All 10 of the fastest-growing cities grew by at least 44 percent, and the fastest-growing one, Buckeye, Arizona, a western suburb of Phoenix, was up nearly 80 percent this decade to reach over 91,000 in population.

The 2020 Census listed Meridian as one of the 10 fastest-growing large cities in the country.

All the cities on the list grew at rates of more than 44 percent.

Census Bureau, said in an email that “for the past several decades the general trend has been for the fastest-growing cities of 50k+ population to be located on the outskirts of generally fast-growing metro areas in the South and West.”.

The Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas have had suburbs on this list every decade, he said.

Now, people are often going farther and farther from city centers to search for empty lots, especially in cities that have been growing for the past half-century, Perry said.

Meridian grew from around 75,000 people in 2010 to 117,635 in the 2020 census.

“Back in the day, in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, Meridian was more of a bedroom community to Boise,” Jan Roeser, a labor economist with the Idaho Department of Labor, said.

These growing pains are being felt around the city and Idaho more broadly, Roeser said

Meridian and suburbs like it, Perry said, are “a reminder that there are still some pockets of rapid population growth in certain areas of the country,” despite the past 10 years being the second slowest growing decade for the U.S