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Charlotte GDP = $ 205.3 billion
Triangle GDP = $ 148.5 billion
As for southern Virginia, Danville takes care of that just fine.
What I meant was that Greensboro and the Triad mean a lot to the folks in Southern Virginia because it's their "big city" where they can access amenities only found in regions with decent populations over 1 million people.
They'd be very limited if it weren't for the cities across the border in NC because Virginia has concentrated populations in its cities with the rest of the state being quite rural.
Greensboro is probably very important and cherished by those cities in Southern VA. like Danville and Martinsville.
Durham is gentrifying, but NC natives committing the violent crimes likely aren't moving away. They're likely shifting to another area.
The interstate and Durham's history probably will prevent it from ever fully sweeping away a culture of crime.
When I think of GDP I think of things actually made. Pharma is made in the Triangle, and Charlotte is a big trucking distribution area and of course banking and financial services.
I wonder how brain power of the universities is quantified into real numbers. Of course they are research universities and solve problems and issue patents in the thousands.
I wonder if construction of homes and apartments is considered GDP.
In rural NC, the nations' 2nd and 3rd pork and poultry producer, that has to be big numbers too,
When I think of GDP I think of things actually made. Pharma is made in the Triangle, and Charlotte is a big trucking distribution area and of course banking and financial services.
Mecklenburg County has more manufacturing jobs (69,000) than any other NC county.
1. Charlotte
2. Raleigh-Cary
3. Durham-Chapel Hill
4. Greensboro-High Point
5. Winston-Salem
6. Wilmington
7. Asheville
8. Greenville
9. Fayetteville
10. Jacksonville
The top 5 are pretty self explanatory.
- Wilmington at 6 due to being the main state port and only significant city on the coast.
- Asheville at 6 due to being the anchor city, cultural, and economic center for the entire Western NC region.
- Greenville has ECU and is the largest inner coastal city in NC but there are some decent sized cities around it so it's not as important to Eastern NC as Asheville is to Western NC.
- Fayetteville low relative to population due to not having much significance outside of the large military base
- Jacksonville ranking at 10 for Camp Lejeune, the East Coast center of the Marine Corps.
Beyond that I don't really see any other towns of much significance that aren't part of the metros of the aforementioned cities. At the current pace Charlotte and Raleigh-Cary will continue to put more distances between themselves and the rest of NC. Durham will surpass Greensboro as the Triangle continues to grow much faster than the Triad. Greenville is my sleeper pick for major growth outside of the Charlotte or Triangle areas over the next decade as Asheville has stalled (probably due to high COL and lack of high paying jobs), Wilmington is too vulnerable to catastrophic weather events, and the Triad just can't seem to find the "spark" to get it jump started to the growth rate of Charlotte and Raleigh.
Durham is gentrifying, but NC natives committing the violent crimes likely aren't moving away. They're likely shifting to another area. The interstate and Durham's history probably will prevent it from ever fully sweeping away a culture of crime.
When I think of GDP I think of things actually made. Pharma is made in the Triangle, and Charlotte is a big trucking distribution area and of course banking and financial services.
I wonder how brain power of the universities is quantified into real numbers. Of course they are research universities and solve problems and issue patents in the thousands.
To address a couple of comments:
Durham has been undergoing more transition in the past few years than likely any other city in the state, for many reasons. It is an ongoing transition, and gentrification is part of this transition. Regarding crime, the city has not done enough and will have no choice to crack down by increasing the police presence. I am old enough to remember going to NYC back in the late 1970's, and it was truly a dangerous place to visit. The city got tough, and it is now one of the safest large cities in the country. Other cities like Greensboro and Charlotte have also experienced higher crime-shootings-murder rates and all grapple with addressing this. No simple answers, and it will never go away completely. Chicago has never solved this problem.
GDP captures goods and services. Not sure how intellectual capabilities / research is quantified in this measurement. It may be, I don't know.
My list:
1. Charlotte
2. Raleigh
3. Greensboro
4. Durham
5. Winston-Salem
6. Wilmington
7. Fayetteville
8. Asheville
9. Greenville
10. High Point
11. Jacksonville
12. Chapel Hill
13. Goldsboro
14. MooreHead City
15. Elizabeth City
Durham is doing a much better job of embracing RTP this Century than in the past one, and I think that that has contributed to its rise in prominence as real contender to be NC's 3rd city.
This somewhat confirms my thoughts on the matter. Apparently liberal Durham was pretty restrictive when it came to growth-friendly policies back in the day compared to more laissez faire Wake County. Durham, with its rich history, culture, and existing historic structures, was also well-positioned to benefit from a renewed focus on urban cores this centuries which it clearly has done
Quote:
That said, it is hard to ignore the first city of North Carolina's "3rd metro", the Triad. Greensboro is still larger than Durham, and it headlines a metro that isn't in the immediate shadow of either Charlotte or Raleigh.
Yes and the existence of the coliseum complex and Koury Convention Center, coupled with its central position in the state and extensive interstate network, gives Greensboro a much greater level of visibility and more importance as a destination within the state for large-scale events. Locally it has a LOT of room to continue to flesh out and grow relatively comfortably.
Thats hardly a slam dunk. None of RTP is in the city of Durham. Most liberal county doesn't really seem to factor in to this thread, and I'm not sure most racially diverse does either (Plus I think Robeson County may take that crown anyway). The about to open Tanger Center is larger than DPAC. A&T is larger, and in many ways more significant, than Central.
Those commuting numbers are at the county level, correct? If so, then most of that in-commuting to "Durham" is into RTP, which again, isn't in the city. Another reason for the heavy in-commuting is the perceived undesirability of living in Durham.
Perceived by who?
Durham is the fastest growing major city in NC for the last decade. The only municipality in the state with over 100k people that has grown more than Durham between 2010-2020 is Cary. (Incidentally these same stats also held true for the 1990s; Raleigh took the top spot for the 2000s).
Last edited by TarHeelNick; 02-12-2020 at 02:00 PM..
People who can read crime stats and school ratings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TarHeelNick
Durham is the fastest growing major city in NC for the last decade. The only municipality in the state with over 100k people that has grown more than Durham between 2010-2020 is Cary. (Incidentally these same stats also held true for the 1990s; Raleigh took the top spot for the 2000s).
2020? We're only 43 days into the year...I didn't realize there had been a population count already this year. I assume you're referring to percentage increase? How about in actual numbers?
This somewhat confirms my thoughts on the matter. Apparently liberal Durham was pretty restrictive when it came to growth-friendly policies back in the day compared to more laissez faire Wake County. Durham, with its rich history, culture, and existing historic structures, was also well-positioned to benefit from a renewed focus on urban cores this centuries which it clearly has done
It's more complicated than that. If you reach back to the 1960s, Durham had a thriving legacy tobacco industry while RTP was fledgling.
The spark that ignited RTP was IBM's decision to choose it over NOVA in 1965. At that time, IBM already had a presence and employees in Raleigh and they continued to refer to their operations as IBM Raleigh. By 1971, a very specific section of I40 was opened from Raleigh (Wade Ave.) and RTP (Davis Dr.) that accommodated IBM's Raleigh based employees. It's easy to imagine that as folks continued transferring from NY to Raleigh, they were reaching out to their colleagues in NC and those folks largely lived in Raleigh/Wake. This likely caused the new folks to consider Raleigh/Wake Co. first. Plus, they had a new shiny freeway to get to their jobs. Even when my family moved with IBM to the Triangle in '74, my dad's job was actually in Raleigh and not RTP for at least the first decade. The reality is that IBM had a lot do do with establishing Raleigh as the growth center of the Triangle. Going back to the aforementioned tobacco industry in Durham, there was little need to court the newcomers for economic viability, while Raleigh and Wake were all in on the growth train: riding IBM's coattails because it didn't really have a significant legacy industry. It was just a moderately sized state capital and college town. As Raleigh and Wake rapidly grew with more well heeled residents, money poured into the city and county and expectations rose for better schools, etc. This created a widening gap of experience between Wake and Durham Counties. Both the cores of Raleigh and Durham were hollowed out like what happening nationally, but Raleigh and Wake had the benefit of rapidly growing suburban areas that Durham wasn't enjoying at nearly the same rate. Money buys services and services improves experience, and Wake had much more money. Rinse and repeat that pattern for the remainder of the 20th Century.
Even today, while Durham County's jobs pay more on average (because RTP has an overweighted impact on Durham County than it does Wake County), Wake household incomes remain much higher. This suggests that money made in Durham County is more likely to be spent in Wake than vice versa.
The return of focus to our central cities this Century has a lot to do with the resurgence of Durham City in particular. The city is way less densely populated overall than Raleigh, so it has room to grow. You can still find some pretty significant swaths of undeveloped land within the suburban parts of the city limits. The city also has a collection of legacy buildings with an authenticity that particularly resonates with today's youth. The opportunity is there for Durham to grow at a faster clip because of those things. FWIW, the density numbers back up that narrative. While Raleigh's density is in the 3200 ppl/m2, Durham's is more like 2500 ppl/m2. If Durham could reach Raleigh's current density, it would add 75,000+ more people. This gives Durham more legs to run in the short term. It also doesn't have any real municipal competition for expansion within its county. It's not hard to imagine Durham being 400,000 in the next couple of decades.
Last edited by rnc2mbfl; 02-12-2020 at 03:39 PM..
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