Cool video. I enjoyed in the audio too. Lol.
Raleigh can do better with development. The development is very suspect for a city this size, pop growth, and economy. Looking at the video proves this.
We need better leadership. Raleigh is incredibly far behind peer cities right now unfortunately. Where are the auditors people?
Yeah I was just thinking the same thing. Lots of surface parking lots. No density to speak of. We are making headway. But when you see this video, it throws you off your game. Wow, we have a ways to go, that’s for sure.
Raleigh is an astonishingly young city (especially in terms of not being a tiny, sleepy state capital) whose major growth phase was sparked by the success of a vast suburban office park with another midsize city on the other side of it. It’s doing pretty well in context.
Perspective. It’s all about perspective.
Wish I’d had that “return to home” setting in college.
It wouldn’t take much infill for Raleigh to jump up a couple tiers perceptively. Just frustrating that it has not had the big highrise boom Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte have had. It is steadily getting infill at least.
A few more the height of the Creamery project scattered around downtown would be all it would need IMO.
Auditors of what
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How did you come to such a conclusion for a city of this size. Raleigh will continue to grow rapidly for the rest of our lives. Raleigh needs mature leadership immediately.
I think that you misunderstood my comment. I was replying to Vatnos about perception. My comment was that a few more towers would allow Raleigh to be seen differently (and up a couple of tiers). Again, this was building on what Vatnos said about it not taking much to change perceptions.
I understand now.
Raleigh can definitely benefit from better marketing. The idea of this city’s metro being only 1.5 million in population, destroys the idea of this place being a major metro. There needs to be a major contestation against the census bureau honestly. Marketing is everything!
This is Raleigh/Durham ( pop 2.4 million).
Where did this even come from? Raleigh has done nothing but green-light infill development downtown and it’s more filled in than ever before? We have some parking lots left to go, and a few in the video are already spoken for, as we all know because we track all of this. So really out of left field comment dude.
Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, etc all have more empty parking lots than Raleigh and it’s not close. Everyone here complains about the peripheral development here (north hills, Fenton, etc), but it’s 10x more pronounced in those other sub belt cities, and they continue to sprawl. Have you all been out to these cities that you think are doing more things right than Raleigh? Doesn’t sounds like it. Nashville is an absolute mess, but sure they have a lot of nice tall glass buildings now. Please wake up and stop trashing where you live. We do a lot of things right here and infill is one of them. Funny thing is, development is so obvious to the naked eye, yet you are making a claim to try to say Raleigh isn’t filling in with infill development. It’s remarkable.
Sure, but all cities mentioned, even including Richmond, are already so much more dense that they currently look and feel more like rich, dense, urban cities even with all their existing surface lots. Raleigh is getting there, but still has QUITE a way to go to even reach Richmond status.
In fairness Charlotte also has a ways to go to reach Richmond’s level of density.
Ironically hilarious. I was just about to mention Richmond. Yeah, even Charlotte looks like a joke compared to Richmond.
Each of the cities mentioned here have been major population centers for much longer and were developed as large cities before the advent of car-centered development. Richmond was a big city when people still walked everywhere, so the urban footprint is bigger and more dense. Same for Atlanta and Nashville.
We are bigger now and growing but that is a comparatively recent development. Because I am a loser I checked, and as of the 1950 Census the Raleigh MSA (which did not include Durham or surrounding counties) ranked #125, behind #23 Atlanta, #55 Nashville, #52 Richmond, and #91 Charlotte. Just keep doing what we’re doing.
For a little more context, in 1950:
For me, these numbers are a reminder of the points being made on both sides in the comparisons here. We are starting with a disadvantage, and we are making great strides. But, even with all of the positive developments going on, it also isn’t unreasonable to ask for and expect more for the future of the city. There is no reason our walkable urban grid shouldn’t be better than Richmond’s in the future, given time. Our past is an explanation for why our built environment is the way it is, but it can’t be an excuse going forward.
Unfortunately for VA, It haș NEVER had the annexation laws that were afforded to NC for many, many years. While that has changed now within the last decade or so to not allow for land grabs by municipalities, it did afford Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Clemmons, etc, etc, etc. the ability to grow their municipal populations and services.
Places like Richmond, Wytheville (where I grew up), Roanoke (where I went to college), Blacksburg (where my sister went to college) are virtually unchanged because the land area is the same as it has ever been forever and ever amen.
Just some perspective on the situation. And some forward thinking on the forefathers of those politicians in NC.
Is it right too that the cities are independent of the counties?
Virginia is an unusual place when it comes to urban growth, much of which doesn’t come till after the civil war. Particularly the tidewater developed through the revolution with no cities to speak of, and only a few small towns.
If you take Raleigh’s 1950 city limits, I wonder what the population is today. Maybe one of our resident GIS whiz kids can figure that out?