Joel Aschbrenner

jaschbrenn@dmreg.com

Greater Des Moines will have nearly 1 million residents by the year 2040, according to new projections from the American City Business Journals.

The metro area’s population is projected to grow by 50.1 percent during that time, making it one of the fastest-growing mid-sized cities in the nation. By 2040, the Des Moines area should have about 935,000 residents, the projections show.

The report forecasts faster growth than other projections have shown. Last year, the Des Moines Area Planning Organization projected the metro would reach 750,000 residents by 2050. But the American City Business Journals used a larger area to define the metro, the census' Des Metropolitan Statistical Area, than the MPO, which used its own, slightly smaller definition of the metro.

American City Business Journals based its projections on recent population trends captured by census data. The report examines the expected growth or contraction of cities nationwide over 25 years.

Des Moines would be the fastest-growing city in Iowa by a wide margin, followed by two college towns: Iowa City (39.7 percent) and Ames (29.8 percent).

Cedar Rapids is projected to grow 10.9 percent by 2040, while the Quad Cities area is projected to lose 0.7 percent of its population.

Nearly all of Iowa’s rural population centers, like Carroll (-11.8 percent), Mason City (-15.7 percent) and Fort Madison (-17 percent) are projected to lose population.

The fastest-growing big cities nationwide were concentrated in the South and West: Austin, Texas; Fort Myers, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Orlando, Florida; and Houston.

The biggest population losses will come in the Northeast: Cleveland; Pittsburgh; Detroit; Buffalo, New York; and Hartford, Connecticut.

Eight mid-sized metros expected to see more than 50 percent population growth. Des Moines was an outlier on that list, as the only city not located in the South or West.