Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City
 [Register]
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.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
View Poll Results: Which do you prefer?
Metro Charlotte 52 50.00%
Raleigh-Durham (Triangle) 52 50.00%
Voters: 104. You may not vote on this poll

Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 11-17-2010, 09:34 AM
 
1,211 posts, read 2,665,457 times
Reputation: 642

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by adavi215 View Post
Ok, I'll play your game and I'll compare RDU CSA to Charlotte's MSA, although I do agree that RDU should be one MSA. So, I am comparing RDU's 7 county CSA to Charlotte's 6 county MSA.
Charlotte: 1.745million, $11.8billion GDP
RDU: 1.6 million, $85billion GDP.
Keeping everything fair RDU has more counties and a smaller population and a smaller GDP. So, as you can see, Charlotte is really a huge economic pull with relatively the same amount of population as RDU. Now, you can cite banking for Charlotte. Some other things you need to cite are medical devices manufacturing, energy infrastructure and production, biotech research(yes it's here playa), textiles, automobile parts manufacturing, wholesale trade and logistics, federal offices (Reserve bank divisional branch, federal circuit court, and FBI office), and the list goes one. Now you can see why banking is only 10%.

This is of no slight to RDU. What RDU is doing is extremely impressive and it should be applauded. It should also be noted that whle RDU is growing at a faster rate than Charlotte, Charlotte is growing bigger. The percentages for RDU's growth is relative to the size of RDU. While numerically Charlotte is adding more people. Also, Salisbury, Statesville, Mooresville, Chester, Lancaster, Shelby, and Lincolnton are very much apart of the Charlotte metro region and rumors have it that some will be added to the MSA.

And let's not act like RDU doesn't have any rural communities that are connected to it. Let's think about Knightdale, Wendale, Garner, Wake Forest, and Oxford and tell me those places are purely suburban.

Economically RDU is in better shape right now. Soooo?

Charlotte is spread out over a much larger area. Numerically means what?

All of the towns you mentioned are historic towns, just because they have some country looking areas means what? Most of the towns surrounding Charlotte have country characteristics. Both Raleigh and Charlotte have country looking areas within their own city limits! Even Atlanta's suburbs have country characteristics!

The towns you named are directly connected to Raleigh except for Oxford. I'm talking about places that are 3-4 counties away.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 11-17-2010, 09:38 AM
 
1,211 posts, read 2,665,457 times
Reputation: 642
Quote:
Originally Posted by seanm83 View Post
But if you look I did account for the flawed MSA's of Raleigh and Durham being separate and added them together. Like I said Charlotte is still a good bit larger MSA to MSA. The triangle's CSA contains plenty of rural counties as well since when are Vance and Warren counties considered anything but rural especially Warren. And these are the first two that popped in my head there's a long list of them that I haven't been to which are probably just as rural as those in Charlotte's. So if you want to count the Triangle's entire CSA you have to count Charlotte's as well and by the CSA definition, Charlotte is way larger.


But I'm trying to be fair by adding the Raleigh and Durham metros together which they should be considered one region, but even though the population difference is far less, it is close to 200,000 give or take. Like I said 200,000 out of a metro of 1.9 million is pretty big, it would be like the Triangle adding another city the size of Durham. And Charlotte has not been a sizeable city for quite some time, it wasn't nearly as developed 20 years ago as it is today, not even 10 years ago.


And please the Charlotte Greensboro and Triangle areas similar in size. This is exactly what I'm talking about if you compared areas roughly the same size in each metro Charlotte would probably add a lot more people to it's MSA, because if you combined the Triangle MSA's together as they are now they would cover more of the populated areas into the whole MSA. Like I said Charlotte has Anson in it's MSA, which makes no sense while Iredell and Lincoln are left out and both counties have higher populations than Anson. In the Triangle you may have less counties included in the MSA, and I'm still talking both Raleigh-Durham I never split them into separate MSAs like the census but those counties represent the majority of the population of the Triangle and Wake is physically huge, Charlotte's MSA might have a few more counties but most are small like Durham and Orange. And with Charlotte, southern Iredell has a pretty good portion of the metro population, although it is not included.


Like I said if anything, the Triangle would benefit from the MSA numbers if Raleigh and Durham were combined where as Charlotte would be slightly shortchanged by not including Iredell and Lincoln which are as much a part of the MSA as any other county and moreso than Anson. Even with the numbers in the Triangle's favor it is still smaller by quite a bit, yes the difference doesn't appear to be that much but when u consider, hell we'll go with your CSA of the Triangle at 1.8 million and Charlotte MSA at 1.9 if that's what you said, that is like adding a Cary to the Triangle that would make quite a difference in population.

And since neither city has historically been that large, both are fairly new and up and coming maybe Charlotte had a few years advantage but we're not talking about quite some time like you say, Charlotte deserves the clout. Get back to me when Raleigh-Durham passes Charlotte, which is quite a few years away I think it's fair to say at least a decade if it does happen, and if it doesn't have the "clout" Charlotte does now, then yes you win. Although imo both cities are overrated to begin with, the fact that Charlotte has more "clout" alone should tell you something. You don't have to like Charlotte, there are places I like much better than NC, I was just responding to a simple post based on your opinion and trying to share the facts I did have as fair as possible. They may not be 100% accurate but accurate enough to make my point, it's not just my opinion, it is going by the same data you went by in a way as fair as possible to both cities. If I was trying to play games just to prove a point, then yea I could just throw around the MSA numbers according to the census bureau and it would be no contest.

But I gave the Triangle the credit is it due, the fact is it's still smaller than Charlotte. Both have their assets, they are known for different things nationwide, but by the numbers, Charlotte is larger. Like I said in the future if the Triangle passes Charlotte more power to them there's no point in me trying to knock on them by saying "Charlotte should be larger because..." it wouldn't matter because the Triangle would be larger based on the numbers and with that goes reputation somewhat and amenities and so on and so forth. Things change but right now Charlotte has more clout it is what is.

You're misunderstanding my point. I never said Charlotte wasn't the largest metro in the state. As of right now the difference between the Charlotte and RDU area is only around 100k-150k. That's not that big of a difference that's all.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 09:44 AM
 
1,211 posts, read 2,665,457 times
Reputation: 642
The city of Charlotte was the size of present day Raleigh as far back as the early 90's. Charlotte's land area was 136 sq miles. Then again Raleigh was only 54 sq miles at 228,000. Hard to compare these cities.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 05:01 PM
 
4,692 posts, read 9,267,710 times
Reputation: 1330
Quote:
Originally Posted by metro.m View Post
Economically RDU is in better shape right now. Soooo?

Charlotte is spread out over a much larger area. Numerically means what?

All of the towns you mentioned are historic towns, just because they have some country looking areas means what? Most of the towns surrounding Charlotte have country characteristics. Both Raleigh and Charlotte have country looking areas within their own city limits! Even Atlanta's suburbs have country characteristics!

The towns you named are directly connected to Raleigh except for Oxford. I'm talking about places that are 3-4 counties away.
Numerically means Charlotte is adding more people. If Raleigh is adding 10k in one year, Charlotte is adding 15k/ So the 10k is a larger percentage to Raleigh's 1.2million MSA compared to 15k for Charlotte's 1.7million, but Charlotte is still growing larger. I was not debating that neither Charlotte nor Raleigh were exempt from country areas, just rebutting a ststement you made that Raleigh was exempt from country areas. And Charlotte's MSA is not more spread out than Raleigh-Durham CSA yet it has more people.

And Raleigh is in better economical shape than Charlotte for now. But, with the freezes in state budgets, and other economical hardships for how long? Not to mention the 2001 tech bubble that busted also affected Raleigh. Basically banking bubbles affect Charlotte more, tech bubble affect Raleigh more, both are apart of cycles. They all recycle.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 05:02 PM
 
4,692 posts, read 9,267,710 times
Reputation: 1330
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akhenaton06 View Post
I think you put a period in the wrong place, LOL.



While Charlotte obviously has other industries besides banking, we do need to be fair here. A full 27% of the area’s GDP comes from the finance and insurance sector, making Charlotte by far the largest U.S. city to rely so heavily on any one sector.
LOL. Yeah the period is in the wrong place. And where are you getting the 27% reference number? On the BEA I see 10%.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 05:07 PM
 
Location: metro ATL
8,180 posts, read 14,799,108 times
Reputation: 2698
Quote:
Originally Posted by adavi215 View Post
LOL. Yeah the period is in the wrong place. And where are you getting the 27% reference number? On the BEA I see 10%.
Well the 27% figure is mentioned in this article (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/26/1718870/seeking-a-vision-beyond-banking.html - broken link), but you can calculate the same on the BEA website as well. Finance and insurance constitute $32 billion of metro Charlotte's GDP of $118 billion. That's 27%.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 06:35 PM
 
1,211 posts, read 2,665,457 times
Reputation: 642
Quote:
Originally Posted by adavi215 View Post
Numerically means Charlotte is adding more people. If Raleigh is adding 10k in one year, Charlotte is adding 15k/ So the 10k is a larger percentage to Raleigh's 1.2million MSA compared to 15k for Charlotte's 1.7million, but Charlotte is still growing larger. I was not debating that neither Charlotte nor Raleigh were exempt from country areas, just rebutting a ststement you made that Raleigh was exempt from country areas. And Charlotte's MSA is not more spread out than Raleigh-Durham CSA yet it has more people.

And Raleigh is in better economical shape than Charlotte for now. But, with the freezes in state budgets, and other economical hardships for how long? Not to mention the 2001 tech bubble that busted also affected Raleigh. Basically banking bubbles affect Charlotte more, tech bubble affect Raleigh more, both are apart of cycles. They all recycle.
Both Raleigh and Charlotte are growing at an amazing pace. Greensboro is no slouch either. It's amazing that just as recent as the 80's, Greensboro was larger than Raleigh. Raleigh will be more than twice the size of Greensboro in 2-3 years.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 09:24 PM
 
4,692 posts, read 9,267,710 times
Reputation: 1330
Quote:
Originally Posted by metro.m View Post
Both Raleigh and Charlotte are growing at an amazing pace. Greensboro is no slouch either. It's amazing that just as recent as the 80's, Greensboro was larger than Raleigh. Raleigh will be more than twice the size of Greensboro in 2-3 years.
Yeah, it is truly amazing. To think now that Durham is about to surpass Greensbor as far as economic activity is just amazing. RDU is definitely a true star. But, IMO, the shining star of NC is Charlotte. This is no slight against RDU, but not enough credit, support, and praise is given to Charlotte from its peer NC cities.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-17-2010, 10:57 PM
 
Location: South Beach and DT Raleigh
13,966 posts, read 24,043,396 times
Reputation: 14760
Wow!....what a fun pissing match about population. I should make a cocktail.

I answered Raleigh-Durham in the poll for the following reasons:
  1. It's the more educated metro.
  2. I like that it offers several different vibes in one Metro. Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill can each stand on its own but provide for a very satisfying shared identity.
  3. The schools are generally better (objectively), especially in Chapel Hill and Wake County Systems.
  4. The crime is lower. Both Raleigh's and Durham's rates are lower than Charlotte's and Raleigh's is the lowest in the state among large cities. Cary is even safer.
  5. The "college hoops" cannot be beat anywhere in the US. The college football is also fun.
  6. The universities and colleges enrich all corners of the Triangle via extension programs and are palatable in both Raleigh and Durham. Of course they are as well in Chapel Hill but I thought that would be a given.
  7. Whole Foods
  8. The enormous number and variety of sports and entertainment venues as well as the plethora of museums and performing arts companies.
  9. It's closer to the beach
  10. It's closer to VA than SC
  11. It's more casual (due to the types of industries and economy IMO)
  12. No NASCAR! Seriously...I hate NASCAR
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-18-2010, 05:09 AM
 
Location: BMORE!
10,085 posts, read 9,866,783 times
Reputation: 5737
raleigh is nice, i go down there every year and the place seems to grow with every visit.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
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.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > General U.S. > City vs. City

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top