I don’t disagree but the city data is worth looking at because the significant population decline is a phenomena that the other cities mentioned haven’t seen. And - these threads that are concerned with new development are typically focused on the city rather than the surrounding burbs. But yes - our political definition of the city hurts comparisons to other places, especially outside VA.

A few decades IF the growth rate was at a much faster trajectory than it is now. Look on Wikipedia at the decade-by-decade population for each city - Austin has really never lost people and has always been growing quickly. Portland has 2X the population it had in 1950.

RVA lost significant levels of people while Austin (and other comps like Nashville) grew at double digit rates for many decades at a time. We are just getting back to 1950s levels of population. Though this is only the city, not the MSA. The MSA overall has seen much stronger relative to the city but still not at all anything like Austin. Though - population growth alone is going to not show the effects of gentrification and displacement/replacement from lower to higher income residents. Still, we have room. The best comp for questions like this are not big boom cities - it’s places like Grand Rapids.

Did my taxes - my wife and I owed a shit ton. Make sure you update your W4 as the format and the withholding amounts have changed in recent tax years.