Families flood fast-growing San Ramon

The city of San Ramon isn’t what it was when I was growing up.

I spent 20 years of my life there. In the six years since I’ve left, San Ramon has bent and molded and expanded itself into a completely different suburban mini-metropolis all together.

I might go back and visit the fam say, oh, once a month. And on every visit, I will see a new housing development or stretch mini-mall that I didn’t even know had been built.

Dougherty Road used to be a two-lane gravel path in the hills with very few street lights. Now, Dougherty Valley is literally its own town.

So it wasn’t too surprising when the Contra Costa Times reported this week that my hometown hasn’t just grown in population over the past decade, but that it has a more concentrated population of children and adults of parenting age than California and the United States as a whole.

The San Ramon City Council revealed Tuesday that the Census Bureau also had data concluding that, while all races have seen increased population, the Asian community saw the biggest jump, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino.

The city saw its greatest jump between 2000 and 2010, when the population shot up by 61 percent. Most of that jump is from families that have moved to the area, as there are fewer young adults and elderly living in the area.

And the area with the highest household size and the expectation of 2,000 more new homes in the works? Dougherty Valley.

If that doesn’t explain all the new housing developments every time I go visit, nothing does.