Wilmington is on absolute fire as well. The rest of the coastal counties also do well, be it on a percentage basis.
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Without cheating, Raleigh will likely hit 500,000 in the next few years. And if we are going to cheat, why not take Cary and push 700K? 
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Just for funsies:
Several states could definitely be said to have multiple growth centers, kinda sorta, dependingâŚ
So, here are some states with some of their top 4 metro areasâ growth since 2020:
Our top 5:
NC: Charlotte +4.8; RTP +5.5; Triad +1.8; Asheville +1.8; Wilmington +10
For sure SC, Florida, and Texas all count:
SC: GSP +5.3; Columbia +3.3; Charleston +5.9; Charlotte +6.9; Myrtle Beach +12.9
Florida: Miami-Ft Lauderdale-WPB +0.8; Tampa-St Pete +5.2; Orlando +5.9; Jacksonville +6.3; Sarasota-Bradenton +9 (If you combine Ft Myers and Naples, AS YOU SHOULD, that would be #5 instead: +8.9)
Texas: DFW +6; Houston +5; San Antonio +5.5; Austin +8.2; McAllen +3
Then we have some other contenders:
Oklahoma: OKC +3.2; Tulsa +3
Oklahoma isnât growing much, but thatâs mostly because of people fleeing the rural areas. The two main metros are pretty even.
Tennessee: Nashville +4.4; Memphis -0.8; Knoxville +4.9; Chattanooga +3.3
We assume Tennessee is just Nashville, because Memphis hasnât grown in 20 years, but the two smaller cities are catching up.
What about Georgia?
Atlanta +3.6; Savannah +5.6; Augusta +1.7
Savannah is booming! Of course, Atlanta metro is 12x the size of Savannah metro, so nobody would think of it as a multipolar state.
Utah could be an interesting case. If you combine Salt Lake City with Ogden (which you should, regardless of what the census bureau says), you get:
SLC-Ogden +1.9; Provo +8.8; St George +12.1; Logan +7; Cedar City +11.9
But IF you combine SLC and Ogden, then by the commuting rules you end up also adding Provo AND Logan (along with Price) into one gigantic Salt Lake Area metro, and you have something like:
SLC-Provo-Logan +3.8; St George +12.1; Cedar City +11.9
But now you have a state like Georgia, with SLC being about 14x the size of St George.
How about Arkansas? The state overall has actually grown by over 3% this decade, soâŚ
Little Rock +2.1; Fayetteville-Springdale +7.8
NW Arkansas could conceivably overtake Little Rock in 20-30 years. This has been a down decade for Little Rock so far.
Now weâre getting to much smaller states (and metros), but, Idaho definitely qualifies:
Boise +7.6; Idaho Falls +6.4; Coeur dâAlene +7.9; Twin Falls +5.2
Boise metro is about 4x the size of Idaho Falls metro, which is a little more than Nashville:Knoxville for TN, although without Memphis in between.
Montana! It got a whole new seat in Congress in 2020! Surely we have to count them, right?
Billings +4.1; Missoula +4.8; Bozeman +7; Kalispell +8.8; Helena +6.8
Montanaâs kind of interesting: Billings is just a hair more than twice the size of Helena, which is the smallest gap between #1 and #5 among all the states. But Billings is also just a hair under 200k, smaller than Fargo ND or Burlington VT and every other stateâs biggest metro except for Wyoming.
South Dakota anybody?
Sioux Falls +5.8; Rapid City +5.8
Okay, both of these metro areas are smaller than Wilmington, but hey, both centers of growth!
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Since you did Georgia/South Carolina/Tennessee, how does Virginia look in contrast?
Similarity, what about Maryland?
You might enjoy this website. I know that I do. Combined Metropolitan Areas (USA): Combined, Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas - Population Statistics, Charts and Map
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I do love Virginia and Maryland.
Virginia of course starts with the DC metro, which is about 3.2M people in VA alone, about the size as the next two metros combined:
DC +1.2; Hampton Roads +0.4; Richmond +2.6
Roanoke (-0.4) is about 1/5 the size of Richmond.
Maryland certainly has two main urban centers, but itâs hard to call Baltimore (my hometown) a âcenter of growth.â Alas.
DC (2.7M) +0.3; Baltimore (2.9M) -0.3
For reference, Hagerstown is #3, at about 155k and +0.7 this decade
Pennsylvania certainly fits the criteria, but again, growth? UhâŚ
Philly (5.5M) -0.2; Pittsburgh (2.5M) -1.4
There are five midsize Pennsylvania metros that are a bit more hopeful:
Allentown-Bethlehem (762k) +1.4; Harrisburg (629k) +2.3; Scranton - Wilkes-Barre (607k) +0.2; York-Hanover (571k) +2.0; Lancaster (559k) +1.1
Ohio is famously multipolar but all the growth is in one place
Cincinnati (2.5M) +0.9; Columbus (2.4M) +1.7; Cleveland (2.1M) -1.3
MAC fans may be interested in the next layer of metros:
Dayton-Springfield (1.1M) -0.3; Akron (700k) -0.6; Toledo (667k) -1.0
I mean, Nebraska certainly qualifies, itâs just that Omaha is so much bigger than Lincoln
Omaha (1.0M) +1.5; Lincoln (419k) +1.1
Technically so does Kansas
Kansas part of Kansas City (1.1M) +1.2; Wichita (685k) +0.7
Missouri, too:
The whole of Kansas City (2.5M) +1.3; the whole of St Louis (2.9M) -0.8
Louisiana fits if we ignore the concept of positive population growth
New Orleans (1.3M) -2.7; Baton Rouge (894k) +0.2; Lafayette (595k) +0.3; Shreveport (451k) -2.9; Lake Charles (277k) -4.8; Monroe (279k) -2.8
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Just thought that some may enjoy this statistical video.
Even though its not about cities is is still fascinating 
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Had a quick (history) question for anyone in the knowâŚ
Taking a look at the Census website for Raleigh shows that Wake County is broken up into different townships, and the city itself is broken down into these smaller groups. However, if you use the map to go over to the other municipalities in North Carolina, they seem to not be broken up into those same smaller groups. Greensboro looks to be broken down into two, while Winston-Salem and Charlotte seem to be not be subdivided at all. Scrolling over to Asheville, it looks like Buncombe is broken up into both Asheville City and Asheville Township.
Is there any rhyme or reason to why this is? Do each county or city get to decide how their subcategories are divided?
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Thatâs really interesting. I have no idea why itâs broken into townships, but it seems like those decisions may have happened in the 1950s when Raleigh itself was basically ITB + what is the very core of todayâs Midtown.
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I question their township population, or perhaps the output of this tool is incorrect? I know that this doesnât follow the Raleigh Township exactly, but itâs pretty close and it doesnât even cover MidTown or all of Southeast and Southwest Raleigh.
For shits and giggles, I ran another one that approximates the 540 loop, and it looks like we are pushing a million within it.
Now this is interesting. If I take the same circle and approximate it within Charlotteâs loop, the population is less.
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Townships were introduced to North Carolina by Reconstruction-era reformers and abandoned as Southern Redemption forces took over and returned power to county governments.
In the northern states, towns (and their rural equivalent, townships) are the basic unit of local government. In the southern states, counties are the basic unit. This creates very different situations: Connecticut has no county governments whatsoever, and doesnât even use county boundaries for statistical reporting. Contrast that to Maryland or Virginia, where probably <10% of the Baltimore or Washington metropolitan populations live in incorporated suburban towns and several counties have zero incorporated towns. (Even DC doesnât technically have a âWashington cityâ government, only a District government.)
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Hey @kjhburg @JeepCSC @thehappysmith
Iâm lookign through all of this stuff now. Do you mind if I use some of the stats you pulled for an MLB Raleigh post on social media.
I know itâs all in there, but you guys are the ones who dug in, took the time and pointed out the interesting stats, so I wanted to make sure you all were ok with that.
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Love your work, no problem.
Of course, no problem
A potential way to combine Raleigh and Durham MSAs
I have been reviewing the 2022 LODES commuting data. LODES estimates are produced by the Census Bureau using different inputs than the ACS commuting data estimates, but importantly they are updated annually for most states. They operate essentially the same way, and you can use LODES data to compare changes in commuting patterns over time.
Today I checked to see where Durham Countyâs workers come from - rather than seeing where Wake County residents work. Per the 2022 data, more Durham County workers come from Wake County than come from Durham County (by a couple thousand).
Iâve looked at this in the past, but it has never been flipped this way (Durham has always been the primary supplier of Durham workers). I suppose it was inevitable given Wakeâs growth, but the important point is that Durham County should by OMBâs own definition be combined with Wake County in a single MSA if Wake is supplying more workers to Durham than Durham itself is.
That saidâŚI have not reviewed the recent 5-year ACS release to see if it has commuting data in it, and that data is what Census and OMB use for MSA definitions, not LODES. I donât know when to expect commuting data from ACS; if it isnât this year, perhaps next, but no idea. Nonetheless if LODES is showing this trend, I expect ACS to show it as well if it is as I suspect a real feature of post-pandemic life and not data noise. The problem could be if the 5-year estimates happen to be eg 2018-2022 they may lag significantly behind post-pandemic trends, meaning weâd have to wait YET ANOTHER 5 years for the numbers to finally bear out a statistically-justified (rather than justified by, like, real life) Raleigh-Durham MSA.
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Thanks for sharing the information. Iâve always made this argument. Raleigh and Charlotte have had comparable populations for decades. Unfortunately, weâre a city that doesnât take itself too seriously. I believe our city is capable of achieving better things.
Ask the commuters who are stuck in traffic jams between Raleigh and Durham if these cities are related⌠
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Yes, the % of Durhamâs workforce that commutes from Wake is definitely the strongest tie, making Durham a âcentral countyâ in MSA-speak. But what I think is the big holdup is that Wake canât be both âcentralâ (attracting many commuters from Johnston and Franklin) and âoutlyingâ (sending many commuters to Durham). See the definition:
OMBâs response would be that this is exactly the sort of situation that CSAs were meant for, but those just havenât caught on in the same way.
However, the standards are due for revision in 2028, so itâs anyoneâs guess.
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I hope the Raleigh Durham Cary MSA rises again. As others have said the traffic alone between the 2 counties proves the interconnection. Many of Durham Countyâs largest employers especially those in the RTP are full of Wake County residents. There is almost continous urban development on US 70 and I-40 between the 2 cities. It is important for this metro region to be one for national stature as well. Raleigh Durham Cary is larger than Nashville metro for example but most would not know that. Cary town limits sprawl into âthe Durham metro areaâ already when they cross into Chatham County. It irks me that this region is not treated like Dallas Fort Worth MSA which by the way are the same distance apart as Raleigh and Durham. Hopefully this will change at the next opportunity.
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I wanted to test this, so I went to Google Maps.
By their shortest driving distance (as close to a straight line as possible), Raleigh and Durham are 23.1 miles apart center to center. Dallas and Ft Worth are 32 miles apart.
I think what screws up the OMBâs method is that commuting patterns are reversed to what they probably expect. I suspect that having a large number of Wake residents commuting into Durham isnât treated in the same way as a large number of Durham residents commuting into Wake. By far Wake is the largest county in the Triangle, and there arenât as many commuters into Wake from Durham.
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i did some delivery jobs and âjobsâ in rtp and durham as a raleigh resident years back. some were simple commutes from n raleigh to rtp. others were jobs in west raleigh where i drove all over raleigh and druham. others were a job in durham where i went all over durham and rtp as i drove back home to north raleigh. for those years i just didnt make much of a distinction when a city limit sign showed up on the road. personally i think there may some be some truth beyond the truth with some of the mapping stuff.
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