Oil boomtown Williston, ND keeps its title as the fastest-growing town with a population over 10,000, growing at a blistering 13.9% from 2012 to 2013. It was closely followed by north Dallas suburb Little Elm, TX (+13.3%), south Denver suburb Lone Tree, CO (+11.5%), Prosper, TX (+10.3%), another north Dallas suburb, and the NYC suburb of Harrison, NJ (+9.3%), near Newark.
Smallish, ruralish, California towns made up 3 of the top 5 10,000+ losers, with northern Caifornia's Susanville (-6.4%) bringing up the rear. Susanville was followed by Avenal, CA (-4.8%) in the Central Valley, Florence, AZ (-4.7%), arguably exurban Phoenix but off the main highway corridors, Detroit enclave Highland Park, MI (-4.3%), and Tehachapi, CA (-4.1%), in Kern County southeast of Bakersfield.
Harrison! Sweet!
Harrison, BTW, is very small and urban (across the river from Newark, on the edge of the Meadowlands) and was mostly built out by 1920- not the sort of exurban boomtown that usually tops these lists.
What's going on is that a lot of old industrial land, especially in the south of the town by the PATH station, is being redeveloped. The first step was when the Red Bulls opened their soccer stadium there in 2010, and just now the first couple blocks of apartments and mixed-use buildings have opened, with more on the way in the coming years. In a small town that's going to be a big jump.
That's a Five Guys on the corner, if you can't see.
