Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Wake County goes to more Durham Bulls games and buys more DPAC tickets than Durham does. Durham functions as a secondary downtown for Wake County. Whether that would have happened without the Park fueling the growth in Western Wake is a question. But it’s unlikely we can unravel 60 years of growth and surmise what could have happened.
"The MA standards specify the step-by-step definition process by which the concept of a densely settled core area plus its suburbs becomes realized as individual MSAs, CMSAs, PMSAs, and NECMAs. Qualification of an MSA requires the presence of a city of 50,000 or more inhabitants, or a Census Bureau-defined UA (of at least 50,000 inhabitants) and a total population of at least 100,000 (75,000 in New England). The county or counties including the largest city in the core area of population become central counties of the MSA; so does any adjacent county that has at least 50 percent of its population in the UA surrounding the largest city. (In New England, the basic geographic unit for defining MSAs is the city or town rather than the county.)
Additional outlying counties are included in the MSA if they meet specified requirements of commuting to the central counties as well as other requirements of metropolitan character. The minimum level of commuting to central counties required to make a county eligible for consideration as an outlying county is 15 percent. In general, the lower the percentage of a county’s resident workers commuting to the central counties, the more demanding the other requirements of metropolitan character the county must meet in order to qualify for inclusion. The measures of metropolitan
13-6 Metropolitan Areas
character specified in the standards include required levels for the county’s (1) population density; (2) percentage of population that is classified as urban; (3) percentage growth in population between the previous two decennial censuses; and (4) percentage of, or absolute number of, inhabi- tants within the UA that qualifies the MSA"
Which cities will combine to form a new census designation first?
Cincinnati-Dayton CSA 3 million
Raleigh-Durham recombination MSA 2 million
Nashville-Clarksville CSA 2.2 million
Norfolk-Richmond CSA 3 million
Orlando-Tampa CSA 5.7 million
*The numbers combine current msa populations.
Fixed them (as of Census estimate 2018) and rounded to nearest 100,000
As for the answer, who the heck knows? It makes no sense to me that Raleigh & Durham were ever separated into two in the first place. Since they were separated, they've only grown even closer to the point that the two cities actually meet and cross into each other's county.
No other pair of core cities in this list of choices are on top of each other like Raleigh and Durham. Additionally, Orlando's and Tampa's MSAs don't even currently touch. They are separated by The Villages on the north side and Lakeland-Winter Haven on the south side.
Clarksville and Nashville are nearly 50 miles apart, and Dayton and Cincinnati are over 50 miles apart. Richmond and Norfolk are even further away from each at over 90 miles. Raleigh and Durham, center to center, are just over 20 miles apart and share the region's juggernaut employment center: RTP, that's between them. It's also the fastest growing pair among the pairs.
Especially your second point. It's straight up laughable that there are two different MSA's within the Triangle. The two major cities touch each other in many areas and even bleed into each others counties, as you stated. I literally drive back and forth between both metro's several times a day. I work in RTP (Durham) and can drive down the road to get lunch in Brier Creek (Raleigh) in about 5 minutes.
When I drive to my job in RTP from Raleigh, I have to pass through Durham's MSA, and then back into Raleigh's MSA where my job is.
Western Cary, in Raleigh's MSA, is closer to downtown Durham than it is to downtown Raleigh.
I have friends who drive from southern Durham to their jobs in the Wake County (Raleigh MSA) side of RTP in 7 minutes.
In effect, the Triangle operates as one 2 million+ metro but it gets diminished by the OMB due to their inability to understand/acknowledge how it really operates. Raleigh's county, Wake, carries the lion's share of the area's population and growth, yet Raleigh's MSA only gets two other counties to its east (opposite the decades of growth direction), and doesn't get to include 4 counties that border it, three of which border extremely fast growing areas of the county. It's all statistical ridiculousness when compared to the many bloated MSAs of many other fast growing Sunbelt cities. For example, Raleigh's + Durham's combined MSA area is close to the land size of Richmond's MSA alone, and significantly smaller than Nashville's. Even more ridiculous is that Durham's MSA land area is larger than Raleigh's, even though Raleigh has been driving the lion's share of the Triangle's growth for half a century, and continues to put distance on Durham's MSA each subsequent year.
In effect, the Triangle operates as one 2 million+ metro but it gets diminished by the OMB due to their inability to understand/acknowledge how it really operates.
I don't think it has anything to do with the OMB's misunderstanding of anything. The criteria that determines the establishment of MSAs and CSAs is consistently applied but due to the unique set-up of the Triangle largely attributed to the behemoth that is RTP, it results in two separate MSAs under the current criteria. As big as the US is with so many urban areas and sprawling labor markets, it will be next to impossible to craft a set of criteria that, when applied consistently, will reflect the reality of commuting and employment for each and every area. Now there may be actual instances wherein the source of the commuting data or how commute flows are determined is a bit wonky and in such cases I do think the OMB would be to blame (and I'm only aware of one such instance at the moment and it's not the Triangle).
Anybody have access to commuting statistics between Durham and Wake counties as well as how many residents remain within their counties for employment?
Wake-to-Durham is the largest raw commuting transfer in the state with over 50,000 (around 11% of Wake’s workforce). Conversely about 20,000 Durhamites go to work in Wake (~15% of it’s county workforce). 69% of Durham stays inside Durham, 81% of Wake stays local.
There are counties in other metros with less commuting ties than Wake-Durham.
I don't think it has anything to do with the OMB's misunderstanding of anything. The criteria that determines the establishment of MSAs and CSAs is consistently applied but due to the unique set-up of the Triangle largely attributed to the behemoth that is RTP, it results in two separate MSAs under the current criteria. As big as the US is with so many urban areas and sprawling labor markets, it will be next to impossible to craft a set of criteria that, when applied consistently, will reflect the reality of commuting and employment for each and every area. Now there may be actual instances wherein the source of the commuting data or how commute flows are determined is a bit wonky and in such cases I do think the OMB would be to blame (and I'm only aware of one such instance at the moment and it's not the Triangle).
Anybody have access to commuting statistics between Durham and Wake counties as well as how many residents remain within their counties for employment?
The second I put misunderstanding/acknowledgement in my post, I knew someone would reply. Thanks for not disappointing me.
There are other multi-core MSAs like Miami/FtLauderdale/West Palm Beach & Dallas-Forth Worth, that are unified. I would like to see the criteria that these places meet that the Triangle doesn't.
Adding to your post, it's notable that RTP spans both MSAs in the Triangle, with the more recent growth in RTP happening in Wake County. So, like me, Wake commuters to RTP are more likely to stay in Wake County than they were previously.
I suspect that when Wake County was much, much smaller, and a higher % of occupied RTP was Durham County based, there was likely a larger share of commuters from Raleigh's current MSA to the Durham side of RTP. RTP's relative influence as a job center has diminished as a % over the decades as Wake County, in particular, has exploded in population. For reference, here are the county numbers for Wake by decade for the last 40 years:
1980: 301,327
1990: 423,380
2000: 627,846
2010: 900,993
2018: 1,092,305
RTP's employment has not grown on a similar trajectory, though there are RTP adjacent companies in both Durham and Wake Counties that have sprung up over the decades.
Lastly, it will be interesting to see what happens to the urbanized area regardless of the MSAs. A source that I follow from Europe unified Raleigh's and Durham's UAs recently, based on their contiguous density metric of ppl/km2. This is no easy feat to accomplish in the Triangle because where the two cities meet, there are all sorts of road blocks that don't house people including RTP & RDU Airport near the middle, Falls Lake and its watershed to the north and Jordan Lake and its watershed to the south. Nonetheless, the suburban development between Raleigh and Durham continues to fill in the available holes with more people.
When you look at Raleigh and Durham, and the distance, development, and synergy between them, there's much more and they are actually a bit closer together (core to core by the straightest path of travel) than Richmond and Petersburg, yet Richmond and Petersburg are in one MSA. That comparison alone makes me question the criteria that the OMB uses to designate MSAs.
DT Richmond to Old Town Petersburg is 24.4 miles. DT Durham to the State Capitol is 24.7 miles. Pretty much equal. The difference is like 90% of Petersburg residents have to come to Richmond or Chesterfield for work. Time-wise its also a far quicker trip in Richmond. From what I understand, the criteria are based on commuters so this would make sense. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nort...5000!3e0?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/dir/The+...5000!3e0?hl=en
DT Richmond to Old Town Petersburg is 24.4 miles. DT Durham to the State Capitol is 24.7 miles. Pretty much equal. The difference is like 90% of Petersburg residents have to come to Richmond or Chesterfield for work. Time-wise its also a far quicker trip in Richmond. From what I understand, the criteria are based on commuters so this would make sense. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nort...5000!3e0?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/dir/The+...5000!3e0?hl=en
It must be more because there are some metro counties with less commuting traffic than Wake-Durham.
It must be more because there are some metro counties with less commuting traffic than Wake-Durham.
For other cities, I'm not sure. I was just speaking to the Richmond area. It makes sense to me in Richmond's case as there are virtually zero jobs in Petersburg so naturally, they are going to have to come to Richmond for work. We were actually discussing the lack of jobs in Petersburg in the Richmond forum earlier this week.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
