Anaconda, MT. I knew that not because I looked at the list but because I had a placemat with a map of the US and cities on it.
Raleigh Durham CSA 2019: 2,079,687
+35,961
We’ve put more distance on our nearest lagging CSA competitor: Nashville. We are now over 17,000 people larger than they are. We passed them in 2016 and have put distance between us and them ever since.
Also, this year we passed Milwaukee in the CSA category. We were minus 3k last year and are now +23,000 on them.
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Of all the MSAs, Raleigh-Cary had the 13th highest absolute number gain, and the 11th fastest growth rate.
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Durham-Chapel Hill needs to be put back in the Raleigh-Cary MSA, to become Raleigh-Durham MSA everybody knows us as this from Airport Designation, To MLS Bid, to economic business expansion, To Future MLB Bid, to The Music Industry, and Media/TV all’s stations have there call letters as this Raleigh-Durham. If we do this we will be the largest undisputed metro area this concept has worked with Dallas-Fort Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul let’s stop the city division cause there not. And let get this started.
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Yea, but just try convincing Durham…you’ll need either a better argument or offer to call it the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel-Hill metro area…Lol 
I finally opened that link. That map only shows Wake, Johnston and Franklin Counties. That’s the right MSA boundary, and it’s actually quite small compared to other fast growing MSAs in the Southeast. For example, Nashville and Charlotte have MSAs that are nearly 3x the size of Raleigh-Cary.
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I have participated in City-Data Forums since before Obama was president, and one thing that I’ve noticed is that, in national forums, folks from Durham and Chapel Hill tend to talk about themselves only, while folks from Raleigh tend to talk about the Triangle as a whole. It’s VERY rare to see folks posting from Chapel Hill to ever include Raleigh in their narrative. It’s quite telling that they aren’t interested in regionalism, only in the money that flows there way to DBAP, DPAC, and other resources that they have in their MSA.
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Those artsy lil’ enclaves have a hard time embracing there’s cool things in the (big) capital city…
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I know people like to dunk on Charlotte, but Wake county is also 60% larger than Meck by land area, at 835 vs 525 sq mi. Not that either of us are particularly dense, but we’d need to be up to ~1.75m to have comparable density.
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We know this folks from Charlotte USA in North Carolina’s (NOW) second most populous county Mecklenburg County makes this fact well known about Wake County being larger in land area but hey Mr.Mitch thanks again for reminding us yet again Lol.
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Most of Wake’s communities are denser than Charlotte, but as a county Mecklenburg is denser.
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Isn’t Raleigh city limits denser than Charlotte city limits too? People forget that all those tall buildings in downtown Charlotte only a few are residential. Most people will live in single family houses, townhomes, or apartment complexes not much taller than we get here in Raleigh.
Though I hope we get more information about Smoky Hollow 3! I would be so sad if The Walter is taller.
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I’m just making sure we don’t go gettin above our raisin’ over here.
The fun part of this for me is that Charlotte touts its stats all the time based on bloated land areas, but they are quick to point out bloating when it’s not their own.
Charlotte’s city limits are bloated
Charlotte’s MSA is bloated
Even Charlotte’s CSA is bloated when compared to the Triangle’s. Fun fact: the Triangle’s CSA is slightly more densely populated.
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Let’s look at some statistics . . .
All density estimates are from the Census Bureau’s QuickFacts tool, and use 2010 data. Municipalities in bold are located in Wake County.
• Raleigh (2,826 (people/sq.mi.)
• Cary (2,488)
• Charlotte (2,457)
• Apex (2,438)
• Morrisville (2,250)
• Cornelius (2,058)
• Wake Forest (1,995)
• Davidson (1,903)
• Knightdale (1,837)
• Garner (1,746)
Mecklenburg County (1,756)
• Holly Springs (1,643)
• Matthews (1,590)
• Fuquay-Varina (1,484)
• Pineville (1,129)
• Wendell (1,123)
• Huntersville (1,081)
Wake County (1,079)
• Zebulon (1,071)
• Rolesville (962)
• Mint Hill (950)
These two towns are mostly located in Union County, but a small portion of each extends into Mecklenburg:
• Stallings (1,749)
• Weddington (542)
These cities and towns are located in other counties but small portions extend into Wake:
• Durham (2,127)
• Angier (1,496)
It interesting to see that, as @JeepCSC noted, Wake County is less dense, but has denser (and more—12 vs 7) communities than Mecklenburg. Of course, all this data is nearly a decade old, so we will see how it changes once 2020 data is published.
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These stats are now significantly off for many of these communities. Raleigh is well over 3000 ppl/m2 and towns like Apex, Morrisville and Cary have also ramped up their densities. Likewise, Charlotte’s density has increased, but it still falls short of Raleigh’s, and might still be lower than some of Raleigh’s burbs.
The big shocker is how less dense Durham is than Raleigh. It too has increased, but it still falls way short of Raleigh.
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I think using 2018 stats, it’s
Morrisville
Raleigh
Wake Forest
Cary
Apex
Charlotte
It’s likely Knightdale passed Charlotte in density last year but it will take a few months to know for sure. Charlotte has the densest area in the state with uptown. But it is not a dense city in the main. Conversely Wake has some of the densest cities/towns in the state, but it overall isn’t a dense county. Both have their flab, both of have their density. Density and how these suburban areas handle it, will be the name of the game over the next decade or so.
Wake County probably will never be particularly dense due to large watershed protection areas of Falls Lake, Swift Creek, Little River, and to include the Harris Lake and part of Jordan Lake areas too. Not to mention RDU and Umstead.
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Thanks for saving me the time to pull those reasons together! They’ve been on my mind but I didn’t get around to it. 
That said, Wake is getting denser. It’s already denser than Durham Co., and I think that a lot of people might presume that Durham is denser for the same reason why Mecklenburg is denser.
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A bit off topic, but I’ve noticed Raleigh is ranked 41st in population and gradually climbing. I also see that Durham is growing a little faster than Greensboro and should become the state’s third largest in just a few years.