Wait, the “Charlotte USA” is a self-made label. It was their slogan circa 2010 I think.
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Tariffs crush IPO market for Triangle firms. Both Pendo and SAS have put off plans for a 2025 IPO.
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2025/04/07/sas-pendo-ipo-tariffs-market-turmoil-trump.html
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Black & White is being acquired:
Probably my favorite coffee in town, sad to see them being sold to private equity.
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I don’t think that we are great again. 
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Little irrelevant question but why doesn’t Raleigh itself offer incentives. The county and state do it for companies to relocate here why not Raleigh itself?
they do. I am pretty sure they just did for the Ralliant (sp?) project. I beleive you can check the council agenda from ~2 weeks ago to confirm.
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To be fair, a number of years ago, there was an extensive debate amongst Charlatans as to whether or not they were a world class city. I remember reading about it. That debate did not originate in Raleigh or anywhere else. Of course it was widely mocked; if you have to ask, you probably aren’t a world class city.
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World class city is a high bar. I think the US only has a handfull.
NY, Chicago, Boston, LA, Miami off the top.
Next tier maybe Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, Denver others…
All these are up for debate obviously. But Charlotte doesn’t even sniff the list.
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Washington and San Francisco are in the top tier conversation if Boston is. Dallas and Houston are business titans, definitely make the second tier if Atlanta also is. Vegas and Orlando are obviously their own thing (and very much not my cup of tea), but they’re the best in the world at what it they do.
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Yeah, I’m sure I missed a bunch (DC also). Wasn’t trying to make a comprehensive list. Just wanted to point out that Charlotte is not even in the conversation.
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Raleigh can be a tech titan if we lure more HQs not to just RTP, but downtown Raleigh. Make downtown a urban hub, with more bikes lanes and invest in a better bus system we’re not ready for trains. Pay developers or give them tax incentives to build development with companies and affordable housing.
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I dont care if Charlotte thinks its world class or not or Raleigh wants to be. It is simply not relevant. Or what city has more billionaires as most people in that bracket have multiple homes.
Here is some real economic news for Raleigh and what areas in advanced industries the city and region have. Basically the Triangle region has large quantities and concentrations of such jobs which is a good thing.
https://raleigh-wake.org/blog/exploring-raleighs-economic-growth-a-deep-dive-into-advanced-industries
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For those that like to geek out on this stuff, there’s an authoritative list of “Global Cities” published annually by an established research institute. You can look up the methodology, but it’s basically a measure of how much each city contributes to global economic interconnectedness.
Charlotte makes the cut, but just barely, on the bottom rung of the lowest tier (Gamma - desgination).
Don’t shoot the messenger, but Raleigh didn’t qualify for Global City status in 2024. But we get the consolation prize-- High Sufficiency: “cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be overly dependent on world cities”. Sure. On the positive side, only 5 cities in the Southeast rank higher – Charlotte (Gamma -), Tampa and Nashville (both Gamma), Atlanta and Miami (both Beta +). So we’re within spitting range of a very exclusive list.
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To include Texas and Missouri, Houston is Alpha-, Dallas is Beta+, Austin is Gamma+, and St. Louis is Gamma-
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Isn’t Texas considered Southwest? Or maybe just its own thing? Birmingham, Jacksonsville Louisville, Memphis, Orlando and Richmond are all Southeast-ish but show up in the bottom subtier (“Sufficiency”) – a step below Raleigh.
Earlier publications used to separate Raleigh & Durham (I believe Durham “ranked” higher than Raleigh at the first release). Not sure if that is still the case here, but wouldn’t surprise me. This rating tends to favor cities with multiple economic industries, as well as their interconnectedness with the global economy. This explains why somewhere like Perth rates so high – it’s Australia’s 4th largest city and only major city on the west coast, but that west coast is powerfully connected to Australia’s natural resources and the SE Asia port network. Or like Balkan capital cities like Zagreb, Belgrade, and Bucharest where their relative size and proximity between Russia and Western Europe play key trading roles. Or why there are a ton of Chinese cities that are ports.
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Do we know that Durham is included with Raleigh here?
The rankings are based on urbanized area, and Raleigh and Durham actually have separate urban areas at this point, just like how we have separate MSAs.
I was looking this very topic on the CityData forum as well, and it goes back to previous years’ rankings. It looks like Raleigh moved up a notch recently from sufficiency to high sufficiency. At the same time, Nashville moved up 2 notches. I’m not sure how they moved up 2, and us only 1, if Durham was included with Raleigh.
however the globalists define a golbal city…i kinda get it? in 83 glaxo et al were in rtp and zebulon? ibm had been here well before? Dreamscape filmed in part in RTP?
You have to buy their book to see the full methodology, which I don’t feel like doing, but from what I can gather, ranking is a function of both the city’s global influence and the size of the “regional configuration” it commands. Which leads me to think Durham is collapsed into Raleigh.
Plus, I don’t see any city pairs given separate treatment. For example Fort Worth is home to multiple Fortune 500s and an important city in its own right but nowhere on the list.
Re: Perth, not totally clear how much cargo throughput matters. If it did Louisville’s and Cincinnati’s standing would be inflated as they host global sorting hubs for UPS and Amazon respectively, even though both companies are headquartered elsewhere.
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