This is how fast Seattle has grown in the last 5 years

Anyone walking around Seattle can see: it's a city experiencing a growth spurt of mammoth proportions.

In the last five years, the Emerald City has seen growth that is unparalleled in its history. Thousands of people are moving here every month as tech and other industries continue to grow.

As those companies grow and hire more people, they all need space — apartments, offices, storefronts and homes — and Seattle has been delivering.

Check out how the West Coast’s 20 most populous counties compare when it comes to income inequality. The statistics presented here are drawn from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, as analyzed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s County Health Rankings & Roadmaps project. less Check out how the West Coast’s 20 most populous counties compare when it comes to income inequality. The statistics presented here are drawn from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, as analyzed ... more Photo: Boston Globe/Boston Globe Via Getty Images Photo: Boston Globe/Boston Globe Via Getty Images Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close This is how fast Seattle has grown in the last 5 years 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

But the staggering rate of that growth is hard to quantify in a way we can easily grasp.

WATCH SEATTLE GROW IN THE VIDEO VISUALIZATION ABOVE.

For instance, if I told you the value of the last five years' worth of issued building permits (according to data from the Department of Construction and Inspections) was $17,500,201,106, would that mean anything?

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Sure, it's a huge number and offers a grasp of the growth, but what does that mean in actual projects?

That dollar value was spread across 36,272 projects. Another nearly 20,000 were included in the data but hadn't had permits issued.

The value of the projects was unsurprisingly concentrated heavily in downtown Seattle, as you'll see in the graphic above.

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At the very top of the pack, a project at 2100 Seventh Ave was valued at more than $292 million, and another nearly 30 ran to the hundreds of millions.

The lowest valued projects, largely residential in nature, ran down to no value at all (mostly on demolition permits) or a mere $1, likely used because some value had to be recorded.

Almost 4,000 of the permits included in the data were only for demolition, while 10,459 were for new construction.

In the video graphic above, I included issued permits for all projects going back to April 2012 by month issued. In the other graphic, you can zoom in and hover over an individual project to see its details.

Daniel DeMay covers Seattle culture, business and transportation for seattlepi.com. He can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.