DUBLIN — Just a few years ago, the Tri-Valley city of Dublin made national headlines for its sudden and remarkable population boom. Its unexpected and widely reported status as “California’s fastest-growing city” made such an impression that some media outlets were still repeating it as recently as last year.
But the reality of Dublin’s growth since 2018 — when it earned that title with an incredible surge of 4.5% — is much more complicated. During the pandemic, Dublin actually contracted, tracking negative growth for two years. But by 2023 it had begun to recover, lurching into position as the 14th-fastest-growing city in the Bay Area. A year later, Dublin had risen again to fifth-fastest-growing city in the region, outpaced by Belmont, Burlingame, Berkeley and Oakley, according to data from the California Department of Finance.
So what do these ups and downs mean for the future of growth in a city that was once the hottest commodity in the Bay Area?
First, while it’s fallen from its highest highs, Dublin’s most recent growth rate on record is still enviable compared to most cities in the Bay Area, at 1.16%. Dublin City Councilman Kashef Qaadri says a tumble was inevitable.
“It’s really a leveling, as there’s a shorter, limited supply of developable land. The land supply is decreasing as the city of Dublin approaches that point of build-out,” Qaadri told this news organization. “There are broader macroeconomic conditions at play. Market conditions, higher interest rates, higher construction costs — those have come together and slowed the pace of building.”
Qaadri said Dublin has not yet reached a point of “build-out,” — a critical mass where the city runs out of developable land — but said the rapid growth of his city in recent years has been fueled by both housing and commercial development.
Councilwoman Jean Josey said that Dublin saw its most significant population boom between 2010 and 2020, after officials decided to annex and develop land in what is now the eastern part of the city — part of a detailed plan that had been laid out in the 1990s.
Over the last several years, Dublin has consistently created housing for various income levels throughout the city, but there’s still room left to build, Josey added.
“There are still these small pieces left that are coming to fruition,” Josey said, including the expected Grace Pointe affordable housing development at Dublin Boulevard and Brannigan Street, higher-density housing projects near the city’s BART stations, and a newly imagined downtown Dublin district, among other things.
Students arrive on the campus of Emerald High School for the first day of school on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, in Dublin, Calif. The campus is still under construction and is the first new comprehensive high school to open in Alameda County in the last 50 years. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)Qaadri said he thinks Dublin will continue to grow thanks to the draw of things like the city’s blossoming school system; in 2024, Dublin Unified School District opened the first new high school in Alameda County in more than 50 years. He also pointed to other major developments like Francis Ranch, the luxury single-family home development in Dublin’s eastern hills, and the Amador Station mixed-use housing and commercial development near the West Dublin/Pleasanton BART station, that are expected to bring hundreds of new homes and several new businesses to the city.
“Dublin continues to be a very desirable destination for folks, including families,” Qaadri said.
File photo of students navigating a hallway on the new campus of Emerald High School in Dublin on the first day of school in 2024. The campus was the first new comprehensive high school to open in Alameda County in the last 50 years. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)Qaadri said city officials are working on plans for a walkable, welcoming downtown, with residential and retail attractions like those in surrounding cities such as Pleasanton and Livermore. But he noted there is a consequence to having been California’s fastest-growing city — development in Dublin will have to get increasingly creative.
“It’s unsustainable to stay at that rapid pace of growth,” Qaadri said. “There is limited land. The remaining parcels within our city, I would imagine they would be higher density — so fewer single family homes and more multi-family buildings.”
What’s missing for Dublin residents, Josey said, now appears to be smaller, single-story homes for seniors looking to downsize. A recent Bay Area News Group poll shows Bay Area seniors continue to struggle with mounting cost of living, debt and lack of income. But seniors also make up the state’s fastest-growing demographic, according to the state Department of Aging.
File photo of a pedestrian crossing the street in a neighborhood at the Boulevard, a condominium community located near the Dublin/Pleasanton BART, in Dublin. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)Josey said she would like to see more “row house” developments, which include a single-family home, such as a condo, townhome or duplex, with commercial space on the ground floor.
“We’re really trying to do some different things that you don’t see everywhere, to cover that whole life cycle of age-in-place,” Josey said. “Part of the fun of being on council is trying to figure out what else we don’t have and how can we bring it here.”
On the flip side of the most recent Bay Area population data, the slowest growing cities included Moraga, Colma, East Palo Alto, Foster City and Milpitas, which all lost over 0.59% of their overall population between January 2025 and January 2025. Moraga lost the most in population, marking a -1.98% percent drop in residential percentage.
“We would certainly love to see more growth in our urban centers, more growth in our BART-served cities in our region,” said Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, a pro-business group. He noted that while growth slowed in Dublin and other parts of the Bay Area during the pandemic — and many people left the state — “we’ve seen a lot of those people come back.”
According to state population data, California’s pandemic-era exodus ended in 2024, when the population grew by 108,000.
While Dublin’s available land stock may be dwindling, Regan said there’s still somewhere left for the city to go.
“There’s always up,” he said. “You never run out of air space.”
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