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They don’t cut up counties, but they do cut up cities.
That's not really accurate either although I know what you're getting at in Raleigh's case. If a city is located in more than one county and at least two of those counties are assigned to different MSAs, then you get people in the same city residing in different MSAs. High Point is the same way except it is located within two counties of two different MSAs by reason of the city itself sitting within four counties: Guilford (which contains the bulk of the city) and Randolph are in the Greensboro-High Point MSA whereas Forsyth and Davidson are in the Winston-Salem MSA.
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I don’t get the criteria personally. I’ve seen commuting is an issue, but then it looks like Wake-Durham has the strongest commuting ties of any two counties in the state so. With COVID and WFH, I do wonder if the commuting criteria is long for this world.
The criteria makes sense to me right now but I'd imagine using Census tracts would be more precise but also a lot more tedious.
The criteria is such that the two most connected counties in the state by way of commuting (by either raw numbers or by percentage) don’t fit the criteria of “secondary county” for OMB purposes. So somewhere like Franklin or Chatham, which is much less tied to Wake/Durham, somehow get under the commuting guidelines. As Judge Judy would say, that makes no sense, its ridiculous.
And I’m not sure why you say they don’t cut up cities while admitting they cut up cities. Obviously they aren’t setting out to do it, but their Byzantine standards does just that. I believe it happens to 4 between the two MSA’s (Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Morrisville). I guess technically Angier also fits here, but it’s quite different in reality.
The criteria is such that the two most connected counties in the state by way of commuting (by either raw numbers or by percentage) don’t fit the criteria of “secondary county” for OMB purposes. So somewhere like Franklin or Chatham, which is much less tied to Wake/Durham, somehow get under the commuting guidelines. As Judge Judy would say, that makes no sense, its ridiculous.
Question: do you actually understand the entire criteria underlying the delineation of core-based statistical areas and the reasons Raleigh and Durham are anomalies? It doesn't make much sense to me to lambast the criteria when, in the majority of cases, MSAs have more or less tracked with the reality on the ground. But that said, with the passage of time, the Census/OMB must become responsive to changing realities on the ground and tweak or overhaul its criteria accordingly and I think it does a decent job with that. Let's see what changes in criteria or delineations under present criteria change in 2020 (although this Census isn't shaping up to be as firm as past ones).
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And I’m not sure why you say they don’t cut up cities while admitting they cut up cities. Obviously they aren’t setting out to do it, but their Byzantine standards does just that. I believe it happens to 4 between the two MSA’s (Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Morrisville). I guess technically Angier also fits here, but it’s quite different in reality.
Cities that spill over into adjacent counties are already "cut up" as one political entity existing under at least two jurisdictions of another layer of government. If anything, when such cities wind up in different MSAs, it's a reflection of its pre-existing "cut up" state.
I don't find the standards to be Byzantine myself when you keep in mind that we're talking first and foremost about statistical creations of government for funding purposes, so the basic unit of these statistical creations must necessarily be a unit of government to facilitate administration of basic obligations, programs, etc on behalf of the federal government. If the rest of the country--or perhaps just NC--were more like New England with cities and towns as the basic unit of government, I'd imagine things might be different.
I’ve read your link. The problem seems to be that neither Wake nor Durham meet the standards to be the core county of the other, and the 2003 redefining by the OMB which created 50 new metro areas needs a single core county to work. So while the Wake-Durham commuting ties are the strongest in the state, since they go both ways the OMB binary world doesn’t recognize it.
I also think the 2003 made New England more uniform with the rest of the country as far as county-based metros are concerned. Though they still have a separate list for NECTAs, there is now an MSA as well used when comparing to the rest of the country.
I live in NC, and I know that Raleigh has it's own MSA, but like someone said, it's hard to separate Raleigh from Durham. There is no line there that lets you know you have crossed from one MSA (Durham's) to another. So, for me, I like to view this from a CSA perspective.
The Raleigh area has some fundamental things in place that qualifies the area as a metro area to be reckoned with: they have a nice Int'l airport, world-class universities, an educated populace, Research Triangle Park, state government, museums, arts, and nice city and state parks.
I know the OP mentioned the growing population of the Raleigh area. It is impressive, but I don't know if having a growing population alone means that a metro area can move up to a higher tier and compete with more established cities by that metric.
I think it will take a combination of metrics for a metro center to move up the ranks. Sure, a growing population is important, but a metro area needs an identity and name recognition, among other things. If Fortune 500 companies plant locations or relocate there, it helps.
I think Raleigh is built for some of these things to happen.
So currently you view Rgh within the RVA/Memphis/Jax tier, the Atx/Clt/Nashville tier, or somewhere in between?
Mutiny, where do you currently view Rgh and 'how' do you view it in its growth and maturation as a city?
So currently you view Rgh within the RVA/Memphis/Jax tier, the Atx/Clt/Nashville tier, or somewhere in between?
Mutiny, where do you currently view Rgh and 'how' do you view it in its growth and maturation as a city?
The Raleigh MSA or urban area I view as being near or at the top of the Richmond/Memphis/Jax tier in terms of population, GDP, and growth rates for each. It doesn't have the history, distinctive local culture, or geographical location of those cities (respectively), so it lacks some things that those features themselves give rise to as well as the stronger tourism sector that have naturally emerged in Richmond, Memphis, and Jacksonville (as well as others in the same weight class with those prominent features like Louisville, Buffalo, New Orleans, etc), but the rate and quality of Raleigh's population and economic growth as well as high QOL metrics in key areas more than make up for that IMO.
Reviewing this data, the strongest commuting ties in raw numbers is Wake-Durham. However I was wrong because in percentage terms, Orange-Durham (15% of the population crosses county lines) is the strongest in the state. Second is Wake-Durham (12%). Eyeballing, it doesn’t look like any other 2 counties cross the 10% threshold, with Forsyth-Guilford, Johnston-Wake, and Union-Mecklenburg in that 7-8% range.
I think in the end, that’s the problem with any MSA questions about the Triangle. We discuss Charlotte’s MSA or Nashville’s MSA or what have you as if they are written in stone as more cohesive than the Triangle because commuting patterns. Except the commuting pattern don’t show that, and actually all they show is that the OMB discounts the Wake-Durham commuting pattern solely because it is not one-sided. That is a clerical issue, not a statistical reality. In actuality, Wake provides the plurality of the Durham Bulls season ticket base and the DPAC subscription base. Wake is more tied to Durham than Wake is to any other county in it’s own MSA, or Mecklenburg is to any other NC county. So when discussing a 14-county Nashville MSA, it should be noted that it’s doubtful all if any of them are as tied together in all aspects as Raleigh is to Durham despite OMB ruling otherwise.
Long story short (too late), MSA is a lazy way to place the Triangle in tiers.
If one looks at Raleigh over the last 50 years, it's really easy to understand why it's sometimes difficult to wrap ones head around it, where it "stands", and where it's going in the future.
If we look backward first, Raleigh was tiny 50 years ago. It wasn't even a top 100 city, no less a top 50 city. It was just establishing the foundation on which it stands today; a foundation that started with IBM. Greensboro was larger. Heck, Greensboro was still larger in 1980. If you go back further a few more decades, and Winston-Salem and Durham were also larger. Raleigh was simply a state capital and college town with no real substantial legacy industry that the others in the state or the region enjoyed. W-S & Durham had Tobacco; Greensboro had textiles & the greater Triad had the furniture industry as well. More than the other cities in the Triangle, Raleigh hitched its wagon to the RTP train early, and it, and Wake County, have been reaping the benefits ever since.
We can debate where Raleigh and Triangle are in the pecking order of cities/metros right now, but its trajectory is is on a different level, and it's ascending in a much smaller MSA footprint than its comparable cities. Most of the MSAs that are in its population "neighborhood" are places that were larger than Raleigh in 2010, and much larger each previous decade prior to that.
Here are where the previously mentioned cities' MSAs were in 1990 and where they are estimated to be in 2019:
Now let's see what's happened to Raleigh. In 1990, its MSA was 544,031. In 2019, that number was estimated to be 1,390,785. Now consider that Raleigh's MSA land area is TINY compared to the other 4 cities. The next smallest land area MSA among this group (JAX) is still more than 50% larger.
Over time, Raleigh and its county has clobbered Durham in growth in the Triangle. It has been doing the heavy lifting for the Triangle for decades, and each subsequent decade means that Wake County and Raleigh's MSA are a larger share of the total CSA population. For context, post WW2, Raleigh and Durham were basically on par with each other.
Of the previously listed 5 MSAs, Raleigh passed 3 of them this past decade, will pass OKC in the next year or so, and will close a lot of the gap with Jacksonville by 2030. In its current small land area form, Raleigh's MSA will be hundreds of thousands larger than Memphis, Richmond, and Louisville, more than 150,000 larger than OKC, and will be within 80,000 of Jacksonville.
Of course, all of this is completely ignoring that Durham's MSA is immediately next door, something that none of these other cities can mimic. That just adds another 3/4 million people hanging out just to the west of Raleigh. (Yes I know that FL is a different sort of animal with development and people stringing along the entire east coast south of JAX).
Just this week, Raleigh landed #1 on a list of 3 cities that will thrive post Covid19, and was listed as the #1 market for real estate investment overall (and #1 for housing) for 2021 by the Urban Land Institute. I'd bet on Raleigh's growth only accelerating once this pandemic is over.
So, where is Raleigh right now? I dunno? Maybe by its MSA, it's in the company of the cities previously mentioned? Then again, by CSA, it's most closely related to Nashville. In the case of all of the MSA comparisons, it's growing faster in less land area. In the case of Nashville at the CSA level, it's also growing faster in less land area.
All I know is that it won't be in the company of Richmond, Louisville, or Memphis much longer as it quickly puts distance on them. If the MSA designations change and Raleigh and Durham are re-combined, it immediately zooms past OKC and JAX as well, and finds itself in the company of places like Nashville, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.
I think in the end, that’s the problem with any MSA questions about the Triangle. We discuss Charlotte’s MSA or Nashville’s MSA or what have you as if they are written in stone as more cohesive than the Triangle because commuting patterns. Except the commuting pattern don’t show that, and actually all they show is that the OMB discounts the Wake-Durham commuting pattern solely because it is not one-sided.
Charlotte and Nashville are seen as more cohesive areas than the Triangle because they both have a dominant urban area with no real secondary ones anywhere close to Charlotte's and Nashville's sizes that could legitimately be called another principal city in the metro in layman's turns; although they have some of the biggest names of their region's economy in their suburbs, they lack singular jobs-dense economic areas of activity in their suburbs that rival Charlotte and Nashville themselves. Charlotte and Nashville are the undisputed top dogs and economic engines in their regions, being contained within one county (any municipal overspill into a neighboring county for Charlotte is negligent). They have simply followed the more common development trajectory as a large central city attracting more and more suburban commuters over time.
The Triangle, by contrast, as we know it today was essentially engineered to become a singular region with the creation of RTP mostly as a separate CBD (with no residents) in southeastern Durham County but with Wake County being the first to embrace it and build the roads to give its residents access to the park. Thus an increasing number of residents in the neighboring county were becoming commuters to another county, resulting in Cary effectively becoming a suburb of RTP in the 60s. None of this represents an organic process of development and growth that tend to produce clearer relationships amongst cities/counties within a region.
That’s all correct to a degree. With the exception that you are still using an MSA definition as your starting block comparative tool despite the fact that it is deficient if the commuting patterns don’t adhere to a predetermined norm that can’t exist in a polycentric region. Raleigh’s region is only comparable to Memphis’ region if you include towns 60 miles away from Memphis and ignore cities that border Raleigh. And not because Holly Springs Mississippi has closer commuting ties to Memphis, simply because the commuting goes in the correct direction. It’s not a feasible base for comparison. Not a fair comparison at any rate. There is an obviously clear relationship between Durham and Wake counties that is obviously clearly stronger than what is found in >90% of MSA’s in the country, and the OBM’s 2003 redefining of core county-centric MSA’s doesn’t change that.
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