St. George growth 2nd fastest in U.S.

The Provo-Orem metro area used to only include Utah County, but has added Juab County.

U.S. Census Bureau spokesman Mike Bergman described the changes as a "statistical update."

Since the 2000 Census the Office of Management and Budget has been doing a lot of work revamping the definitions after a series of hearings across the country, he said.

Spendlove said the prior organization was strange to some who questioned whether Ogden had more in common with Salt Lake City than did Provo.

In the case of the Logan metro area, it may seem strange for a metro area to extend across state lines, Spendlove said, but he noted that Kane County was at one time part of the Phoenix, Ariz., metro area.

Nearly 90 percent of Utahns live in one of the state's five metro areas, and six percent live in micro areas, according to July 1, 2004, population estimates.

Nationally, about 83 percent of the nation's population lived in the 362 metropolitan areas, and about 10 percent lived in the 573 micropolitan areas.

More than one-half of Americans lived in metro areas with populations over 1 million in 2003.

Americans have been moving south and west for decades, with a big jump in population in the South, starting in the 1970s. Still, the West continues to outpace all other regions.

According to the 2000 Census, population in the western United States grew by 19.7 percent in the 1990s, followed by the South with 17.3 percent more people. The Midwest and the Northeast posted single-digit increases in population.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com

Contributing: Nancy Perkins, Deseret Morning News; The Associated Press