Ought to, but probably won’t… 
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Interesting projections for 2020 by the city. Official census numbers aren’t due until December but this is the highest I’ve seen so far. Projections by most other sources have Raleigh between 480k and 500k. However, doesn’t look like a lot of them took into account the growth trends in 2019 and 2020. Most of those projections are based on growth trends in 2018 and earlier. Interesting regardless. For now, i’d average out the max and min and say 495k is probably closest to the actual number.
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Did we annex Knightdale or something? How are they projecting an area size that big?
This looks outdated IMO. Why such a big gap between 2012 and 2020? My bet is that this was projection from 2013 or so. Seems like the growth rate for Raleigh has slowed a little since then, hence the estimated 475k from 2019.
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Wake County’s internal estimate of Raleigh’s population for January of this year was 499,983.
I don’t know about the accuracy of the internal numbers last time around, but the Census estimates were inflated compared to the actual 2010 numbers. The countdown to Wake passing Mecklenburg was put on pause for almost a decade once the official numbers were released.
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Wake County bases their estimates on what has been built each year and uses the housing unit vacancies and average persons per household that were used in the 2010 Census to extrapolate the estimated population. Has really nothing to due with the inflated estimates made in the interim.
I’ve seen that one before, but Raleigh is nowhere near 211 square miles. That level of annexation didn’t happen in accordance with that projection.
That’s a very interesting projection since it’s so much higher than the 2019 Census estimate. I’d love for Wake’s projection to be correct, but I am not holding my breath for Census confirmation come next Spring.
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Particularly since participation in the census looks pretty low across the country. Here in Alabama they are saying on an est. 62% of folks responded. I trust everyone on this board, being good civic minded folks that you are, filled out there census questionnaire!!
I know they will do some statistical correction, but it will be interested to see how the counts come out.
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I filled mine out online on March 31st.
I don’t know what secret sauce will be used to make up for non-participantion, but rest assured that 38% of the folks in Alabama aren’t just going to statistically disappear. That said, I wouldn’t doubt that there are some that would like to make undocumented Hispanic immigrants statistically disappear for political reasons.
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Imagine if the Triangle was as large as one of these emerging giga-cities? Talk about multi-core metros!
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Culturally, I can imagine the Triangle eventually becoming a part of a megaregion like New England alongside DC, Richmond, Charlotte, and Atlanta, since we’re all Southern while being pretty imaginative instead of being stagnant, backwards hillbillies. Greensboro, Greenville (SC), and Birmingham might get there in the future, too, if they can get themselves on the world’s radar.
Do you think it would be better if we looked at ourselves in this “Atlantic Corridor” context and tried to act like it (like planning food and water, economic policies, transit etc. as a region)? Or is it smarter to just focus on the Triangle being the best it can be, and just let a megaregion eventually come to life?
Were more like a metroplex like Dallas-Fort Worth. Or the Research-Plex or the Capital-Plex. Something like that I think we be a great megacity, if Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill metro are combined again then it’s really possible!!!
I think the closest we’ll have for now is a North Carolina belt from Charlotte through Greensboro to Raleigh. We’re closer to DC than Atlanta, but there’s nothing much between us and Richmond.
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The Piedmont Crescent is certainly the closest thing that we have, and it will undoubtedly “fill in” over the coming decades. It’s starting to feel more connected from Raleigh to Winston, even though you are driving through 5 different MSAs. When you drive from Winston to Charlotte, you are only going throuigh 2 MSAs. If you peel off toward Charlotte from Greensboro, you go through 3.
It’s certainly easy to imagine consolidation of MSAs in the Triangle to Triad corridor, resulting in just 2, with the entire trip from Raleigh to Charlotte traveling through only 3 MSAs.
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Here’s a great visual map that shows the gap between Raleigh and Richmond. In fact, it shows how Richmond exists fairly isolated compared to those in NC.
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Random thoughts:
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Regions are more likely to coalesce when (a) they’re growing quickly, and (b) their favored paths of growth intersect. This happened to occur as Raleigh sprawled north & west, and Durham sprawled south; these were the favored quarters even before RTP became the job center.
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I once remember a planning-school class where a guest lecturer mentioned that state governments have a role in setting metro boundaries, specifically pointing to the line between Howard (Baltimore MSA) and Montgomery (Washington MSA) counties in Maryland. I’ve never found any evidence for this claim, though.
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Looked up the county commute flows from 2017 LEHD:
Durham County workers: 32.4% live in Wake, 30.4% in Durham, 7.3% Orange
Wake County workers: 55.9% live in Wake, 5.8% in Durham, 5.8% in Johnston, 3.0% Mecklenburg (!!!), 2.1% Franklin
Orange County workers: 27.3% live in Orange, 16.8% in Durham, 14.4% in Wake, 10.1% in Alamance, 4.8% in Chatham -
Surprised at how much Alamance is becoming a bedroom community for Orange County (more workers than Chatham!), to the point where PART runs buses into Chapel Hill. Ironically, it’s Chapel Hill’s no-growth attitudes that will result in any future Triangle-Triad consolidation.
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And because this is bugging me too much, I looked up OMB’s definitions.
Apparently, there was a “local opinion” role prior to 2010, in edge cases: “OMB accepts the Review Committee’s recommendation to eliminate the use of local opinion in the qualification of combinations with employment interchange measures between 15 and 25.”
EIM is “the sum of the percentage of workers living in the smaller entity who work in the larger entity and the percentage of employment in the smaller entity that is accounted for by workers who reside in the larger entity.”
For Durham as smaller entity, the EIM is well over 25:
% of workers living in Durham who work in Wake: 24.6%
% of employment in Durham accounted for by workers residing in Wake: 32.4%
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A lot of orange county workers live in Mebane which is mostly in alamance county.
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