New data out today from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that Lancaster County’s population officially topped the half-million mark last year. The county grew by 4,415 between July 2007 and July 2008, bumping it from 497,955 residents in 2007 to 502,370 in 2008. The increase is 0.9 percent in one year.
From 2000 to 2008, Lancaster County has grown 6.7 percent. During that time period, Chester (13.4 percent) and York (11.2 percent) were the only Pennsylvania counties to grow faster.
Lancaster’s growth rate this decade has been higher than predicted. The Pennsylvania State Data Center projected Lancaster County’s 2010 population would be just 498,465. New data certainly calls into question the Data Center’s projections for Lancaster County in 2020 (pop. 526,194) and 2030 (pop. 553,293). Is it possible that the county will top 600,000 in the next decade?
Sources: The Pennsylvania State Data Center (pdf) and the U.S. Census Bureau
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Wow, that's good and bad news. It's encouraging to see growth and prosperity in the area. Yet it's sad to see farmland gobbled up for strip malls and housing developments.
I hope this doesn't mean that Lancaster will become the Montgomery County (MD) of PA. Living there the growth was insane! New condos and townhouses and monster houses and strip malls etc, were popping up all the time. Constant construction. Of course, I wouldn't mind in Lancaster had all the cool restaurants in MontCo…
Daniel – it might be nice to see a blog post on how much the Farmland Preservation Trust (http://www.lancasterfarmlandtrust.org) has done (and continues to do) to preserve Lancaster's farms and green spaces.