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.
Lord knows...Wake County is bigger, has many more municipal water/sewer systems with its number of towns...and is a high growth county...so yeah Wake Co will eventually have more population than Mecklenburg, where the density has long been at the border of the county line.
There's no need for a pissing contest back and forth. The Triangle region is a substantial region...as is the Charlotte region.
1.) Charlotte is larger than Raleigh, period. You don’t need mental gymnastics to come to that conclusion. Unless you want to tell me Gastonia or Concord is just as large as Durham. If Raleigh were as big as Charlotte.... then the triangle would need to be much larger than Charlotte metro because you still have this thing called Durham.
2.) larger land area is why Wake is surpassing Meck. That’s not a misconception. That’s fact.
Mecklenburg would dramatically increase in population if it gobbled up just a tiny bit of amoorseville & Concord. It wouldnt even need the actual downtown parts of each, just the populous portion on the border. That’s the problem coming up with fictitious hypotheticals. You start cherry picking which areas to include. I could easily shrink Charlotte’s city limit size, redraw the city limits and make the population increase by 100,000 despite much smaller city limits. That’s pretty much what you’re doing with your hypothetical of a smaller wake
Because of a technicality within how the census bureau defines MSA's.
Because Wake is the largest county in the Triangle it is considered the "core" county....census define's MSAs by proportion of population that commutes to the "core county" for work.
The major employment center in the Triangle is RTP.....not downtown Raleigh. RTP is mostly in Durham County. Thus more residents from Wake County actually commute into Durham County than vice versa; even though Wake County has more than 3x the population of Durham County (320k vs over 1 million)
So yeah that's why; the Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary are two separate MSAS. In an incredibly twist if irony; it's because they are actually MORE interconnected than most multi-nodal metro areas and the "point of connection" is in the smaller of the two largest core counties.
If the majority of RTP were in Wake County.....the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA's would be combined into the (original) Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA; with well over 2 million in population using the weird rule the census now uses.
Last edited by TarHeelNick; 04-23-2019 at 03:34 PM..
Because of a technicality within how the census bureau defines MSA's.
Because Wake is the largest county in the Triangle it is considered the "core" county....census define's MSAs by proportion of population that commutes to the "core county" for work.
The major employment center in the Triangle is RTP.....not downtown Raleigh. RTP is mostly in Durham County. Thus more residents from Wake County actually commute into Durham County than vice versa; even though Wake County has more than 3x the population of Durham County (320k vs over 1 million)
So yeah that's why; the Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary are two separate MSAS. In an incredibly twist if irony; it's because they are actually MORE interconnected than most multi-nodal metro areas and the "point of connection" is in the smaller of the two largest core counties.
If the majority of RTP were in Wake County.....the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA's would be combined into the (original) Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA; with well over 2 million in population using the weird rule the census now uses.
Durham is not a technicality. It’s a city bigger than Winston-Salem & will surpass Greeensboro.
And that’s exactly my point. The triangle as a whole would have to be substantially larger than metro Charlotte for the two cities to be similar in size.
Charlotte metro isn’t multi-nodal: it doesn’t have a Durham. That’s why it’s false to say: Charlotte is bigger only because of huge city limits and it’s false to say wake is growing faster irrespective of county area. That’s just the way it is when it’s a multi-nodal region.
Now, both regions are growing at similar levels I think. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the difference shrink. But I think that growth will be spread amongst Raleigh AND Durham...
And I also don’t feel the need to worry all about all the cities equally because triangle & CLT is where most stuff is happening. Particularly in development.
Durham is not a technicality. It’s a city bigger than Winston-Salem & will surpass Greeensboro.
And that’s exactly my point. The triangle as a whole would have to be substantially larger than metro Charlotte for the two cities to be similar in size.
Charlotte metro isn’t multi-nodal: it doesn’t have a Durham. That’s why it’s false to say: Charlotte is bigger only because of huge city limits and it’s false to say wake is growing faster irrespective of county area. That’s just the way it is when it’s a multi-nodal region.
Now, both regions are growing at similar levels I think. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the difference shrink. But I think that growth will be spread amongst Raleigh AND Durham...
And I also don’t feel the need to worry all about all the cities equally because triangle & CLT is where most stuff is happening. Particularly in development.
Agreed.
I do feel bad that Charlotte and The Triangle are thriving so significantly while much of the rest of the state is left behind in stagnation or rapid decline....but that isn't unique to NC.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,675,688 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by TarHeelNick
Because of a technicality within how the census bureau defines MSA's.
Because Wake is the largest county in the Triangle it is considered the "core" county....census define's MSAs by proportion of population that commutes to the "core county" for work.
The major employment center in the Triangle is RTP.....not downtown Raleigh. RTP is mostly in Durham County. Thus more residents from Wake County actually commute into Durham County than vice versa; even though Wake County has more than 3x the population of Durham County (320k vs over 1 million)
So yeah that's why; the Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary are two separate MSAS. In an incredibly twist if irony; it's because they are actually MORE interconnected than most multi-nodal metro areas and the "point of connection" is in the smaller of the two largest core counties.
If the majority of RTP were in Wake County.....the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA's would be combined into the (original) Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA; with well over 2 million in population using the weird rule the census now uses.
The same thing happened for a similar reason, to Greenville and Spartanburg in upstate SC. That's just the way it goes.
Where I live, the whole town is in the Charlotte urbanized area, but part of the town is in the MSA and part is not. That's the way the cookie crumbles.
Because of a technicality within how the census bureau defines MSA's.
Because Wake is the largest county in the Triangle it is considered the "core" county....census define's MSAs by proportion of population that commutes to the "core county" for work.
The major employment center in the Triangle is RTP.....not downtown Raleigh. RTP is mostly in Durham County. Thus more residents from Wake County actually commute into Durham County than vice versa; even though Wake County has more than 3x the population of Durham County (320k vs over 1 million)
So yeah that's why; the Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary are two separate MSAS. In an incredibly twist if irony; it's because they are actually MORE interconnected than most multi-nodal metro areas and the "point of connection" is in the smaller of the two largest core counties.
If the majority of RTP were in Wake County.....the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA's would be combined into the (original) Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA; with well over 2 million in population using the weird rule the census now uses.
Also, back during the early days of RTP when the region began taking off, the Raleigh/Wake side was more conservative, had a more laissez faire approach to growth and development, and was hesitant in supporting regional transit initiatives whereas the Durham/Chapel Hill side was more liberal, wanted to ensure that infrastructure could support population growth (Orange County long ago established an urban growth boumdary), and was more transit-oriented. Had the entire region been more progressive about transit and infrastructure decades ago, it would probably have a more cohesive feel and would still be one MSA.
The same thing happened for a similar reason, to Greenville and Spartanburg in upstate SC. That's just the way it goes.
Very true. I think the major difference between the two regions is Greer, the shared suburb that contains the BMW plant and the airport which used to be considered primarily a Spartanburg suburb but has experienced a good bit more growth on the Greenville County side over the years, orienting it more towards the west. If there were significant residential growth in and around RTP and RDU, the Triangle would most likely be heading down a similar path.
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.
