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.
Well, actually, just over 20 years: corporate HQ moved from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.
Guess they want the top brass closer to one of their biggest customers. The company's defense division (which included the McDonnell part of McDonnell Douglas and was headquartered in McDonnell's old hometown of St. Louis) had already moved to Arlington in 2017.
Wonder if this doesn't reflect increased competition in the civilian airliner category? Boeing still makes almost all of those in Seattle.
Their explanations for leaving Seattle never made sense to me.
Bingo. End thread here. The ‘Independent Cities” silliness has greatly stunted the growth of Virginia cities. While NC up until recently had a very lax annexation policy. NoVa, thanks the the government influence from DC has saved Virginia from looking more like Alabama or Mississippi with that backwards Independent Cities nonsense. This is very evident by looking at the urban core areas of Richmond and the Hampton Roads cities compared to Raleigh and Charlotte.
Until very recently (like in last 5 years or so) not only was Northern VIrginia more expensive than NC, Richmond and Tidewater were too. Rent and home prices have been cheaper in Raleigh and Charlotte during their boom periods. Now, from what I understand, Charlotte and Raleigh have become much more expensive (especially Raleigh) and rent and home prices are higher than in VA’s 2nd and 3rd metros. Virginia is still the 10th most expensive state for home prices. North Carolina comes in at 22nd (I know that NOVA inflates our numbers but NC has much more expensive beach and mountain resort homes).
To be fair, North Carolina has been more populated than Virginia stretching back to the late 19th Century. This is not a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination. That said, the delta between them did grow from then to now.
As others have mentioned, there's a large collection of reasons why North Carolina grew more than Virginia. While the stories of growth are rightly about Charlotte and the Triangle in more recent decades, the Triad (Greensboro, High Point, & Winston-Salem) and surrounds were a growth center for North Carolina in the early years with its trifecta of manufacturing jobs, Textiles, Tobacco and Furniture, driving growth in the state for decades. As manufacturing waned and jobs were offshored, NC's growth didn't skip a beat because its two new growth centers were in major acceleration mode.
Since the early 20th Century, North Carolina's government made some fundamentally impactful decisions that have since benefitted the state's growth and improvement in life metrics.
In the early 20th Century, NC heavily invested in roads and positioned itself as the good roads state long before the interstate highway system.
As others have mentioned, the establishment of Research Triangle Park near the geographic center of 3 closely clustered major universities was established. What hasn't been said about it was the state's intention to keep its graduates in the state following graduation. Despite having had excellent universities for a poorer state that prioritized state funding of them, NC used to lose its graduates to other states because NC couldn't compete. Today, NC attracts graduates of other states' universities and keeps far more of its graduates in the state.
Consolidation and restructuring of the state's universities from the 1930s-70s also played an important role. To prevent the splitting of funding for programs among multiple institutions, the system divvied up its most impactful programs at its main campuses. For instance, NC State got engineering while UNC got medicine. This way these two closely located universities didn't compete with each other for program funding.
North Carolina municipalities enjoyed liberal annexation laws during the decades when white flight and urban abandonment were common in the post WW2 decades. This helped prevent the decaying of its major cities. The independent city model in VA did the exact opposite.
Ultimately, I think that the consolidation of its school systems at the county level in (I think) all of its major counties has played a huge role in reinforcing more equity in education at the county level in a similar way that annexation better helped its cities fight urban blight.
The Charlotte Business Journal recently pointed out that only one of Wells Fargo's 19 C-suite offices is actually in San Francisco; 12 are in NYC, including the CEO's. The bank's largest employee base is in Charlotte, with about 3X as many as in SF. (It also has 3X as many jobs posted in Charlotte as in SF.)
Chase is also a coast-to-coast bank, with branches in all lower 48 states. Due to a 1994 law, the big three banks can only add branches by opening them rather than acquiring them, since they all have >10% of the nation's bank deposits. Citibank also has branches on both coasts, but hardly any in between.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
Now, however, I also wonder this after reading that article: Was Branch a person, or did the bank's name refer to the type of operation it set up? (BB&T: Branch Banking & Trust Company.)
The name! It was founded by Alpheus Branch in 1872, but didn't open branch banks until after World War 1 and didn't expand beyond Wilson until the 1920s.
But also, looking at the record, I don't think NC changed much. At least relative to the times. We were the 10th largest state in population in 1850. We dropped in the aftermath of the war (but never worse than 16th) and were back at 10th in 1950. We are now 9th. We've certainly adjusted with textiles and banking and research, but demographically we've stayed even-keeled.
Virginia was the 4th biggest state in population in 1850. They dropped as low as 20th for a generation or so, before getting back to 15th in 1950. They are now 12th. I'm assuming most of their wealth was tied into large plantations which obviously went away after the war. But what happened then? Did people just move for jobs? I assume industry never took hold like NC got with textiles. There have been some good multifaceted responses here, and I'm really enjoying the information sharing.
I wonder what we mean by growth and development in this instance besides pure population growth. VA has much higher per capital income than NC.
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.
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.
