I am in downtown Raleigh several times a week even though I do not live there any longer. Don’t put us Chatham residents down. We have the top rated restaurant and hotel in the state, plenty of big SUV’s, goat farmers , all kind of stuff.
Yeah, but Orange county is the REAL place to be and NOT be seen! lol 
Glad you’re still able to enjoy the city during your Walden Pond phase
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It used to be. I grew up in Efland and it’s just felt too built-up ever since they put in the stop light.
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So, I’m playing around with some numbers in comparison to our closest CSA in population: Nashville.
Across the Triangle’s 9 counties, the 2022 estimate shows growth of 36,191 over the adjusted 2021 estimates for a total of 2,190,786. This is 46,178 more than the 2021 CSA estimate of 2,144,608.
Across Nashville’s 16 counties, the 2022 estimate shows growth of 37,949 over the adjusted 2021 estimates for a total of 2,180,071. This is 36,664 more than the 2021 CSA estimate of 2,143,407.
In effect, Nashville’s CSA grew slightly more than the Triangle’s over adjusted 2021 estimates. It appears that while the Triangle’s 2021 CSA was significantly underestimated, Nashville’s was slightly overestimated. The net result of all of this is that Triangle widened the distance of the two CSA’s from 1,201 in 2021 to 10,715 in 2022. When MSA and CSA estimates come out, the 2021 numbers might show the adjustment which will then show that the Triangle’s lead over Nashville slightly shrunk.
At the end of the day, The Triangle’s physically smaller CSA is still more populated than Nashville’s.
(all of the above analysis presumes that my tired Saturday morning eyes didn’t make any mistakes with my spreadsheet work!)
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There was a link. I submit a bunch of pleas don’t think it exists anymore. But the OMB definition didn’t chsngrcmody lf out urban areas, have exceeded the 10,000. So it’s likely we could get merged back.
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OMB doesn’t plan to release MSA boundary updates until at least June 2023, then December 2024. So there won’t be any news on that topic until then. And no, there’s nothing to do about it; they reiterated their standards in 2020 and will continue to apply them.
It’s all based on the 25% commute interchange figure set in 2000, and has never been subject to “local opinion” (which had been used for CSA delineation before 2010).
The decision to split the MSAs after the 2000 Census was never about some nefarious plan by (blue) devilish Durham politicians to pull down Raleigh; it was entirely because OMB increased the commute interchange minimum from 15% to 25% in 2000, to reflect increased cross-county commuting nationwide:
OMB agrees with the Review Committee that raising the commuting percentage required for qualification of outlying counties from the 15 percent minimum of the 1990 standards to 25 percent is appropriate against this background of increased overall inter-county commuting
The “Combined Statistical Area” designation was also introduced after 2000 for counties in that 15-25% range, but it hasn’t quite caught on in the same way.
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Hopefully the urban area criteria will meet it I believe will be retied. The average person beside us our community may not care, and that may be or not a good thing. Most of our urban areas definitely exceed 100,000. So it probably going to happen, we can’t stay split forever. And the Feds know that, transit commuter rail depends on it, so does another professional sports franchise like MLB to come here and also Fortune 500s. It literally a crucial decision.
I hope the Feds also do this under the table. Like this is final there decision to remerge us no questions asked.
Snagged a screenshot. The counties around Wake County mostly higher net domestic migration except for Durham.
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Using blue to show more of an increase hurts my brain.
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This graphic is a bit misleading because it doesn’t tell the entire story. Wake added nearly 7X the number of people of Johnston and 8X that of Franklin. Someone just looking at the graphic might jump to a conclusion that’s fundamentally different from what’s observed on the ground,
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True, but most of it is occurring on the borders such as western Cary, Apex, Wake Forest , Fuquay. Outside of 540.
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Another exciting Friday night at home playing with data.
I looked into the revised 2021 Census estimates from which the 2022 growth estimates were based. As suspected, some Triangle counties were overestimated initially while most were underestimated.
Overestimated Counties in 2021:
Granville: 578
Orange: 274
Vance: 82 (Even though Vance shows +35 from its revised 2021 estimate, its 2022 estimate is still lower than its original 2021 estimate)
Underestimated Counties in 2021:
Durham: -3573
Wake: -2153
Johnston: -809
Franklin: -275
Chatham: -222
Person: -45
Population Change from Census 2020 to Estimate 2022:
Wake: +45,628 (+4%)
Johnston: +18,787 (+8.7%)
Durham: +7,831 (+2.4%)
Franklin: +5,961 (+8.7%)
Chatham: +3,594 (+4.7%)
Orange: +1,770 (+1.2%)
Granville: +902 (+1.5%)
Person: +293 (+0.7%)
Vance: -432 (-1%)
Finally, if Wake sustains its 2% growth per year through the decade, Census 2030 will land the county in the 1.375M range, or about that of current day Bronx Co. NY.
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Yep the MSA merger is gonna happen, and no one can stop me.
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Hey, does anyone know where to find those presentations that used to be floating around that talked about Raleigh’s downtown demographics and data?
I thought it was called “The State of our City” or something. But there was a bunch of slides you could click through and they had data presented with infographics and easy to digest chunks.
Does anyone know where I can find that?
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I think you’re referring to Downtown Raleigh Alliance’s State of Downtown report.
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When is the next time the MSA can be updated/re-combined. 2030?
It’s either 2040 or 2050…
I think that it’s this year actually.