The 2015 population of Brazos County (215,037) represented a 10.4% increase over the 2010 population, outpacing the overall Texas population growth rate of 9.2%. Employment in the Bryan-College Station MSA, a slightly larger area than Brazos County, was 101,040 for 2015 and 92,990 in 2012, representing an 8.66% increase over the 3 year period.
BASIC INDUSTRIES
Industries in College Station having a Location Quotient above 1.0 are included in the basic industries table below:
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| Data collected from Bureau of Labor Statistics |
College Station's basic industries of Architecture & Engineering; Life, Physical & Social Science; Education; Food Preparation; Office & Administrative Support; and Construction & Extraction have a cumulative Basic Employment of 14,095.
Total Employment is 101,040, which yields an Economic Base Multiplier of 7.17.
Oddly, given Texas A&M University's constant expansion, both the Architecture & Engineering and the Education sectors saw slight losses between 2012 and 2015. Thus, the 8.66% overall job growth of College Station between 2012 and 2015 was largely driven by the Science, Food, Office and Construction sectors. From this point, I will focus only on these 4 growing Basic Employment sectors to describe employment growth in College Station.
Using an estimated 5.52% rate of growth of national Employment over the same period, the National Share of the growth rates are estimated for each. The National Growth Share of these growing basic industries' 2012-2015 growth was 1,734 jobs, or 22.15% of growth.
The Industry Mix effect compares the national growth of each individual category to the overall US employment growth over the same time period. This effect is responsible for a gain of only 30 jobs, a mere .38% of growth.
The Regional Shift table separates the local growth within an industry from US growth of that industry to account for regional differences in the growth of an industry. This accounted for 6,066 jobs, or 77.47% of the growth.
For a more concise analysis of the actual growth, the table above combines the three Shift-Share factors to find the growth of each category, leading to a total growth of 7,830 jobs in these 4 growing Basic Employment sectors.
With the National Share and Industry Mix factors contributing a very small amount to the total growth, the Regional share is most responsible for actual growth in the Bryan/College Station submarket -- over 3/4 of it.
In the next section, I'll discuss how this employment and population growth has affected, and will continue to affect, the Bryan-College Station area.
GROWTH PATTERNS
As is the case in most contemporary metropolitan areas, Bryan-College Station represents a Multiple Nuclei model for urban growth. The close proximity of Bryan and College station caused them to grow into one urban mass over time as each spread out from its center.
The Brazos river to the southwest and the Navasota river to the northeast are densely forested and surrounded by wetlands and low lying areas, with few crossings. These serve as natural barriers to development, hence the area's elongated NW-SE orientation.
Additionally, the primary Transportation Corridor through the area, SH 6 - a grade-separated freeway throughout Bryan-College Station - also runs NW-SE between these two rivers. It provides easy access to several major population centers and thus bears some resemblance to the Axial Model for development.
The above map shows the Future Land Use Plan for College Station, the southern half of the BCS "Microplex". Examination will reveal something particularly rare for a city: College Station has no true CBD. The only true "walkable" area in College Station consists of the University's main campus and the currently-urbanizing Northgate District to the north. This makes sense, as the largest concentration of employment and certainly the greatest concentration of people at one location is the University itself.
However, College Station seems to take the Multiple Nuclei Model and apply it on a smaller scale across this one jurisdiction alone. The FLUP calls for urbanized and mixed use nodes (Brown) at a variety of locations, including the existing Northgate and Eastgate areas, as well as the Post Oak Mall area (likely a redevelopment area within the next 2 decades), the mostly-multifamily area to the south of the university, and the mixed-use Tower Point district to the south. The interstitial space between these nodes consists, generally, of Suburban, Restricted and Unrestricted; Neighborhood Conservation Areas, and General Commercial (Particularly along the Texas Ave and University Dr corridors. The little remaining space is given over to a smattering of other uses including Medical and Business Parks. This widespread nature and distribution of employment is quite unique among cities, and likely college towns in particular.
Future development in College Station will be two pronged. In the first prong, new development will continue to the south of College Station, eventually extending well beyond the existing city limits and pushing toward Navasota to the south. However, the development barriers to the east and west prevent extensive development in these directions, and the commute from Navasota will be cumbersome to some. Additionally, the University has numerous plans for expansion over the next several decades, ensuring it remains a vital driver of the local economy. These pressures lead to the second prong: redevelopment of existing areas. Much of College Station developed recently. This sleepy college town wasn't truly awakened until close to the end of the 20th century. But these intense development pressures will lead the older existing areas to be redeveloped more quickly than they might be in other cities with more room to grow in multiple directions. Already, the Northgate area is seeing its second and third high-rise student apartment buildings begin construction just beyond the University's shadow. These new buildings replace former banks, low rise apartments, blighted retail areas. While some questions as to their financial feasibility remain, they will be pieces of the ever-expanding BCS urban fabric for years to come, and mark the beginnings of what few thought the area would ever have: a skyline.
sources:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_17780.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/48041,48
http://cstx.gov/Index.aspx?page=2920
