Raleigh, N.C. — Forbes magazine has ranked Raleigh fourth on its list of America’s Fastest Growing Cities in 2012, city officials said Thursday.

Calling Raleigh “the boomtown,” Forbes cited Research Triangle Park, the presence of major corporations and the numerous universities and colleges as the factors stoking Raleigh’s growth engine.

“Over the past two decades ending in 2010, the Raleigh area’s population and jobs market grew at some of the highest rates in the U.S.," the magazine's editors wrote. "The population is currently expanding at a rate of more than 3 percent annually, and job growth was 2.3 percent in 2012."

Raleigh trailed only three Texas cities in the rankings: Austin, Houston and Dallas.

Forbes used metrics from Moody’s Analytics to compile its rankings, including the estimated rate of population growth, the rate of job growth, the rate of gross metro product growth or economic growth, federal unemployment rates and median incomes.