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I was also last in Raleigh in 2019. I loved the vibe Raleigh has going on feeling "livably smaller" yet growing relatively fast.
I think the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area is an amazing location for families. High-paying jobs are abundant, and cost of living is not outrageous (yet) and quality of life is high with lots to do, and a 4 season climate with an extremely mild winter.
Not to mention the incredible North Carolina beaches are an hour-ish away.
One thing Raleigh is experiencing is definite growing pains. The downtown to me still feels small-ish in its layout and vibe. I know it will be growing very quickly and developing more this decade. But when I was there, it felt like a city that had a comfortable population of 150k or so, for decades, and practically overnight found itself as this metro area of 1.4 million.
The Raleigh downtown to me is currently on par with a city like Knoxville, TN or Tucson, AZ. It has a ways to go to catch up with cities like Birmingham or Memphis. But, I'm confident it will in the next decade, due to the surging overall growth in the region and Raleigh itself.
All-in-all, Raleigh is a super exciting city to watch develop and grow.
It's interesting to get an outsider's perspective on what's happening in Raleigh, and I'd tend to agree on many of your comments. From a historical/context perspective, it's really important to understand where Raleigh was 100, even 60 years ago. At the time, and in the pecking order of Southern cities, Raleigh was not even on the radar of legacy manufacturing cities like Birmingham, or river cities like Memphis or Louisville. To your point, Knoxville was a larger city and metro area. Heck, even within North Carolina itself, The totality of the Triangle was still smaller than the Triad to its near west in 2000. Up until the mid 20th Century, Raleigh proper was just a city of 66,000 in a county of 136,000. FWIW, today the city is nearing a half million in a county of 1.13M. For even more perspective, Macon GA was larger than Raleigh in 1950.
Like most other Sunbelt post WW2 boomtowns, Raleigh saw its investment mainly around its periphery and between the cities of Raleigh and Durham. Led by the development of RTP, Cary exploded onto the scene from what was a really tiny town to now the 7th most populated city in the state. All the while, the growth for decades happened around a largely intact city from 1950 that served as the state capital and a college town. The locals refer to this area as ITB or Inside the Beltline. While there has always has been a cachet about ITB, serious investment and focus there didn't start happening until decades after RTP's conception. Primarily since the turn of this century, the city has looked inward to its core more and more often, and while its rebirth has been hampered first by the dotcom crash, then the financial meltdown of 2008, and to a certain extent the pandemic, it's been making huge strides in leveraging what it means to be the core of one of the fastest growing areas of the country.
What's been fascinating to watch is how Raleigh is transforming its core in an age when people want to be back in city centers while maintaining its periphery historic single family neighborhoods from the late 1800s and early 1900s that are walkable to downtown itself, and while not having a freeway plow through its center like happened to many other cities in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The totality of this context sets up Raleigh in a really interesting dynamic and tension for growth and development. The squeeze of its core has forced development into a smaller area where large projects and increased population have an arguably greater impact overall than if they were scattered across a larger core footprint.
The current city council was swept into power in 2019 in a backlash to what was being perceived as the "council of no", that moved like molasses in an ice storm and prioritized NIMBYism over downtown growth. This current council has been on tear approving rezonings in the core one after other, likely setting up development for the next two decades regardless of what happens next election cycle to them. Raleigh's going to be really interesting to watch over the next decade.
It's interesting to get an outsider's perspective on what's happening in Raleigh, and I'd tend to agree on many of your comments. From a historical/context perspective, it's really important to understand where Raleigh was 100, even 60 years ago. At the time, and in the pecking order of Southern cities, Raleigh was not even on the radar of legacy manufacturing cities like Birmingham, or river cities like Memphis or Louisville. To your point, Knoxville was a larger city and metro area. Heck, even within North Carolina itself, The totality of the Triangle was still smaller than the Triad to its near west in 2000. Up until the mid 20th Century, Raleigh proper was just a city of 66,000 in a county of 136,000. FWIW, today the city is nearing a half million in a county of 1.13M. For even more perspective, Macon GA was larger than Raleigh in 1950.
Like most other Sunbelt post WW2 boomtowns, Raleigh saw its investment mainly around its periphery and between the cities of Raleigh and Durham. Led by the development of RTP, Cary exploded onto the scene from what was a really tiny town to now the 7th most populated city in the state. All the while, the growth for decades happened around a largely intact city from 1950 that served as the state capital and a college town. The locals refer to this area as ITB or Inside the Beltline. While there has always has been a cachet about ITB, serious investment and focus there didn't start happening until decades after RTP's conception. Primarily since the turn of this century, the city has looked inward to its core more and more often, and while its rebirth has been hampered first by the dotcom crash, then the financial meltdown of 2008, and to a certain extent the pandemic, it's been making huge strides in leveraging what it means to be the core of one of the fastest growing areas of the country.
What's been fascinating to watch is how Raleigh is transforming its core in an age when people want to be back in city centers while maintaining its periphery historic single family neighborhoods from the late 1800s and early 1900s that are walkable to downtown itself, and while not having a freeway plow through its center like happened to many other cities in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The totality of this context sets up Raleigh in a really interesting dynamic and tension for growth and development. The squeeze of its core has forced development into a smaller area where large projects and increased population have an arguably greater impact overall than if they were scattered across a larger core footprint.
The current city council was swept into power in 2019 in a backlash to what was being perceived as the "council of no", that moved like molasses in an ice storm and prioritized NIMBYism over downtown growth. This current council has been on tear approving rezonings in the core one after other, likely setting up development for the next two decades regardless of what happens next election cycle to them. Raleigh's going to be really interesting to watch over the next decade.
The Dillon kind of touched off the current building trend downtown. Now Glenwood South is racing along Hillsborough St. to fill in the gap with the Warehouse district.
The Dillon kind of touched off the current building trend downtown. Now Glenwood South is racing along Hillsborough St. to fill in the gap with the Warehouse district.
I don't know that I'd credit The Dillon alone, but it was a major component as several impactful developments came together in one neighborhood. This included Raleigh's new Union Station and Morgan St. Food Hall. Then, immediately to NW, Bloc83 continues development with a 3rd tower announced to complement the two recently built there + the new hotel. Another half mile to the north, the multiphase Smoky Hollow development is transforming the Glenwood South neighborhood. Then, just another half mile to the east, a D.C. developer is doing the same at Seaboard Station. This is the daisy-chain sort of impactful development that downtown Raleigh is seeing at the moment.
The Warehouse District is being remade in the image of the Dillon. But if nothing else, I do think there was a psychological barrier lifted once the most successful developer in the city decided to stop playing in his North Hills kingdom long enough to build downtown. Smoky Hollow followed.
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