According to 1999 census estimates from the University's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, the Commonwealth of Virginia is becoming increasingly suburbanized and its population in rural areas is simultaneously expanding.
Data indicates that about 5.4 million of Virginia's 6.9 million residents -- or 78 percent -- reside in metropolitan areas and a large proportion of those metropolitan residents live in the suburbs.
The Center calculated that about 52 percent of Virginia's residents live in suburban areas.
Center Research Analyst Donna Tolson said these findings are "a continuance of a trend we've been seeing throughout the past decade."
The migration of people from cities to surrounding suburbs has been particularly significant in Northern Virginia.
Tolson said that the disproportionate growth in Northern Virginia has caused Fairfax County to become an "economic center" comparable to Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Va.
Second-Year Engineering student Adam Goobic, a resident of Chantilly, Va., in Fairfax County, corroborates these findings.
Goobic said he remembers the "population began to increase rapidly around 1988 and it is still increasing."
He said the massive influx of people has intensified traffic problems and congestion in Northern Virginia.
He added that the Fairfax County Parkway was constructed next to his house in an area that was previously wooded.
The purpose of the Parkway was to alleviate traffic problems, but Goobic said it used to take "15 minutes to get to high school, which was less than one mile away from home."
Rural areas in Virginia that once faced population declines are now experiencing growth. Since 1990, Virginia's rural counties have gained almost 92,000 residents; but the majority of this growth is concentrated at the rural edges of metropolitan areas.
Thirty-seven of Virginia's 59 non-metropolitan areas share a border with at least one metropolitan locality. These border counties are important because as the population continues to spread outward from metropolitan areas, these once rural counties become suburbs, Center officials said.
The prevalence of interstate highways is another factor that may contribute to population growth.
In particular, distance from an interstate may be an important influence on the rate of growth.
The three slowly growing areas of Southwest Virginia, Southside and the Northern Neck all contain a significant number of regions that are separated from an interstate by more than one county.
The Center conducts this study annually in years when there is no national census. Researchers gather data that is formatted into a statistical model that measures indicators of change, such as changes in the number of births, school enrollments and filed tax returns.
Changes in these samples indicate a change in the entire population, Tolson said.
She said the objective of the study is to determine population estimates for future state funding and planning.
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