Raleigh and Statistical Area Population

I think the City of Raleigh is preparing to expand into east Wake County in a big way in the next year or two. I remember listening to a city council meeting about it. CoR wants to apply city standards now instead of more rural Wake County standards so that future development along the county border/540 expansion is more urban.

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Yes. I believe it will be between Knightdale and Garner and will take advantage of the new NC 540 corridor that will be built as the final phase.

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Would this really be just an expansion of Raleigh’s ETJ for now? It’s interesting how Raleigh’s limits and ETJ poke peninsula of jurisdiction between Garner and Knightdale. I don’t know that I’ve ever considered that.
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=db9adb52f6044cb3b3c78a4439cc714a&extent=-79.1526,35.5928,-78.1385,36.0482

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It includes water if it has been annexed. Also, for Raleigh it includes Durham County. But for Cary and Wake Forest it does not include the Chatham and Franklin County portions. Had to spend a few minutes looking at the data source.

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Thanks. I wonder why they weren’t consistent in their approach that includes Raleigh’s total area, but not other municipalities?

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See if I did this right… This is the numbers back in July 2019

Click on the link and it will take you to it.

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Well in the city limit layer in Imaps (and the source data) Raleigh city limits are included probably because they wanted the data to be included. Cary and Wake Forest either don’t care or at least have not asked to have all limits included.

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@TedF Do you know what the total area of Raleigh was in 2010? The Census site gives land area, but I am not sure if that’s the same number. I just want to understand how much area was annexed into the city over the last 10 years.

I don’t know it but I believe anybody could figure it out through Imaps. They started keeping track of the dates annexations occurred in the City Limit layer and with a little time could probably summarize and acquire the information. But the census says it was 143.77 square miles in 2010.

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148.40 - 143.77 = 4.63 m2
So, Raleigh’s only added 4.63 m2 while it added over 70,000 through 2019. That’s pretty good in my book.

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Maybe this will help. The two lightest greys are Raleigh city limits and current ETJ (ExtraTerritorial Jurisdiction). The darker shade of grey is the SRUSA (Short Range Urban Statistical Area). The darkest shade of grey is the LRUSA (Long Range Urban Statistical Area). This will all be in Raleigh city limits eventually (through annexation).

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Wow! So, Raleigh is going to completely block expansion from either Garner or Knightdale into the area that will grow from the completion of 540. Very, very interesting.
While this might presume years, if not decades to happen, I suspect that it will be quicker when 540 is completed through the area.

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Found this Study that Raleigh is doing for this area:

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From Wikipedia

Durham Area: 111.82 (Land) Pop. Est. 2019: 279,993 Density: 2,503/ sq mi
Cary Area: 58.86 (Land) Population estimate 2019: 170,282: Density: 2,893/sq mi

Cary/Apex/Holly Springs/Garner: Area 113.54 Population estimate 2019: 298,801 Density: 2,632/ sq mi.

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Most of the expansion land is zoned rural residential, and it will do nothing to push Raleigh’s density metric higher, or even add to the population in any significant way. I suspect that most of it won’t be annexed in my lifetime! Frankly, it’s fine with me if it never is annexed.

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Thanks for doing that homework. It’s very interesting to see that a collection of comparable land area Wake burbs are more densely populated than the Triangle’s second largest city. I have known for a while that Cary was more densely populated, but I’ve never considered it as a collection of towns.

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Well zoned rural residential is actually a good thing. It will be easier for developers to amass parcels because little will be built on it already. The zoning will change once Raleigh makes it part of their ETJ. And I suspect land around 540 will probably be higher density. It looks like this final part of 540 will not begin construction until 2029. So completion may be around 12 years. So there will probably be nothing much happening at least till then.

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There’s a lot of wetland in that area, so I suspect that protecting that is going to be paramount in how it’s developed. It could either be larger parcels with horse farms, etc., or larger parcel estate homes. It remains to be seen if folks who want to spend that sort of money want to be in that location. Again, I’m not terribly concerned about it ever being annexed.

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I assume the 0 population Umstead State Park is included within the city limits(?). If so, what would Raleigh’s density be subtracting the State Park from the total square miles of the city?

If it’s in the city limits, it’s part of the metric.
The park is 5599 acres, and there’s 640 acres in a square mile. That’s 8.75 square miles.
If the city is 148.40 square miles today, and if we subtract 8.75 from it, we’re left with 139.65 square miles. If that were the case, and we go by the latest Census estimate that we have from 2019 (474,069), the city would have a density of 3,395 ppl/m2. Alas, that’s not the case, so it’s a moot point.

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