Austin area to hit 2 million

There are dozens of things to love about Austin.

“The mixture of the city and being able to escape into the hillside when you want to,” Shaley Schneider, resident, said.

“It's pretty, I like the music,” Scott Reynolds, resident, said.

It seems the rest of the world loves it too. According to the city demographer, the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro is expected to hit 2,050,311 on April 1.

“I know a lot of people who live in Austin who want to keep it local, keep it small but maybe the growth will have Austin spread throughout and develop more diversity,” Schneider said.

Reynolds moved here to play music. He loves the city, but thinks it is losing its old charm and becoming a little boastful.

“You know that cool kid in high school who would be a really nice kid if he didn't think he was quite so cool, it's kind of like that,” he said.

Along with the growth of the city limits of Austin comes the growth of suburbs. Round Rock is one of them.

Joelle Jordan works in the planning department for the city of round rock. She counts and projects population.
She says over the last six years, the population increased by 10,000.

“Round Rock was just under 100,000 in 2010 so that's pretty significant growth,” she said.
By 2030, she says Round Rock will hit 160,000.

By 2030 the whole metro area is expected to reach the 3 million mark. That's only 14 years from now.

“It's just going to get bigger. If it weren't nice, then we wouldn't have to worry about it would we”? Reynolds said.

A big issue with this growth is emergency response times. The city council approved Thursday, to present the issue of building more fire stations, to the city manager.