There's no denying that Houston's population is booming, and to keep up, the city is expanding at a rapid rate. BuildZoom recently conducted an in-depth study on metropolitan growth in the U.S., and Houston's is astounding.

Since the 1970s, the expansion rate in the greater Houston area is the third greatest in the nation, behind only Atlanta and Dallas.

While the survery goes back to the 1940s, the greatest expansion in the Houston area began in the 1970s, with 328 square miles added, and continued pretty much each decade afterwards, with 228 square miles of expansion in the '80s, 232 in the '90s and 393 in the 2000s. The change in expansion rate from the 1970s to the 2000s is 19.8 percent.

The Houston area's population in 2010 is 6.11 million, spread over 1,672 square miles.

Watch Houston's growth from the 1940s on below: