Which I equate with Western Johnston County…(Cleveland School Crossing?)
I-40 & NC42…???
Here’s an interesting tidbit I found while randomly scrolling through wikipedia: Davidson county, TN, where Nashville is, reached a population of 100,000 in 1890 where Wake county only reached it in 1940. Since then, we have grown over 10 x larger from that point on nearing 1,100,000 as of 2018. Davidson county TN has only grown by 6x as of 2018 reaching about 625,000. This means we are creaming Nashville in terms of population growth.
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Nashville has been the laggard in population growth between the trio of Southern capital boomtowns. But Nashville has the cool factor along with Austin that Raleigh just doesn’t seem to have.
I guess it should also be noted that Nashville is interchangeable with Davidson at this point, so to most people all they see is that Nashville is at 600,000 and Raleigh is at less than 500,000. Or better yet, that Nashville MSA is over 2 million and Raleigh’s at less than 1.4 million. Oh well.
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Don’t forget that Nashville also has the benefit of having over 2.5X the land area associated with its MSA than Raleigh’s. The Nashville MSA covers a huge swath of central TN that’s even larger than the Triangle’s CSA. In the end, there are simply more people in the Triangle’s smaller land area than in greater Nashville. Nashville’s greater metro area covers 14 counties. Chew on that a while.
Then there’s the Nashville city size. At over 669,000 people, Nashville accomplishes that in a municipal land area that’s more than triple the size of Raleigh’s.
It’s amazing how stats based on invisible lines actually diminish the size of Raleigh and the Triangle.
Go play here if you are statistic’s junky like me…
https://www.citypopulation.de/en/usa/combmetro/
You can go to MSA as well and visually see on the map how hampered Raleigh is compared to other fast growing boom towns. Even Durham’s MSA is physically larger!
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Having lived in Raleigh all my life, i can definitely say the city feels bigger, both in terms of population and things to do than it used to. I’ve been to Nashville and it doesn’t feel bigger than Raleigh at all, yet with a much higher crime rate and not to mention rampant corruption. Raleigh is probably one of the safer boom towns for it’s size, which is pretty remarkable if you think about it.
Also, Raleigh is producing more actors, artists, and entertainers than ever before, getting routine national attention, so i think the cool factor is certainly there. I remember when i was in school alot of my classmates wanted to leave because raleigh was “lame” but now alot of millenials are sticking around or coming back. I’m interested to see the official numbers for the 2020 census to see if the city outpaces projections or not. current projections are between 480k-490k
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I love the enthusiasm of your post!
That said, I too am interested to see the Census numbers for 2020. The estimate for 2018 is still under 470,000. I would be more than delighted to see the 2020 number above 490K, but I’m not holding my breath. Once Raleigh crosses 500,000, I think it takes Raleigh to the next level of visibility. That’s going to happen before 2025, though I’d like to see it by 2022.
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Some stats provided by Wake County…
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Time to annex the annexers!
Kidding of course. If any 'burb was to still be annexed, I’d figure Knightdale would the most likely. Garner would make even more sense as it’s closer to DTR but it’s larger and has had an identity for a long time. Probably no political will to do either one.
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I think it would be Cary annexing Morrisville because Cary pretty much completely surrounds Morrisville.
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Annex Cary!.. Just kidding
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411 acres is just .64 square miles. Annexation has slowed to a trickle.
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Am I correct in saying that if memory serves, the General Assembly has intentionally made it harder for cities to annex? Possible power play or control of power??? 
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Raleigh has had 22 annexations so far in 2019. Not sure how much acreage that it is though. Definitely has slowed down since the big days back about 10 or more years ago.
Yes. Cities can no longer forcibly annex. But 99% of all annexations in Wake County were voluntary annexations anyway.
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Where’s the data that shows that 99% of former annexations were voluntary? I will agree that a ton of annexation in Raleigh’s past was probably virgin forest or farm land that was converted to subdivisions by developers and annexed in conjunction with the development. However, I am not sure that I’d call that 99% without seeing the data.
@RobertSanderlin Regarding the state government, it’s true that it’s now impossible for a city to force annexation now in NC. Some would call it an affront to cities to limit their power and influence since the Republican take over. Others would call it protecting peoples’ property rights. Frankly, I just think that it has a lot to do with taxes. Since the maratorium on annexation at will, Raleigh’s population density has quickly ascended, creating more tax base per acre. In the end, and if played correctly by the city, it can be beneficial as they grow tax base faster than infrastructure. Also if played correctly, they can find a way to “fee” non-residents to death for using city resources that they don’t pay for through city property taxes.
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All annexations in Wake County for the past 17 plus years come across my desk. In my memory Raleigh was the only municipality to do forcible annexations and that was maybe one or two every year or so. It was a pretty rare occurrence. Wake County routinely has over 100 annexations every year (111 so far this year). So that is my anecdotal evidence…
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I understand that, but hasn’t the majority of your tenure been under the state law that prevents forcible annexation? If it hasn’t been the majority of your tenure yet, I suspect that it soon will be.
I’m talking about a longer period of time inclusive of the 60s, 70s, 80s, & 90s when the majority of the Raleigh of today was assembled.
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Nice try… but the law was changed in 2014 only 5 years ago. Read the article below. It provides some insight.
Nearly six years ago.
My point is that your 17+ years of experience don’t represent what happened in the city in the booming decades before you were counting annexations. This all can’t be voluntary annexation. If that were the case, there wouldn’t have been a political motivation to create a law to stop something that wasn’t really happening.
Clearly since 2000, the city and its burbs were closing in on each other and making annexations more limited in opportunity.
I’d also love to see the list of parcels that were entangled in annexation lawsuits in the run-up to 2014. If they do exist, I suspect that there’s also a direct line to donations to Republican lawmakers who changed the annexation law. In the end, Republicans in the state government are not friendly to the state’s cities, despite those cities generating more than their fair share of the state’s revenues. The power needle was moved purposely away from cities.
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