Boomburb is a neologism for a large, rapidly growing city that remains essentially suburban in character even as it reaches populations more typical of urban core cities. Like edge city, an older and more widely accepted term, it describes a relatively recent phenomenon in North America.
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Definition
Boomburbs are defined as incorporated places in top 50 Metropolitan areas in the United States having more than 100,000 residents that are not the core cities in their metropolitan areas and have maintained double-digit rates of population growth (10% or more) over consecutive censuses between 1970 and 2000.
As of the 2000 Census, the United States contained 54 boomburbs, which accounted for about half of the 1990s growth in cities with between 100,000 and 500,000 residents.
List of boomburbs
Robert E. Lang of Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech lists 54 boomburbs as following:
The boomburbs listed above are based on the populations of cities determined by and definitions of metropolitan areas used in the 2000 Census. Boomburbs occur mostly in the Southwest, with almost half in California alone.