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Eh... I think Raleigh and Richmond, VA are most similar on paper to be honest...
I was thinking about including Richmond in the poll, but then I opted against it. They're similar and dissimilar at the same time. On one hand, both are southern state capitals, similar in size, and located on the border (Fall Line) between the Piedmont and Coastal Plain/Tidewater in their respective states. On the other hand, Raleigh is more of a suburban "New South" city, while Richmond is older, more urban, and has a slight industrial feel that Raleigh lacks. They feel different to an extent, even though they're less than three hours apart.
If I could take a little from here and little from there, I'd probably parse it as follows:
From a structural/mission perspective, I'd say Austin since it's a state capital, home to a large major state university, and has a tech based workforce like Raleigh. Atlanta fits that mold too, but its size isn't as comparable.
From a cultural perspective, the two North Carolina cities will undoubtedly be the closest. Atlanta would be my next pick after that.
From a more recent growth perspective, Raleigh slides in with Charlotte, Austin, and Nashville.
From a suburban perspective, Raleigh's burbs feel a lot like the earlier days of NOVA.
From a multi-core metro perspective, it's easily more like Greensboro.
From an education perspective, I'd probably go with NOVA or Austin.
The challenge with Raleigh is that there's a piece of it that's more akin to rapidly growing metros of Florida and the Southwest in that they also seemingly emerged from nowhere. Raleigh was a spec of a place in the 50s and 60s, and was smaller than all of the other core cities on the list. It didn't play second fiddle in NC until the last 35 years or so, and the Triangle was smaller than the Triad. That dynamic flipped in the last few decades and the Triangle keeps putting distance on the Triad.
I think it's hard to pin down the similarities, and it's easy to for people to say "yeah but" anytime someone tries to compare it to other places.
Austin and Nashville have a tourism/entertainment sector that Raleigh doesn't have. Charlotte doesn't have a large university presence. Greensboro at this point is about to surpassed by Durham in population numbers. Columbia has a large university and is the state capital and not much else to compare. I haven't been to Reston but if we use NOVA, I guess I can see the comparisons.
To me, and I know the OP said leave out Durham, but Columbus is probably the closest thing if you were to combine Raleigh and Durham. But getting away from that.....
-NHL franchise
-State Capital
-High growth
-Large university
-Tech sector
-Underrated music scene (IMO)
-Abundance of suburbs (Dublin is very similar to Cary IMO)
I don't think Nashville is really a good comparison in terms of as a city and city center Nashville Feels alot larger.....and this I think is in part due to the Multi Nodal way the area is with multiple large areas Durham,Cary, Chapel Hill Etc...As a Metro Area its comparable to Nashville,Charlotte etc though.....
As was mentioned, Columbus, Ohio is probably the most similar. State capital, large university presence (Ohio State and North Carolina State), white collar, NHL hockey team, CSA is similar in size, etc. The biggest differences are that Raleigh is growing much faster (MSA growth was 25% this past decade as compared to 12% for Columbus) and Raleigh does not have the same built-up older urban environment that Columbus has (Columbus had a population of 306,000 in 1940 while Raleigh had 46,000 that same year).
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