Here’s where I got the screenshot. It’s a bit hard to zoom in using this tool, though. I’m sure other tools will be released in the coming days.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article253375248.html
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Tract-level density map: https://arcg.is/0eWzy8
524.09 (Avent Ferry area) is clearly Raleigh’s densest tract, with 11,407 people per square mile. (That east-west BRT line should do fine.) Second place (thx John) is downtown. Surprisingly, third place is 523.03 in Trailwood with 8,396, then 537.30 off Lynn Road with 7,755. A few, including Boylan Heights, have around 7,500.
It’s also comfortably more dense than Durham’s densest (Duke East Campus, 10,722) or Chapel Hill’s (UNC South Campus, 10,822).
But Charlotte, of course, has tract 1.03 (Fourth Ward in Uptown) with 28,863 ppsm.
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Census tract 503 is the area bounded by Hillsborough St, St Marys St, Wade Ave and the railroad (that runs between West and Glenwood) (i.e., Glenwood South, “North Boylan”, and “Glenwood-Brooklyn”). This covers the Carriage House Apartments and Glenwood Towers, 222 Glenwood, 510 Glenwood, and Paramount condos, and large apartment complexes such as The Gramercy, St Marys Square, 712 Tucker, and Devon Four25.
I think one of the main things that hurt the “true” downtown census tract 501 (with regard to population density) is that there were a lot of units vacant in the condominium complexes downtown (PNC Plaza, the Quorum Center, and the West Condominiums). I believe this is primarily due to owners having second residences that they were staying at during the pandemic. You can see that the percentage of units occupied downtown is only at 83% whereas tract 503 was at 93%. This percentage is further hindered by the Peace Raleigh Apartments being counted as housing units for census purposes, but not having any tenants as of the census date of April 1.
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Here it is folks; this is what NC’s most densely populated Census Tract looks like. It’s pretty amazing what sort of density you can get when you have a single massive residential tower, several midrise housing projects, and a tiny footprint from which to measure (it’s only .1 square mile). The density is achieved despite still having tons of surface lot parking.
Personally, while objectively dense, it looks rather soulless to me. I’d rather have fewer people and a more engaging experience.
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If that’s all we’re getting, then yeah, it seems really bland and not worth the effort. Like… why build when you have nothing to build for?
But maybe Raleigh can flip that trend around? Density is just one aspect; if a dense-but-economical/soulless building is what it takes to start the trend of denser developments in Charlotte, Raleigh, and everywhere else (especially those with mixed uses so that you can actually lead a fulfilling life in a city neighborhood), then maybe we could see it as a necessary evil.
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I don’t know about you guys, but I think the Soviets really nailed the exciting, urban density. Something to strive for…
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China’s like, “Hold my beer”.
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I will say that I am encouraged by the development in Raleigh that addresses keeping/creating soul while growing, including:
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secondary public place making: courtyard at bloc83, the Hollow @ SH, the promenade @ the proposed Creamery block etc.
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Facade retainment at Dillon and now RUS Bus
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Rehab of existing structures like MSFH, Transfer Co., CAM, etc.
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Insertion of smaller footprint projects like 615Peace, Revisn (though I hate the design)
While some big projects like SH and Seaboard can clearly jump start an area, I’m way more interested in smaller scale development and public amenities/programs that happens around them.
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NC overtook Michigan and closing in on GA! With time not unreasonable to assume NC could be #5 behind CA, TX, FL and NY
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We have passed New Jersey and Michigan since I was a kid (though Georgia passed us in the meantime).
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Eventually, both GA and NC will pass Ohio. Depending on what happens economically, it could be as early as next decade.
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Another interesting note about the new census data, since I just ran into this article: because this dataset applies a new differential privacy filter, tract-level statistics may be (more) misleading (than past years). Comparing the population/density of specific tracts might actually give you very “wrong” data.
If you're wondering WTF differential privacy is, click me!
Differential privacy adds noise in data to protect citizens’ privacy. They play tricks on the data like adding extra/negative numbers of people or changing their demographics in some census tracts -all while keeping the true overall numbers for a state. It means that it’s much harder to reverse-engineer people’s personal information (which has happened on a massive scale, before), but in return, individual tracts may not have the “right” data.
I haven’t had the chance to parse through the census data myself, but I wonder what the confidence intervals on Raleigh/Wake Co. and Charlotte/Mecklenburg Co.'s populations are? I feel like a more probabilistic approach like that is how we should be looking at the data, as opposed to the raw numbers.
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IL too. People flee there in droves
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Assuming the same growth rate as 2010-2020 (which obviously is completely unrealistic), we’d be 6th behind GA and the big 4 by mid 2050s.
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Differential privacy only affects the very finest-grain of Census data products, like block counts or maybe tract-level crosstabs (like race by age) where you’d previously be getting single-digit results. Tracts have ~4000 residents apiece, so any artificial noise at the single-digit level should have canceled out at that level.
“We don’t need more seats at the table, we need a prettier table” sounds fine to those who already have a seat… but not to someone who’s arriving later.
Sure, we’d all love Paris instead (53,754 PPSM), but that’s not the infill housing that’s on offer – because our systems make it impossible and/or cost-prohibitive.
Transportation planners sometimes talk about “the Ds,” which began as Density, Diversity (of land uses), and Design (street connectivity). Density is unlike the others in that it’s necessary; everything else stacks onto it. It doesn’t matter how nicely designed a place is if nobody is around to enjoy it.
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Sorry, I don’t want quantity without quality of place that’s people oriented, and I can assure you that I’m not talking about eliminating seats at the table. I am just being provocative to make a point that we should not settle for a sterile experience that isn’t human centered: something that @GucciLittlePig excellently memed with his Soviet block apartments.
We have already been down this path during the urban renewal years post WW2. That didn’t work out so well.
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Counting college students during a pandemic (April 1, 2020) lockdown impacted Raleigh, Boone, Greenville…. At that date where do they reside. Just unfortunate.
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The glass half full point of view would just say that there’s more opportunity for Raleigh to wow the world this decade! It’s not as if Raleigh didn’t have any growth. It still added more people than any municipality in the Triangle, and it did so while being near the top of the density metric food chain already.
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It depends on where their legal address was at that time. On-campus students never counted in the census which would stem a lot of that bleeding. Off-campus students who would’ve left after COVID hit the fan are another story though.
The Census date being when it was was a godsend for northeastern/midwestern areas that have since lost people as well as California. It hurts areas that have been beneficiaries of that outmigration such as the Triangle.