Raleigh and Statistical Area Population

https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2021/06/07/migration-drives-population-growth-in-triangle.html

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I think that this is the last time that I can post in a row.
In any case, population flow maps are now complete and published per the census, and here are some interesting numbers for Wake Co. per the 2020 Census data (since 2010)

Net flow to Wake for some key counties per below:
Durham > Wake +3261
Mecklenburg > Wake +825 (outside of the Charlotte metro, more come to Wake than anywhere else)
Guilford > Wake +520
Johnson > Wake +364 (this one surprised me)
New Hanover > Wake +157
Buncombe > Wake +118
Cumberland > Wake +84

Net flow from Wake for some key counties per below:

Wake > Granville -462 (are there new developments up there or something?)
Wake > Pitt -331 (ECU students maybe?)
Wake > Forsyth -229 (the only major NC county that Wake has a negative net migration with)
Wake > Brunswick -145 (retirees?)

Play more here: U.S. County Migration Patterns

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Intriguing Data and now your multi-post string has ended…

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Thanks for nothing, @NoRaAintAllBad. Now we get another string of @John posts.
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Now you get more :toilet:
grab your :roll_of_toilet_paper:

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ECU students definitely account for the 331 to Pitt county.

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Suffolk NY +129
Nassau NY +71
Westchester NY +267
Middlesex NJ +476
New Haven CT +528
Montgomery MD +481
Fairfax VA +627
(when I last looked at these data in ~2005, Suffolk was the largest out-of-state sending county, it’s now handily beat by DC suburbs)
Johnston NC +364
(very surprised that the +3,740 inbound migration flow exceeded the -3,376 outbound, but then again Raleigh’s urban pull over rural ENC is strong!)
Fulton GA -280

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Wake was also net positive against Travis (Austin) and Davidson (Nashville). Being net positive to those two is winner winner chicken dinner.

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I was doing some (very amateur) research and saw that Wake County is divided into townships. I don’t know if this is anything other than historical divisions of the county, but I did notice the Raleigh township seems to be all of ITB and North Hills (roughly 37.5 sq miles). The population of this area is apparently 140,576 as of 2021, giving ITB a population density of 3,749/sq mile. A little less than Richmond at 3,782/sq mile. Just an interesting fact I found out, and really helps put into perspective how ITB is a decent amount more dense the rest of the city. It seems uptown Charlotte is about 6,500/sq mile according to Wikipedia, but it is also the CBD of the largest city in the state, so that makes sense.

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Downtown Raleigh is already above 6500 ppl/m2. There was someone on CityData Forums that was showing this in a recent thread, and showed that dt Raleigh was actually more densely populated than Uptown Charlotte. The person who was doing the data started with the narrative that Uptown Charlotte was way more densely than downtown Raleigh, but that narrative flipped after all was said and done.

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Would you be able to provide that link? :pray:

I am generally interested in other people thoughts/opinions in regards to population statistics in general. :+1:

Ah! Was wondering that, but couldn’t find anything anywhere. I had to stop looking at city data because of all the raleigh bashing on there.

Let me see if I can find it. There’s a civil war on City-Data between Raleigh and Charlotte in general. That is the place where homers of both cities go after each other.

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Good… I’m glad Raleigh had no friends in NC we are at war with them.

What I see often on C-D forums is Charlotte boosters statistically diminishing Raleigh by picking and choosing data points that push their narrative. It’s not uncommon for Raleigh bashers there to claim that Raleigh is 3 decades behind Charlotte, etc. They also quickly jump to apples vs. oranges comparisons so that they can’t be wrong. I’ve also seen them claim that Charlotte rose from being the 3rd most populated metro in the state since 1950, when in fact they have always been the most populated. I hit them with data often but they nearly always find ways to twist it or present it in a new way, or deflect their way out of the corner they’ve been back into. They are clearly threatened by Raleigh, and they only backhandedly compliment our city in ways that are dismissive or can be perceived as unflattering by the “cool kids”.

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Kind of an extension of what I had been researching, but i found this data of the largest cities in NC for 1950, at the start of the age of suburbanization:

Charlotte (of course), Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Durham were well in front population wise. And I also found this PDF showing growth percentages between the 1940 and 1950 census (as well as other censuses before that). Raleigh had the highest growth, at about 40% between 1940 and 1950, of those 5 cities in this list. I think this just helps me especially when I see Raleigh as being so suburban, and how we lose our grid pretty quickly outside of the core compared to most cities. These other cities on this list were already large and decently urban (by NC standards) by the time the suburban experiment started. That’s why it might seem Raleigh’s urban area and downtown seem fairly small compared to other cities of similar sizes. We weren’t nearly as urban or large by the time suburbanization came around. And I think it’s pretty impressive that we are now the second largest city in the state, and we became that within 40 years of this census.

It’s also amusing to see that Cary only had about 1,100 people in 1950!

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It’s funny as my dad use to tell me that back in the 60s/70s when he played high school sports at Southern Durham High School there was a running joke about playing road games against Cary High. Make sure your vehicles were working as if you broke down in Cary there ain’t nobody around to help you as Cary was nothing but open farmland. It’s hard to believe that would be the case for a stranger driving through present-day Cary with the abundance of strip malls, grocery stores, etc.

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North Carolina cities were modest towns in 1950! Compared to present-day small cities…
Charlotte 134K ≈ Ft Wayne, IN
Durham 71K ≈ Cedar Rapids, IA
Raleigh 66K ≈ Springfield, MO

BTW, Wikipedia is an amazingly thorough source of old population figures. Can’t find the articles, but they were all entered by some very diligent graduate student who decided that would be his hobby.

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In 1950, it was Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, then Raleigh.
Today the order is Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, and Winston-Salem.
Soon it may be Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem. When that happens, it will be a complete reversal of the order of #s 2 thru 5.

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as one commuting example, if these are some of the orangapple discussions, my commute in the early 2000’s in charlotte was from near the hwy 51/providence road insection to griffith road in clt. it was right at 9 miles. at that time it was reasonbly smooth across some collector roads thru meighborhoods east to west and not to unpleasant by car…google now says it like a 25-minute drive. i looked in to bussing when i got there but it added about an extra 40 minutes in the morning…not a time i wanted to spend. my job was however was delivery across the charlotte region once i got to the office on griffith. i always found the triangle much more pleasant in that regard.