With a census report that said Jacksonville added over 11,000 new residents in 2017, how long will it take for the city to boast 1,000,000 people? If we can assume 10,000 per year, and we're just over 890,000 now, that would mean this year plus ten more years of similar growth.
Is this really possible, however? So many people want to escape Jax to St. Johns County, and it's growing even faster than Duval, but isn't there really a top-end for this region? We're at the very end of the Florida megalopolis, so most economic and housing increases will be based on Jacksonville alone. Another large city to the north of us would help sustain the growth, but Florida as a whole is doing quite well.
The main thing that people from Wisconsin asked me on a recent trip home was what people do here. Not enough is really the answer. Sustained growth can't really be based solely on services, so the region is going to have to attract. If that happens, 1,000,000 for the city and 2,000,000 for the metro area are well within reach, assuming that's what we want.
