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My wife and I lived in Durham from 1994 to 1996 (she worked at Duke, and I worked at UNC). I usually told people we lived in the Raleigh-Durham area. I have to say we did everything in Durham and Chapel Hill. We maybe went into Raleigh to do something two or three times the whole time we lived in the area. Nevertheless, we certainly viewed the Triangle as one "area," so it's odd to me that it still hasn't met the criteria to be a single MSA. We absolutely loved it there, and if it hadn't been so far from family, we likely would have stayed.
If that were to happen, there could be a domino effect elsewhere involving which counties are added. Specifically Alamance (~170,000) could see its commuting numbers to the core Triangle counties surpass what they send to Greensboro/Triad. Will be interesting to see the next few years.
Leaving Durham and Chapel Hill out of the equation, I think Raleigh is somewhere between Greensboro and Austin in terms of a proper tier. It's still a small-ish city in many ways, especially downtown which can be sleepy at times. However, Raleigh is truly booming and the tech scene has made it desirable among young professionals and transplants. What a lot of people don't realize is that Raleigh is bigger than it seems because it's so suburban. There's plenty of growth in the area, but it's not entirely concentrated in urban areas such as downtown (ITB).
It's true that Raleigh doesn't have a lot of tourism, but the Triangle's economy is healthy and doesn't need to rely on tourism. It's not Atlanta or Nashville by any means, but I do think it's nationally recognized to an extent. There are lots of college basketball fans around the nation and RTP obviously helps the Triangle's reputation, too.
So I think its a good time to specifically clarify the cities in comparison to Raleigh, as I'm not talking about Raleigh's ascent regionally, and I don't want the focus to just be Rgh and other southern cities. I'm talking about Raleigh and how it compares nationally...
Raleigh's comparative cities by MSA
Buffalo
Hartford
Honolulu
Jacksonville
Louisville
Memphis
Milwaukee
New Orleans
Oklahoma City
Providence
Richmond
Salt Lake City
Virginia Beach
And/or any city currently between 1 and 1.7 million population...
Raleigh's comparative cities by CSA
Austin
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Nashville
Orlando
Pittsburgh
Portland
Sacramento
San Antonio
San Jose
Tampa
And/or any city currently between 2 and 2.7 million...
........
What is going on in Raleigh, what it does well, what it offers residents and visitors, the scale of amenities it has, its growth rates, none of that is changed by whether you choose to view Raleigh by either CSA or MSA, all of the tangible characteristics are unaffected by it. We're open to choosing whichever population you prefer, so let's not get so lost on the minutiae of population. Pick which one you like...
So as everything else about Raleigh is unaffected by whichever population you prefer, the question still stands as two parts:
A)do you currently find Raleigh in group one cities (the smaller city group) or group two cities, and what's your reasoning behind either placement? Or do you find Raleigh in a unique in-between place, the first part is where is Raleigh currently, as of today, this moment, right now?
B)where do you see Raleigh in the coming years, and how high do you think it climbs? 5 years from now, 10, 20?
I know we can't tell the future, so before someone inevitably quips that response, this entire forum has habitually practiced the art of future predictions based on current factors, it literally happens every day on here, so we don't even need to do the "who knows" where it goes from here bit. Based off whatever information you prefer, do you envision a Raleigh in 2030, 2040, in a particular light based on things happening today?
How is Raleigh's current peer group (whichever one you align it with) affected by where you see Raleigh going in the years to come?
Salt Lakes CSA is actually similar to Raleighs, in that the CSA includes Utah, Davis, and Weber counties all interconnected with slc which makes our CSA 2.6 million as of 2019. So in some regards I would call slc and Raleigh close peers at this point.
Leaving Durham and Chapel Hill out of the equation, I think Raleigh is somewhere between Greensboro and Austin in terms of a proper tier. It's still a small-ish city in many ways, especially downtown which can be sleepy at times. However, Raleigh is truly booming and the tech scene has made it desirable among young professionals and transplants. What a lot of people don't realize is that Raleigh is bigger than it seems because it's so suburban. There's plenty of growth in the area, but it's not entirely concentrated in urban areas such as downtown (ITB).
It's true that Raleigh doesn't have a lot of tourism, but the Triangle's economy is healthy and doesn't need to rely on tourism. It's not Atlanta or Nashville by any means, but I do think it's nationally recognized to an extent. There are lots of college basketball fans around the nation and RTP obviously helps the Triangle's reputation, too.
I think there is often a temptation to reduce Raleigh to what it was in the 90s with regard to its relative urbanity. It pretty clearly is densifying rapidly and will look and feel appropriate for a city its size in a short manner of time. Growth seems to be funneling more into North Hills, Midtown Exchange, Downtown, and Hillsborough street. Somewhere down the line Downtown South will also come into the picture.
I think at the end of the day, most things about Raleigh can be answered with "it was a much smaller city until recently". Culturally you don't see as many historical contributions from it. It's always had a pretty good local music scene but very little talent moved on to become big outside the region.
There is a flipside to many of Raleigh's attributes. Because it didn't get freeways until the 90s it avoided the mistake many cities made of bulldozing historic minority neighborhoods to put one right through downtown.
Many see I-95 as a missed opportunity, but driving through Richmond and seeing a city the same size suffer under the traffic of a city much larger, I think Raleigh dodged a bullet.
I used to consider the location of the stadiums far on the outskirts a huge negative for the city, but I've actually changed my mind on that, having seen the fate of most urban stadiums in other cities--they end up being the same ugly dead zone that PNC is, but instead taking up valuable real estate downtown, often replacing historic neighborhoods in the process. Though I do wish the region had better pro sports representation.
Raleigh's skyline is very small for a city its size. But in some ways one could argue it is lucky it avoided its skyscraper building phase until later, when better knowledge of urban planning could inform that. In many US cities the CBD is a culturally dead 9-5 zone and the activity is mostly in neighborhoods adjacent to that. Raleigh will never have that issue. All its new buildings are mixed use and deliberately attractive at the street level. The only dead zone in its downtown is the state government complex, which could've been much worse if the city had been bigger and richer in the 1970s, as there were plans similar to Omaha to rebuild the Halifax Mall into a profoundly ugly suburban office park.
There is give and take with many things. That's life.
Many see I-95 as a missed opportunity, but driving through Richmond and seeing a city the same size suffer under the traffic of a city much larger, I think Raleigh dodged a bullet.
I'm fairly certain that Richmond itself would have more traffic than Raleigh even if it was also located along I-95 because the core of Richmond is THE business, government, educational, cultural, and recreational epicenter of its region and is much more centralized than Raleigh/the Triangle.
Although it's unfortunate that I-95 took out a portion of Richmond's urban core, it could've been a lot worse. And if nothing else, I-95 does provide a pretty awesome view of the cityscape and skyline, particularly when approaching from the south.
Raleigh would have certainly benefitted from greater visibility had I-95's route were planned to go through the city (and I-40 has much less thru traffic), but it has plenty of interstate connectivity to both I-85 and I-95. I was in Raleigh last month and took Hwy 64 to get to I-95 when I left and it was an easy ride and not even as long as I was expecting.
I'm fairly certain that Richmond itself would have more traffic than Raleigh even if it was also located along I-95 because the core of Richmond is THE business, government, educational, cultural, and recreational epicenter of its region and is much more centralized than Raleigh/the Triangle.
Not for long, Richmond shot themselves in the foot by not working out a new arena replacement and now Henrico County will have a new entertainment district with the region's premier arena.
I'm fairly certain that Richmond itself would have more traffic than Raleigh even if it was also located along I-95 because the core of Richmond is THE business, government, educational, cultural, and recreational epicenter of its region and is much more centralized than Raleigh/the Triangle.
Although it's unfortunate that I-95 took out a portion of Richmond's urban core, it could've been a lot worse. And if nothing else, I-95 does provide a pretty awesome view of the cityscape and skyline, particularly when approaching from the south.
Raleigh would have certainly benefitted from greater visibility had I-95's route were planned to go through the city (and I-40 has much less thru traffic), but it has plenty of interstate connectivity to both I-85 and I-95. I was in Raleigh last month and took Hwy 64 to get to I-95 when I left and it was an easy ride and not even as long as I was expecting.
The disorganized nature of the Triangle is not great for traffic. It's I-95, which frequently has bad traffic in the middle of nowhere in NC and SC. The problem is aggravated in Richmond because locals also share it with through-traffic to commute.
Downtown Raleigh is the nucleus all.of those things as well for the Triangle except for business. The state government and the state's largest university are right there. It could even surpass RTP in terms of raw employment numbers in the near future. Though there are plans for an urban core in RTP so I expect the region to remain in split custody.
Relative to some of the conversation on the first page of this thread, much of the western and northwestern suburban areas of Wake County, including parts of Raleigh itself are closer to downtown Durham than to downtown Raleigh. Far west Cary is not only closer to downtown Durham, but also to Chapel Hill. Never mind that far west Cary is actually in Chatham County, and therefore the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA.
Certainly there are parts of each MSA that don't access parts of the Triangle with any regularity, and the OP gave some examples. That's true. However, that's true of nearly every metro area including ones that are being served up as comparisons. For example: Nashville's MSA not only covers an area that's larger than the combined area of both Raleigh's and Durham's MSAs, but it's even significantly physically larger than the Triangle's CSA that includes a couple of extra counties. Does everyone in Nashville's orbit often go to Nashville? No. A percentage do, and a percentage don't.
The thing that differentiates (and in my opinion handicaps) Raleigh and its MSA is how tightly it's bounded compared to other Southeastern MSAs. It's less than half the physical area of Richmond's & Memphis', just over a 1/3 the size of Nashville's, and 2/3 the size of Jacksonville's, yet it's outgrown all of them except Nashville in that small footprint. Even in the case of Nashville, Raleigh's MSA grew 260,292 to Nashville's 288,134 from 2010 to 2019, despite Nashville covering nearly 3X the land area. Raleigh's county has 6 bordering counties and only gets 2 counted in its MSA. Even Durham's MSA is physically larger than Raleigh's. That's a lot of potential data that's left on the table surrounding Raleigh. And, yes, I understand why this is the case with an orbit of other core cities sharing bordering counties to Wake's.
Certainly from a city brand perspective, Raleigh is still the new kid on the block & doesn't carry much cultural weight, but it's been ascending so ridiculously fast that it's difficult to dismiss it anymore. In the Triangle, Raleigh carries most of the MSA/CSA growth on its shoulders, with Wake County alone taking a larger and larger share of the CSA population with each passing year. As of today, it's more than half of the entire CSA.
Even if the OMB doesn't change the MSA boundaries, Raleigh is positioned to pick off Oklahoma City in the next couple of years or sooner, and Jax is in its sights. Combined, the Triangle is already larger than Nashville, and every year it puts distance on them.
Subjectivity and the current MSA boundaries drive perceptions of Raleigh, and that perception is often reinforced with the city not having a long cultural historical relevance. In a way, Raleigh is this new thing out there that's hard to grasp and wrap your head around. It's like the successful student that arrives at a new high school in their senior year. Nobody's really interested in that new kid taking THEIR ranking from them, yet they do.
By 2030, Raleigh's little MSA is likely pushing 1.7M, and the CSA is likely picking off Cincinnati. Its urban center will be drastically transformed, while its county adds another 200,000 or so. It likely continues to trail Charlotte's metro by half a million+, but it certainly doesn't live it its bigger sister's shadow.
In the end, Raleigh's story is about numbers and objective success that can be measured. It's low on "feelz" status, but that doesn't stop it.
Last edited by rnc2mbfl; 01-25-2021 at 03:27 PM..
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