The fastest-gentrifying US cities
The CensusEasy Gentrification Score ranks US cities by a decade of combined growth in real income, home values, and college degrees. Denver, CO leads the largest cities at 90.3 out of 100.
Where is America changing fastest? The CensusEasy Gentrification Score measures it directly: a 0 to 100 reading that blends a decade of growth in real (inflation-adjusted) household income, real home values, and the share of adults holding a bachelor's degree. A city near 100 has seen all three rise sharply at once, the demographic and economic fingerprint of gentrification. A city near 0 has seen those measures hold flat or fall.
Among the 358 US cities with at least 100,000 residents, Denver, CO ranks as the fastest-gentrifying, with a score of 90.3 out of 100. The list that follows is dominated by the familiar names of the past decade's urban transformation, with Colorado (4), California (4), Florida (3) accounting for the largest clusters near the top.
The 25 fastest-gentrifying large US cities
| # | City | Gentrification Score | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denver, CO | 90.3 | 740,613 |
| 2 | Santa Clara, CA | 90.2 | 133,446 |
| 3 | Sunnyvale, CA | 88.1 | 156,577 |
| 4 | Austin, TX | 87.5 | 1,002,632 |
| 5 | Arvada, CO | 86.9 | 122,901 |
| 6 | Pittsburgh, PA | 85.5 | 307,632 |
| 7 | Bellevue, WA | 85.2 | 154,193 |
| 8 | Bend, OR | 85.0 | 107,342 |
| 9 | Seattle, WA | 84.2 | 784,777 |
| 10 | Fremont, CA | 83.9 | 226,442 |
| 11 | Nashville, TN | 83.4 | 721,074 |
| 12 | Miami, FL | 82.8 | 489,812 |
| 13 | Conroe, TX | 82.7 | 119,564 |
| 14 | San Mateo, CA | 82.6 | 103,337 |
| 15 | Tampa, FL | 81.0 | 413,554 |
| 16 | Atlanta, GA | 80.4 | 529,110 |
| 17 | Grand Rapids, MI | 80.3 | 201,183 |
| 18 | Portland, OR | 80.1 | 635,109 |
| 19 | St. Petersburg, FL | 79.9 | 264,033 |
| 20 | Durham, NC | 79.4 | 305,561 |
| 21 | Chattanooga, TN | 79.1 | 194,144 |
| 22 | Charleston, SC | 79.1 | 159,423 |
| 23 | Fort Collins, CO | 78.8 | 171,500 |
| 24 | Concord, NC | 78.8 | 114,598 |
| 25 | Lakewood, CO | 78.8 | 156,927 |
The pattern is unmistakable. Mountain West boomtowns (Denver and its suburbs, Bend), Pacific Northwest tech hubs (Seattle, Bellevue, Portland), Texas magnets (Austin), and reinvented industrial cities (Pittsburgh) cluster at the top. Each climbed on the same three-part engine: rising real incomes, surging home values, and a fast-growing college-educated population.
What the score does and does not say
A high Gentrification Score is a measure of change, not of wealth. A city can be expensive and stable (high incomes, but little growth) and score low; a city can be modest but transforming quickly and score high. The score also says nothing, on its own, about displacement. Rapid increases in income, home value, and education are the conditions under which displacement pressure builds, but whether long-time residents are actually pushed out depends on local housing supply, tenant protections, and policy that this single index does not capture.
The full ranked list of all 893 US cities with at least 50,000 residents (not just the top 25) is available as a CSV at /data/studies/fastest-gentrifying-us-cities.csv. Click any city above to open its CensusEasy profile, which carries the underlying income, home-value, and education trends behind its score.
What is the fastest-gentrifying city in America?
Among US cities with at least 100,000 residents, Denver, CO has the highest CensusEasy Gentrification Score at 90.3 out of 100, reflecting a decade of rapid growth in real household income, real home values, and the share of residents with a college degree.
How is the Gentrification Score calculated?
It is a 0 to 100 average of three percentile ranks: the decade-long percent change in real (inflation-adjusted) median household income, the percent change in real median home value, and the change in the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree. Each city is ranked against every other US city with the required decade-over-decade ACS data.
Does a high Gentrification Score mean residents are being displaced?
Not by itself. The score measures economic and demographic change, the conditions under which displacement pressure builds. Whether long-time residents are actually displaced depends on local housing supply, tenant protections, and policy, which this index does not measure.
The CensusEasy Gentrification Score is an original composite index computed for every US city, county, and metro area. For each city we measure three changes over its widest available window of at least five years, starting no earlier than 2010: the percent change in real (2024-dollar) median household income, the percent change in real median home value, and the change in the percentage of adults age 25+ with a bachelor's degree or higher.
Each of the three changes is converted to a percentile rank against every other US city that has the required decade-over-decade data (roughly 28,069 cities in the latest vintage), and the three percentile ranks are averaged into a single 0 to 100 score. A score of 90.3, for example, means a city ranks in roughly the 90th percentile of American cities on the combined measure of rising incomes, rising home values, and a growing college-educated share.
Dollar figures are inflation-adjusted to 2024 dollars using the BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) before the change is computed, so the income and home-value components reflect real growth, not inflation. The score is stored at each city's most recent data year (2024 for the large cities in this ranking). "City" means a Census place row of type city in the CensusEasy database; consolidated city-county governments are included under their common name.
The ranking on this page is restricted to cities with at least 100,000 residents so the list features recognizable places with statistically stable estimates; the downloadable CSV widens the floor to 50,000 residents. The score itself is always ranked against the full national city universe regardless of the display floor.
The full underlying ranking is available as a CSV — every place with both data points, not just the top rows shown above. Columns: rank, place, state, baseline value, latest value, change, and the CensusEasy URL for each place.
↓ fastest-gentrifying-us-cities.csvYou may cite or republish these findings, and the downloadable dataset is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Reuse requires that you credit CensusEasy and link back to this page so readers can verify the underlying data.
CensusEasy Data Team (2026). "The fastest-gentrifying US cities." CensusEasy. Retrieved from https://censuseasy.com/studies/fastest-gentrifying-us-cities
- US Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates: median household income (table B19013), median home value (B25077), and educational attainment (B15003). Source: data.census.gov.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index (CPI-U): annual averages, used to convert nominal dollars to 2024 dollars before computing real growth.
- CensusEasy Gentrification Score: original composite index computed by CensusEasy from the sources above. Methodology documented at /methodology.
CensusEasy publishes original research grounded in US Census Bureau data. Every study includes the underlying numbers, methodology, and sources so readers can verify or extend the analysis.
Data note. Figures in this report are derived from US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, including American Community Survey estimates that carry sampling margins of error. This information is provided as is, for general informational purposes, without warranty of accuracy or completeness. CensusEasy is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US Census Bureau or any government agency. See our Terms of Use for details.