Between The Lines: Region Maintains Growth

One day last week, Northwest Arkansas supposedly reached a population milestone: 500,000 residents.

That distinction will arguably catch the eye of more and larger business and industrial prospects with jobs to fill and products to offer.

Expect the growing population to bring more orange barrels and other challenges, too, as infrastructure needs increase in an ever-challenged region.

The Northwest Arkansas Council made the population projection and publicized May 28 as the magic date to meet it. The date is based on an estimated average increase in the region's population of 24 people a day since the last U.S. Census.

The council is a nonprofit organization made up of community and business leaders who have been promoting the region's economic development since 1990.

Back then, the four counties included in this population count (Benton, Washington and Madison counties in Arkansas and McDonald County in Missouri) boasted a collective population just shy of 240,000, or less than half the present-day estimate.

The U.S. Census in 2000 put the number at just better than 347,000 for the four counties. Ten years later, the number had officially reached 463,204.

Every day, individuals and families move into the region, pushing that number ever upward. The last time any of these counties showed a decline in population over the previous Census was way back in 1960.

Ever since, the region has done nothing but grow, even during this long economic downturn.

Look ahead and the projections are for today's population of 500,000 to double to 1 million in as little as 25 years more.

Even the experts swallow hard at that prospect, but don't count out the possibility.

Instead, think about all those staggering numbers, what the past growth has meant to this region and what the upward population will mean for the future.

How did we get here? And how exactly is the region defined?

Jeff Hawkins, executive director of Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning, attempted to explain the complicated federal logic behind designation of metropolitan statistical areas.

These four counties -- three in Arkansas and one in Missouri -- make up the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO Metropolitan Statistical Area now. Once any part of a county is defined as part of a core urbanized area, the entire county becomes part of the MSA.

McDonald County is the newest addition, triggered by dense population growth just north of the state line.

Madison County, none of which is in the region's urbanized core, is part of the designated MSA, Hawkins said, because at least 25 percent of the workforce there commutes to Washington or Benton counties.

The really significant numbers are in Washington and Benton counties. And the urbanized core runs right through the four major cities.

The federal government establishes these metropolitan statistical areas and changes the boundaries over time as their urban cores get more dense and spread geographically.

This particular MSA began when Fayetteville and Springdale had grown sufficiently dense to have a minimum 50,000-population core. All of Washington County was included in the newly created metropolitan statistical area, which had an 80-square-mile core made up of parts of six jurisdictions -- Fayetteville, Springdale, Farmington, Greenland, Johnson and a part of rural Washington County.

All of Benton County was included in the MSA in 2000 as the population core stretched northward.

An urban area is defined not by jurisdiction boundaries but by contiguous U.S. Census tracts, Hawkins explained, noting that the core population is supposed to be roughly 1,000 residents per square mile.

What was once an 80-square-mile urbanized core for this MSA, all in Washington County, is now more than 188 square miles with a small finger reaching into Missouri.

Interestingly, Fayetteville, with a population just over 42,000 in 1990, provided well over half the total population of the urbanized area back then.

A 2010 breakdown of the much larger urbanized area still shows Fayetteville, with more than 71,000 population, leading among jurisdictions. But that Fayetteville population is barely more than 24 percent of the overall urbanized area. Springdale accounts for 23 percent of the core population, Rogers for 18.6 percent and Bentonville for 11.5 percent.

While the 1990 urban core included just six jurisdictions in Washington County, the 2000 core added eight more jurisdictions, including Bentonville and Rogers.

Ten years later, the 2010 urbanized area includes 21 specific jurisdictions, all linked together by qualifying census tracts with sufficiently dense populations.

McDonald County barely contributes to the population count but has a census tract or two north of the state line that are dense enough in population to be included.

Where will we be 10 years hence?

The population will likely be more dense in a larger geographical area that could stretch even farther north.

And the area's promoters will be touting the numbers as reason for still more business and industry to invest here.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.

Commentary on 06/01/2014

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