Fast-growing Fort Worth added the second-most new residents of any large city last year and is now the 12th largest city in the United States.

According to U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2023 Population Estimates, Fort Worth added 21,365 people between July 1, 2022 and July 1, 2023 — outpaced only by its Texas neighbor, San Antonio.

San Antonio experienced the biggest growth spurt in the United States last year in pure numbers, adding about 22,000 residents in 2023. It now has nearly 1.5 million people, making it the the seventh largest city in the U.S. and second largest in Texas.

Other Southern cities enjoying population booms included 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)

Fort Worth, which added just over 21,000 new residents for a total population of about 978,000, has surpassed San Jose, California (population 970,000) to become the 12th largest American city.

Population slowed in the Austin area, which only slightly outpaced Fort Worth with 980,000 residents, pushing the Texas capital to the rank of 11th largest city in the U.S.

Population growth in Georgetown, outside Austin, slowed by more than one-fourth its population growth in 2022, the report says, from 14.4 percent to 10.6 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.)

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.