Fort Worth growth driven by opportunity and community, Mayor Mattie Parker says
For Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, the city is a place where people in all walks of life can thrive.
“Job opportunities are plentiful. There are wonderful higher education institutions, lots of choices in education, K through 12, and opportunity feels abundant here,” Parker said.
Fort Worth was recently named the 10-largest city in the county by the U.S. Census Bureau. The city’s population of 1,028,117, is an increase of nearly 20,000 from 2023-24, the second-biggest gain in the country.
Though growth in Texas overall has largely been driven by domestic migration, Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said that Tarrant County is an exception and had negative domestic migrations between 2024-45, meaning more residents moved out of the county to other places in the country than moved in.
Tarrant County saw most of its growth through international migration and natural increase.
Fort Worth has been growing faster than Tarrant County as a whole, due to an increase in housing stock increase. According to U.S. News, homes in Fort Worth are over 10% cheaper than the national average.
The city has been going through a comprehensive plan for 2050 to plan for future land use. Parker said the city works with several partners, including the North Central Texas Council of Governments, TxDOT, and the Federal Transit Agency in an effort to sustain growth long-term.
Parker said one concern that frequently gets brought up to her is that people are afraid of losing “small town Fort Worth.” To her, the city has enhanced the community feel over the last few years.
“People are incredibly welcoming, they want you to be successful,” she said. “There’s this really healthy, scrappy aspect of Fort Worth. You can kind of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and you also have the support around community members.”
