Abq to Hit 1 Million

A September 17 story Albuquerque Tribune story somewhat breathlessly proclaimed that the metro Albuquerque population will hit one million by 2021. The story was briefly mentioned by a television station which is how I learned of it. That it took much Internet digging before the thought occurred to check the Tribune reflects both the Tribune's obscurity as a journalistic enterprise and the searcher's obtuseness. The source of the projection—the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research—doesn't appear until the 11th paragraph. Nor does the projection obviously appear on BBER's Web site. BBER's propensity for not sharing projections, specifically those of the taxpayer funded FOR-UNM Economic Forecasting Service, is an old and separate issue.
The Tribune story misses the point in its effort to pitch the need to manage this implicitly out-of-control growth. This is the old journalistic thing about hooking a policy position—managing growth, as if it isn't being "managed" now—on a number—the incipient 1 million metro population.
The point is that if one lifts the mind from the false boundaries of metro areas, namely county lines, the metro, the real metro, has passed one million.
Call this real metro the North Central Urban Area. It runs from Belen to Velarde in Rio Arriba County. That means the four-county metro Albuquerque and metro Santa Fe (Santa Fe County) with southern Rio Arriba County and Los Alamos for good measure. The combine population passed one million, according to Census Bureau estimates for July 2006.
That Albuquerque and Santa Fe had come together appeared a dozen years ago when viewing the two equal streams of 7 a.m. commuters on I-25. A little later, Rio Rancho started marketing homes to Santa Fe workers. Then there is the bumper-to-bumper traffic from Santa Fe to Espanola and beyond.