents, followed by Fulton and Cobb counties with 15,300 and 9,900, respectively.
The overall boom in the number of people who decided to call metro Atlanta home is thanks to the economy, Mike Carnathan, the ARC’s manager of ARC’s Research & Analytics Division, says in a release. The larger 29-county metro region added approximately 77,000 jobs between May 2015 and May 2016.
“As always, more jobs means more people,” Carnathan says. “Newcomers are increasingly attracted to our region as our economy picks up steam, post-recession.”
The total population of the region, according to the ARC, now stands at 4,401,800 kind souls.