Austin couldn't keep being catapulted up the list of largest U.S. cities forever. The capital city of Texas has been outpaced in at least two meaningful ways. In addition to losing its title as the 10th largest city — now it's sitting at No. 11 — it's overshadowed by its suburb, Georgetown, which is the eighth fastest-growing city.

Central Texas
Although Austin lost a place in the rankings, it did not lose population. It rose from 975,418 to 979,882 residents — a change of only 4,464, or half a percent — from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2023 Population Estimates, released Thursday, May 16.

Austin was overtaken by Jacksonville, Florida, which gained 14,066, or 1.4 percent. The former is only barely ahead of Fort Worth, which has 978,468 residents.

Georgetown is far below those totals, but growing much faster. The city started in the report at 87,062 residents and ended at 96,312; gaining 9,250, or 10.6 percent. That means that more than double the total number of people moved to Georgetown compared to Austin.

This is huge growth, but not as huge as Georgetown's three-year arc, which places the growth rate at 42.8 percent, outpaced only by the Dallas suburb of Forney (51.2 percent).

Georgetown's annual population growth slowed by more than one-fourth its population growth from 2022, the report says, from 14.4 percent. It's the same story in the Central Texas city of Kyle, whose population growth decreased by nearly 2 percent to 9 percent in 2023. (Georgetown and Kyle, however, still made the list of the fastest-growing U.S. cities.)

San Antonio saw the biggest growth spurt of any city in the United States last year, numbers-wise. The Alamo City added about 22,000 residents. San Antonio now has nearly 1.5 million people, making it the the seventh largest city in the U.S. and second largest in Texas.

Its population boom was followed by those of other Southern cities, including Fort Worth; Charlotte, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Port St. Lucie, Florida.

The South still dominates the nation's growth, even as America’s Northeast and Midwest cities are rebounding slightly from years of population drops. The census estimates showed 13 of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. were in the South — eight in Texas alone.

Texas trends
Topping the list of fastest-growing cities with a population of 20,000 or more: Celina, a suburb of Dallas, whose population grew by 26.6 percent, more than 53 times that of the nation’s growth rate of 0.5 percent, the report says.

The Texas cities joining Celina on the fastest-growing-cities list are:

• Fulshear (No. 2) with 25.6 percent growth (42,616 total population)
• Princeton (No. 3) with 22.3 percent growth (28,027 total population)
• Anna (No. 4) with 16.9 percent growth (27,501 total population)
• Georgetown (No. 8) with 10.6 percent growth (96,312 total population)
• Prosper (No. 9) with 10.5 percent growth (41,660 total population)
• Forney (No. 10) with 10.4 percent growth (35,470 total population)
• Kyle (No. 11) with 9 percent growth (62,548 total population)

Among Texas' biggest cities, fast-growing Fort Worth (978,000) surpassed San Jose, California (970,000) to become the 12th most populous city in the country.

Most populated cities
New York City with nearly 8.3 million people remained the nation's largest city in population as of July 1, 2023. Los Angeles was second at close to 4 million residents, while Chicago was third at 2.7 million and Houston was fourth at 2.3 million residents.

The 15 populous U.S. cities in 2023 were:

1. New York, New York (8.3 million)
2. Los Angeles, California (4 million)
3. Chicago, Illinois (2.7 million)
4. Houston, Texas (2.3 million)
5. Phoenix, Arizona (1.7 million)
6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1.6 million)
7. San Antonio (1.5 million)
8. San Diego, California (1.4 million)
9. Dallas (1.3 million)
10. Jacksonville, Florida (986,000)
11. Austin (980,000)
12. Fort Worth (978,000)
13. San Jose (970,000)
14. Columbus, Ohio (913,000)
15. Charlotte, North Carolina (911,000)

Modest reversals of population declines were seen last year in large cities in the nation's Northeast and Midwest. Detroit, for example, which grew for the first time in decades, had seen an exodus of people since the 1950s. Yet the estimates released Thursday show the population of Michigan’s largest city rose by just 1,852 people from 631,366 in 2022 to 633,218 last year.

It's a milestone for Detroit, which had 1.8 million residents in the 1950s only to see its population dwindle and then plummet through suburban white flight, a 1967 race riot, the migration to the suburbs by many of the Black middle class, and the national economic downturn that foreshadowed the city's 2013 bankruptcy filing.

Three of the largest cities in the U.S. that had been bleeding residents this decade staunched those departures somewhat. New York City, which has lost almost 550,000 residents this decade so far, saw a drop of only 77,000 residents last year, about three-fifths the numbers from the previous year.

Los Angeles lost only 1,800 people last year, following a decline in the 2020s of almost 78,000 residents. Chicago, which has lost almost 82,000 people this decade, only had a population drop of 8,200 residents last year.

And San Francisco, which has lost a greater share of residents this decade than any other big city — almost 7.5 percent — actually grew by more than 1,200 residents last year.