Stamford Advocate 08/12/2021: After a decade marked by new construction across almost all its neighborhoods, newly released Census data Thursday proved what everybody already knew: Stamford has grown in the last 10 years. By a lot.

The city’s population increased from 122,643 residents to 135,470, according to data released from the 2020 Census. Stamford vastly outpaced the state’s overall growth and became the second biggest city in Connecticut, behind Bridgeport.

Stamford’s population jumped by 10.5 percent over the last decade, making it the fastest-growing city in Connecticut. In stark contrast, figures released previously by the Census Bureau showed that the entire state grew by 1 percent. Connecticut had the fourth-smallest population growth nationwide from 2010 to 2020 and gained the fewest residents of any state in the Northeast.

City officials and business leaders partially attributed the growth to gains in growing neighborhoods like Downtown and the South End. But Mayor David Martin pointed to the city’s amenities — like its investments downtown and diverse housing stock — as attractive qualities for the people moving to Stamford.

“My goal isn’t to grow the city,” Martin said when asked about its population gains. “My goal is to make it the best. And if you make it the best city, that’s where people want to come live, and that’s what’s happening.”

After years of nearly deadlocked population counts, Stamford inched past New Haven as Connecticut’s second-biggest city. New Haven reported 134,023 residents in the 2020 Census, just 1,447 less than Stamford, though it also saw an increase in population greater than the rest of the state.

This is the first time more people have lived in Stamford than in New Haven since the United States first started recording census results in 1790.

Stamford’s upward trajectory is in line with what officials expected from the Census. However, Downtown Special Services District President David Kooris admitted that “it’s nice to see” the city’s gains “codified.” Kooris’s organization — tasked with maintaining and growing the neighborhood’s profile — has existed since 1992 and , like Stamford as a whole, has developed markedly in the last decade.

Kooris frames Stamford’s emergence as the state’s second biggest municipality, not as a victory over New Haven but as a strategic opportunity for the state.

“I like to think of it more as a positive signal for Connecticut, that one of our communities is growing significantly,” he said.

nstead of taking a victory lap, he’s more inclined to pose a question: “What can we replicate elsewhere in the state that is driving success in Stamford?”

For Kooris, the drivers are clear. He argues that the city gives its residents “a high quality of life,” along with “urban amenities, great parks, and ... relatively stable and consistent taxes.” Now that Stamford has consistently given the state a model for progress, he also thinks that Hartford will continue to take notice.

Both Martin and Kooris know that not everyone is enthusiastic about the population increases in Stamford.

“All changes are threatening to somebody,” Martin said. “If the population is going up, some people feel threatened. If the population is going down, other people feel threatened.”

And all these changes, Martin added, create additional challenges for the city. Martin claimed it is why he’s focused his efforts on improving Stamford’s traffic and transportation infrastructure as a way to “make the city more efficient and more effective.”

Given Stamford’s population boom between 2010 and 2020, Kooris sees 2020 as an inflection point.

“Very high growth rates are always difficult to sustain as development opportunities become fewer and farther between,” he said. Whatever comes next, he thinks, will be “moderately less” than the explosion that Stamford has experienced.

But no matter what the future holds, Stamford is only the “tip of the spear” for what Connecticut can achieve.

“In many ways,” Kooris said, “Stamford is a model for the state to show what works in the 21st century.”