Santa Clara County population has stabilized

While real estate prices are falling all around the country, you have to wonder why prices are still super high in the heart of Silicon Valley if the population is dropping. The answer is simple, the population is no longer dropping. The exodus appears to be over with Santa Clara County gaining a small number of people overall and San Jose having a drop of only 1,281 people... a fraction of what happened during the pandemic.

Next year, we could be headed back to growth with substantial new housing projects opening up and plenty of capacity for large businesses to come to San Jose.

Source: usdmedia from Skyscraper City, State of California Department of Finance

San Jose ranked fastest-growing city in the world, 2019-2035

As we already know, San Jose has one of the best performing economies anywhere. That does not seem destined to change anytime soon based on a new report from Oxford Economics. They are predicting that San Jose will have the fastest growing urban economy in the world over the next 16 years.

If the 3% GDP growth rate is correct, that means our economy will be 50% larger by 2035. The growth rate dwarfs San Francisco but would still not put us anywhere near New York or Tokyo in total economic contribution. However, those cities have much larger populations to work with. We do have the highest GDP per capita in the United States, which contributes positively to salaries and investment.

For more info check out the link below.

Source: SJ Economy Blog

Top 10 US Cities by Population by Decade

The animated GIF below shows the ten largest cities in the US each decade starting with the year 1790. It's fascinating to see how much this list has changed over the years. Of course, you have to watch until it gets to the very end (2010) for San Jose to make its official appearance.

Source: Vox

Time Map of San Jose Annexations (1900-2014)

It is fascinating to see how San Jose has grown via annexation over the years. The 45 second time lapse video below takes us from the 1900s all the way to last year. The expansion between the 50s and 70s is especially significant. Willow Glen, Berryessa, and Alviso were all independent cities at some point in the past. Even our job-center, North San Jose, was mostly independent until the 60s and 70s. Check it out below.

Source: Hillrise from the San Jose Development Forum

Saturday Stats: San Jose Metro is One of the Most Dense in US

When you look at population density in cities, there are two that are always at the top of the list. New York City has 27,781 people per square mile while San Francisco has 17,858. However, when you look at the whole metro area instead of just the city, the list becomes surprisingly different. New York drops down to 5,319 people per square mile putting it in fourth place and LA comes in a shocking first place with 6,999 people per square mile. The SF-Oakland Metro holds onto second place with 6,266 and perhaps even most surprising than LA is that San Jose creeps up to third place with 5,820 people per square mile. I never would have guessed.

Source: SpareFoot

Census Population Chart

NBC Bay Area has a new population chart from the US Census showing San Jose as the 10th US city with a current population of 1 million. I added the word current in there because Detroit had 1.8 million people at it s peak in 1950 and has since dropped to 680,000.

At a growth rate of 1.2% in 2014, that also makes San Jose the 6th fastest growing city in the million club. It would be 3rd if you take out the cities in Texas.

Saturday Stats: San Jose Population Growth

New population estimates from the California Department of Finance were released at the beginning of the month. The department pegs the population of San Jose at 1,016,479. This puts us at a growth rate of 1.4% percent year-over-year, which is the second largest growth rate for all large California cities. San Francisco came in at 1.3%.

One surprise to me was the growth rate for Milpitas. 3.9% is a pretty impressive number for a city its size.

Source: usedmedia from the SSC Forums

5 Year Anniversary of TSJB, San Jose Population Hits 1 Million!!!

Today marks this blog's fifth anniversary, which is quite a long time in the local blogosphere! I was feeling a bit nostalgic, so I decided to pull up the very first post from May 10th, 2009:

Born and raised in San Jose, I've had the opportunity to witness this city's amazing transformation from a midsized suburban town into the 10th largest city in the US, the capital of Silicon Valley, and a incubator for innovation and entrepreneurship. The goal of this blog is to highlight new developments in San Jose as well as to visually show a side of the city that many people haven't seen before.  Major changes are underway, and there hasn't been a better time to be a San Josean. Cheers to the future!

I still stand by this statement today, but I have to admit that this really doesn't tell the full story on the blog's origins. Five years ago it was estimated that San Jose broke one million residents. I thought this was a cause for celebration, but I noticed in a couple of online forums when the news broke out instead of congratulating San Jose, the city was getting berated. Posters complained about San Jose's lack of culture, development, and downtown area. In essence, the theme was that San Jose did not deserve to be a city of a million people. Of course, the guys from Skyscraper City and I quickly rose to the challenge and vehemently defended our city. However, I didn't think that was enough. I wanted to prove to the world that San Jose is already a great place and it is developing and innovating at a rapid pace. That was the real impetus for the blog.

When the official census numbers came out a year later in 2010, San Jose did not hit the million mark in population. The figure came out to only 945,952 residents, definitely a disappointment.

Fast forward to 2014. San Jose is again estimated to have hit the million mark, except this time it is an official government statistic and will almost certainly stick by the time the 2020 census comes around. The exact figure released by the California Department of Finance is 1,006,892 residents.

This time the reaction is quite a bit different. There is very little negativity or mockery coming from the news, and even a few San Franciscans have offered congratulations on online forums. It you look at the San Jose of today, it is very different than five years ago. Downtown is booming. The restaurant scene has exploded, multiple cranes are up for major projects, the San Pedro Square Market is bringing people from across the Bay into the area, the convention center is expanded, and I have never seen so many people on the streets over the weekends. As far as infrastructure goes, San Jose is getting BART in a few short years, it will be the core of a new and extensive Bus Rapid Transit system, and Light Rail is going to get several improvements and a new line. In terms of pro sports (a big draw), over the last five years two major stadiums were approved in the area and are well under construction: the Earthquakes stadium at the edge of Downtown and the $1.3 billion Levi's Stadium less than a mile away from San Jose's border. Both will have a big impact on tourism and the area's brand. Lastly, over the last half decade millions of square feet in office have been added with several million more to come. San Jose has become a clear choice for large tech companies that need a large amount of space as well as startups looking for a more urban atmosphere and public transit.

The last five years have had their ups and downs, but I think we are hitting this marker on a very high note. The next five years are going to be much more exciting and I can't wait to see where we'll be in 2019.

Hope you all have a great weekend, Cheers!

Photo by LastLightBender

Saturday Stats: San Jose Draws the Greatest Influx of New Residents in the US

It looks like there is more to all the Silicon Valley traffic this year than just a larger number of people having jobs post-recession. San Jose has taken the top spot in terms of inbound moves in the nation. There were 51% more inbound moves than outbound moves in San Jose. That means that for every 100 families that move out of the city, 151 are moving in.

Second place went to Portland, which was followed by Houston in third, San Francisco in fourth, and Charlotte rounding out the top five. The five cities with the largest moving deficits were Chicago (25.9% more moving out than in), New York City, St. Louis, Boston, and Norfolk-Virginia Beach.

What does this mean? Well, our population is going to continue to grow. We're going to have to continue to look at how we can increase density and infrastructure to accommodate what could become quite a large city. Some are estimating 1.4 million San Jose residents by 2040. This also will likely mean more "big-city" amenities that would be expected of a larger city and accelerated growth of the burgeoning culture scene in San Jose.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: Santa Clara County is Growing the Fastest in California

There was a substantial population boom in Silicon Valley during 2012. Santa Clara County grew by an astounding 1.6% over the year, more than any other major county in all of California. The state average for population growth was half that at 0.8%. San Mateo, Alameda, and San Francisco also grew by over 1% but nothing matched Santa Clara County. This is great news. Since there is very little room for sprawl left in the Valley, as population grows our cities are becoming more dense. As density rises, the average cost of delivering services to residents should decrease while the market for world-class amenities increases. Congestion will also increase, but that will hopefully push government to improve public transit infrastructure throughout Santa Clara County.

Source: SVBJ

San Jose's Crazy Population Growth

In the latest Downtown Dimension, they also listed some interesting statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau showing exactly how fast San Jose has grown over the past 60 years.

SAN JOSE POPULATION

• 1950 - 95,000
• 1960 - 204,000
• 1970 - 459,000
• 1980 - 629,000
• 1990 - 894,000
• 2000 - 950,000
• 2009 - 1,007,000

I find it pretty amazing that we have gone from a city of 95,000 people in 1950 to breaking the million-person barrier this year (and overtaking Detroit as the 10th most populous city in the US). I hope that as we continue to grow, infrastructure will keep up and our communities will be designed with density in mind and less reliance on cars for transportation.