Blog Post

By: Natalie Young

Our recently released subcounty report provides annual population and housing estimates from 2010 to 2017 for every city and census tract in Salt Lake and Utah counties. Though we released tract estimates with our previous 2010 to 2016 release, the addition of the city level estimates is new this year.

In these counties, one particular region steals the show in terms of population growth. We’ve seen it before – it’s the growth core of southwestern Salt Lake County and northwestern Utah County. Herriman, Saratoga Springs, South Jordan, and Eagle Mountain are the top-growing cities, contributing nearly a third of the combined population growth in the two counties (2016 to 2017). These cities have grown by way of large single-family developments.

Areas outside this growth core, such as Vineyard, beg for our attention as well. Vineyard’s population continues to surge as the large “@Geneva” master planned community adds new housing around the clock. From 2016 to 2017, we estimate that Vineyard added nearly equal the amount of new residents as Salt Lake City added (about 2,500 people). Vineyard is still a little place, but it transforms every year.

You can rank the cities yourself by total population, absolute growth, or percent growth in this visualization:

The full report discusses and maps 2016 to 2017 population changes and shares the estimation methodology. To go even smaller than the city level, be sure to check out our census tract population map here. While the Census Bureau also produces annual city population estimates, our subcounty estimates provide the only publicly available annual tract level estimates for Salt Lake and Utah counties.

Contact Natalie Young (natalie.young@utah.edu) with questions about this research.

Natalie Young is a research analyst at the Gardner Policy Institute.