Fairfax County Gets Grayer, More Diverse

Fairfax County settled into middle age during the past 10 years, becoming a stable but increasingly diverse suburb as its younger neighboring counties burgeoned, according to initial detailed numbers released last week based on the 2010 Census.

Fairfax, Virginia’s largest and wealthiest county grew by just over 110,000 people from 2000-2010, to pass 1 million people. But that represented just an 11 percent growth rate - below the state growth rate for the same period of 13 percent. The county grew by 14 percent during the 1990s.

 “The numbers don’t show all that surprise for Fairfax,” said Steve Farnsworth, an assistant professor of communications  at George Mason University who watches Fairfax County population and politics.

“It is getting more diverse in terms of the ethnic population," he said. "There has been relatively slow growth in recent years because there is so much rapid growth outside of Fairfax in Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier," he said.

Meanwhile, by some estimates, Reston is getting smaller sas well.

The American Community Survey, a five-year population estimate by the US Census Bureau, says that Reston from 2005-2009 had a population of 53,759. That is almost 3,000 fewer people than the 2000 census data, which was 56,407.

Official 2010 Census numbers for Reston are not yet available.

Loudoun County had nearly 170,000 people in 2000, then ballooned to nearly 315,000.  Prince William grew to nearly a 500,000 people, a 43 percent increase. Fauquier County grew by 18 percent but still has a population of only 65,000.

Fairfax grew largely because of Latino and Asian immigrants. The white (not Hispanic) population of the county dropped from 58 percent to 55 percent.

That is a huge change. Thirty years ago, Fairfax County was literally black and white, though Reston was founded in the mid-1960s as a community that welcomed all races side-by-side.

The first large numbers of immigrants to Fairfax County were the Vietnamese who arrived in the mid-70s, folowed by  Salvadoreans.

Now Asians are the county's largest minority group at nearly 20 percent of the population, followed by Latinos at 15 percent. Blacks are less than 10 percent of folks in the county.

What does all this mean for the future? First the county will probably become a majority-minority county in about 10 years, Farnsworth predicted. Also, Fairfax is graying. It has a growing senior population and they are going to want more services.

“As the portion of seniors increase that will increase pressure for more services that are of importance to older residents," Farnsworth said.

"There will be more demands for senior enrichment programs, mass transit, senior programs. In eastern Fairfax inside the Beltway you are seeing more older communities and as time goes on more and more of Fairfax will resemble the demographics  of these older suburbs. That will create a lot of pressure on government to fund those services."