A new population estimate indicates that Huntsville’s growth is still accelerating with no signs of slowing down.
The city’s planning department said that about 235,000 people are now living in the Rocket City – a staggering surge given that when Huntsville became Alabama’s largest city in 2021, a census count the year before put the population at a little more than 215,000 people.
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That growth, estimated for the 2023 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, is a 3.3 percent increase over 2022 and represents the highest single-year percentage growth in a decade.
“That’s why our infrastructure has grown,” Mayor Tommy Battle told AL.com. “That’s why you see apartments growing. That’s why you see our retail growing. That’s why you see soccer coming to Huntsville because they see it’s a growing place.”
Population estimates developed by the city of Huntsville's planning department states that about 235,000 people live in Huntsville by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. (City of Huntsville)
Battle has generally viewed the city’s population growth as a sort of double-edged sword – embracing the fact that Huntsville is a place where more and more people want to live while still preserving the quality of life in place before that growth.
And in reality, the population center is pushing toward 300,000 people considering Huntsville’s city limits already encircles Madison – the state’s ninth largest city with a population of just under 60,000 in the 2022 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Huntsville’s population estimates are not official, of course, in the eyes of the U.S. Census Bureau. The census estimated Huntsville’s population in July 2022 at 221,933. Huntsville’s planners projected the population at 227,529 by Sept. 30, 2022.
“They look at meters,” Battle said of how the planning department develops its estimates. “They look at how many how many utility connections you have, how many water meters you have, how many of this, that and the other. And some of it is a projection along with an extrapolation of, you know, 2.1 people per house or 2.3 people per house.
“The interesting thing was that we were within 700 of the (census count) number that our planning department estimates. In 2020, we were under by about 3,000. They’re probably, from the history that we’ve seen in the past, they are good numbers.”
While not verifying the 235,000 people estimate, the city’s revenue from sales & use tax reflect growth. In the 2024 fiscal year budget presentation to the city council, sales & use taxes for 2023 are projected to be 5.8 percent higher than in 2022. The budget, typically built on conservative revenue estimates, projects sales & use taxes to go up 3 percent in 2024.
“Those are numbers that will go up and they will go down,” Battle said of population numbers. “We’ll end up in the 4-5,000 a year as we average it out. And 4-5,000 (per year) is what we think a healthy city should have in its growth numbers.”