By the numbers
Indiana's largest cities and towns for 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau
1. Indianapolis: 858,325
*Bloomington's population includes Indiana University students who live in the city.
Despite a few years of economic growth, the trend of people leaving cities for suburbs has not returned to pre-recession levels.
"We've not seen the urban to suburban flow we saw prior to 2008," said Matthew Kinghorn, economic analyst with the Indiana Business Research Center, which conducted an analysis of population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The analysis found suburban areas in Indiana are still growing quickly, but so are some of the state's largest cities.
The two fastest-growing communities were Hamilton County’s Fishers with 3 percent growth and Noblesville with 1.8 percent. Greenwood at 1.6 percent, Jeffersonville at 1.3 percent and Carmel with a 0.9 percent increase complete the top five fastest-growing communities among the state’s larger communities.
However, the migration from urban areas to the suburbs has cooled over the last seven to eight years, Kinghorn said. That has resulted in more growth for the state's cities.
For example, Indianapolis had the largest numeric gain with 5,479 new residents in 2014. This number was below the nearly 9,000 residents added in 2013 but remains well above the average annual increase of roughly 3,800 a year from 2000 to 2010.
Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second-largest city, had a population of 258,522 in 2014. After adding nearly 2,000 new residents in 2013, the city grew by another 1,658 people last year. To put those numbers in perspective, Fort Wayne’s next-largest annual population gain since 2000 was 790 residents in 2011. Furthermore, Fort Wayne experienced essentially flat growth from 2000 and 2010.
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