Tulsa Population Declining

[Renaissance]

Those numbers are somewhat deceiving.  They do not reflect recent trends--e.g., Tulsa had some serious population loss but is now recovering.  Try these numbers on:
              2006     2007
Oklahoma City  539,916  547,274  1.4%
Norman         105,230  106,707  1.4%
Tulsa          382,618  384,037  0.4%
This can basically be explained by lack of room for traditional new housing.  Oklahoma City has room to sprawl within its city limits; Tulsa does not.

The Metropolitan Statistical Area numbers (which take into account suburban population growth as well) confirm this:
              2006       2007
Oklahoma City  1,175,937  1,192,989  1.5%
Tulsa            893,053    905,755  1.4%

Rumors of Tulsa's demise are greatly exaggerated.  []

[cannon_fodder]

Looking at the numbers I provided, the suburbs are not growing at Tulsa's expense.  The MSA has grown by 100,000 since 2000 - far more than Tulsa has lost in population.

Also, for population growth, consider this demographic:

Tulsa:  34% single, 43% married (the balance are people living in sin I guess , 28.5% (of total households) with children
Age - 24.8% < 18, 10.9% 18 to 24, 29.9% 25 to 44, 21.5% 45 to 64, and 12.9% > 65. Median age: 34

Broken Arrow:  15.7% single, 68% married, 45.5% (of total) with children
Age - 30.8% < 18, 7.7% 18 to 24, 32.3%  25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 7.5% who were 65 years of age or older.  Median age: 33

Tulsa has more young single people and more old people.  BA is dominated by "middle aged" families.  The extremes in Tulsa make our average nearly identical to BA.  BUT, you can see how population booms can more easily take place in BA.  A new subdivision of families has 3 times the population of an equal number of units for young professionals.

Sometimes I love stats...

[SXSW]

quote:I agree that OSU Tulsa could be a very important factor towards improving our city on several fronts. Was mentioning that on a different forum and people from Stillwater said that there were a billion plus dollars being spent on the campus there and that the rumor is they do not at all want to grow the Tulsa campus.

Why then did they state that they wanted 20,000 students at their Tulsa campus by 2020 just a few years ago??  I understand that was probably an undertaking by the past president, Schmidly?  I'd be curious to hear what Burns Hargis has to say about OSU-Tulsa's future and getting "back on track" with the 2020 master plan.  He has brought in over $150 million to academic since he became president (mostly from T Boone) so I'd like to know if he plans on sending more this way of Stillwater.  

Stillwater will always be the main campus and where the athletic program and such resides.  But the Tulsa campus could offer a lot of the same programs as you can find in Stillwater with more in the way of engineering, business, technology, and (especially) graduate programs.  The majority of undergrad programs would be in Stillwater but several could also be in Tulsa and the Tulsa campus could inherit and expand many of Stillwater's grad. programs.  Many could do Stillwater for undergrad for the whole college town experience and then Tulsa for grad school.  I would much rather go to Tulsa for grad school, and many out-of-state and foreign students would be more attracted to OSU's grad programs if they were in Tulsa IMO.  The same could be said for OU-Tulsa with its medical programs serving as a smaller version of the OUHSC in Oklahoma City.

[Oil Capital]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

Some clarification is in order:


We took a hit in the early 2000's.  We all know that.  But our more recent trend is on the rise.  The area as a whole is doing MUCH better than anticipate (the 2000 Census Projection was to hit 850K by 2015).  429,000 area jobs is the highest we have ever had (last October) and we are approaching that number again.


Sources -
Employment:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_id=SMU4046140000000001&data_tool=%2522EaG%2522
Population:
Census.gov (several searches)

Good info.  But not sure where you came up with that bit about "2000 Census Projection was to hit 850K by 2015".  Who in 2000 was projecting that the Tulsa metro would only grow by 47,000 people (barely over 5%) in 15 years?