Projections
As of 2005 the U.S. Census Bureau projected that approximately 88% of the U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2030 will occur in the Sun Belt. California, Texas, and Florida are each expected to add more than 12 million people during that time, which will make them, by far, the most populous states in America. Arizona, North Carolina, and metropolitan Atlanta are also expected to make major population gains. Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Texas are expected to be the fastest-growing states.
Events leading up to and including the 2008-2009 recession have led many to question whether growth projections for the Sun Belt have been overstated. The economic bubble that led to the recession appears, to many observers, to have been more acute in the Sun Belt than many other parts of the country. Additionally the traditional lure of cheaper labor markets in the belt compared to many of the older industrial centers has been eroded by the overseas outsourcing trend of the recent decade.
One of the greatest threats facing the Belt in the coming decades is water shortages. Communities in California are making plans to build potentially multiple desalination plants to supply fresh water and avert near-term crises. Texas, Georgia and Florida also face increasingly serious shortages because of their rapidly expanding populations.
Read more about this topic: Sun Belt
Famous quotes containing the word projections:
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)