The cranes dotted across the Seattle skyline may lead you to believe that King County has only begun to experience rapid growth within the past decade. However, in a new video, King County Demographer Chandler Felt discusses how the County has been booming and diversifying for the past 40 years.

“Looking over a period of almost 40 years, King County’s population growth has been very steady gaining 400,000 people in the last 17 years to a population of more than 2.1 million,” Felt says in the video.

Prior to 2010, the majority of King County growth occurred in South King County, but the focus shifted back onto urban King County with the start of the Growth Management Act (GMA). The GMA focused on protecting farm and forest land while simultaneously focusing on building growth in urban growth areas.

The GMA and its impact is just one of five big trends that Felt identifies as he looks at events that have affected King County. Since 1970, Felt has identified economic diversification, increasing race and ethnic diversity, increasing income inequality, age and household changes, and shifting locations of growth within the county as key trends in its evolution.

Click the image above to watch Felt’s full presentation.