Housing growth in the cores of Austin, Dallas, & Houston (L.A. included for scale) - American Community Survey 2010 & 2024
The American Community Survey began collecting data on housing supply down to the census tract level in 2010, so if you're wondering why these squiggles are drawn the way they are it's because they're defined by 2010 census tract boundaries. I started from the downtown census tract for each city and globbed on exterior census tracts where most housing growth is happening until I reached an equivalent land area between the cities.
I included Los Angeles here because a) because I think more people are familiar with the layout and scale of downtown LA which might provide some frame of reference for people less familiar with the Texas cities, b) they're all fairly similar in being downtown areas not built on an ocean front or large lake front (sorry Town Lake, I know you're technically a lake) and c) I was just curious what these numbers would look like for L.A.! I love all the growth that's happened there lately.
Truthfully I was only really interested in doing this up to the 5 sq mi area, but I suspected people would want to see other areas further out included, or feel I neglected this or that neighborhood, so I continued on to 10 sq miles. This is the result of a lot of tedious work so I hope you find it interesting!