Raleigh and the Suburbs

Going to be tough squeezing in all the suberinites into downtown Raleigh. Then what do we do with all the nice new schools, rec centers, parks and such that our nice bond packages pay for? Conundrum is that it’s tough to build Raleigh density of humans when the city council wants to limit building heights, seem to like the 4-6 story stick apartment structures. We want it all but can we really have it, the struggle is real man.

Nobody is saying to squeeze all the suburbanites into downtown Raleigh. Why does this conversation come back to this narrative? It’s not what’s being said. See Orluz’s latest post for a more detailed outline.
It’s in suburban Raleigh’s best interest to support DT development, and dense developments at other nodes in the city, to generate tax revenue that will help pay for Raleigh’s aging suburban infrastructure.
The silver lining that came from the legislature’s curtail on annexation at will is that the city couldn’t just continue expanding ad infinitum; it forced the city to look at expansion another way, and it just happens to be a way that will actually financially benefit the suburban property owner.

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“You can’t be a suburb of nowhere.” :wink:

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Or, more specifically, we don’t want to be a suburb of nowhere!
I would think that, as a downtown community forum, we could all agree on that!

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That is kind of a false assumption as most cities in Wake County including Raleigh rarely used forced annexations before the law was changed. Raleigh probably averaged one or two neighborhoods each year and most of those had aging infrastructures. 99% of Raleigh annexations were voluntary annexations as developers wanted those properties to be annexed so as to get city services (water and sewage etc) for whatever they were building on the land. Raleigh is naturally running out of room for new annexations because they are surrounded by other cities and/or water conservation districts.

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It’s not a false assumption. When the Republicans took over the state government, they passed and signed a law that made it illegal for cities to force annexations against property owners’ wills. Up to that time, Raleigh’s limits were growing rapidly decade to decade. Now, much of that was requested annexation of virgin forested land by developers, but not all of it. There was a lot of forced annexation that rankled enough people that it became a political issue for the Republicans.
I don’t think that Raleigh’s ETJ has changed since the law was passed, but the city will likely never reach the size of the ETJ due to the new law.
The city is now left with Swiss Cheese holes that are developed but not within the city limits. This is true for even some ITB property. There’s also developed suburban edge development that would have likely been forced annexation by now. As a result of the revised law, annexation has slowed to a trickle for Raleigh. Unless involuntary annexation is allowed again by a future government of the state, I doubt that many of us will live to see Raleigh grow its land area to the potential 200+ square miles that is associated with the ETJ.
You can find a lot of writings about it online. Here’s just one example from the website of a House representative.
https://nchouse117.com/ending-forced-annexation/
Here’s a pretty comprehensive city website link as well.
https://www.raleighnc.gov/home/content/ITechAdmin/Articles/MapGallery.html

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FWIW - https://www.raleighnc.gov/home/content/ITechAdmin/Articles/MapGallery.html

@John, I was not aware of ITB parcels not being within city limits. Interesting! Thanks.

The Republicans did what they did almost entirely because of Fayetteville who forced annexed tens of thousands of people and huge swaths of suburbs. Again, Raleigh rarely ever forced annexed anything before that law was passed. Annexations in Wake County have not slowed down at all as Cary, Apex, Fuquay Varina, Wendell, etc are annexing like crazy. The only real significant place left in the county that Raleigh can annex at all is to the east (both north and south of Knightdale) All cities in Wake County have annexation agreements between themselves showing what would will eventually annexed by the respective city. Raleigh has not had an ETJ expansion in years but most of the other cities in Wake County has expanded somewhat more recently (Fuquay Varina has a huge one in the works right now). Again Raleigh literally has very little left in Wake County that it can annex as they are mostly boxed in. Sure Raleigh would have forced annexed some neighborhoods but one or two a year is not significant unless you assumed they would have done much more of late. Very very very few forced annexations occurred in anywhere in Wake County prior to the law passing.

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We are not talking about Cary, Apex, etc. We are talking about Raleigh.
Given that Raleigh is surrounded by suburban municipalities that have their own ETJs that border Raleigh’s, much of the suburban annexation has occurred on virgin and/or assembled tracts on the outer edges: think west Cary as an example.
In the end, Raleigh has an ETJ that includes a lot of already developed land. We’d be foolish to think that those residents will agree to annexation. For virgin land within the ETJ, that is a no brainer. Developers want to maximize their potential, and can really only do that by annexation/city services.

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There has been 117 annexations in Wake County so far this year with 19 being Raleigh annexations. I believe all of them have been basically infill annexations. So it does happen probably more than you think, but no I don’t think most established neighborhoods would allow themselves to be annexed. But again I say that Raleigh hardly ever forced annexed before the law was changed so I am not sure why you think they would be doing it anyway if the law had not changed. They would have only been adding maybe a few hundred residents each year and that is not a significant amount to make an assumption that the change in the law forced Raleigh to do things differently. What is happening now in high probability would have happened whether or not the law was changed.

@dwight
Sorry, but I have to point out that it is: Raleigh and His Suburbs (not Her) Lol :grin:

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Where are you getting your annexation data? I’d like to follow that as well.
Thanks.

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Yeah, Raleigh was a man.

Raleigh and the suburbs.

Sounds like a band name.

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I am an IT Specialist in the GIS dept working in government downtown. I see every annexation and ETJ expansion that has occurred during the past 17 years that I have worked here. Unfortunately there is not any one place for the public to see what I see. You can visit the individual town web pages and see most annexations that are being purposed but that’s about it…

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@TedF
That is so freak’n cool! I am so jealous! :heart_eyes:

Maps and Stats :star_struck::heart_eyes:

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if you go to IMAPS ( iMAPS ) and go to Layers and toggle on Jurisdictions and you can see the Corporate Limits there. Starting around 13 years ago they started keeping track of the individual annexations and you can click on them to see the Ordinance Number and Effective dates. If you like maps and all the various data that you can see, then you might just enjoy this site.

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Okay. So, short of clicking on every single parcel and/or guessing what’s been annexed recently, is there any set of data anywhere to tell us:
1.) What is the land area of Raleigh today?
2.) What has been the land area of Raleigh, year over year?..decade over decade?
If not, can you answer #1 for us?

Also, the GIS maps show a significant amount of developed land in NW Raleigh that’s not in the city limits, but surrounded by the city limits. I’ll almost bet my life that much of this would have been annexed by the city by now, save for the law that prevents involuntary annexations. It makes no sense for the city to have to extend beyond these areas with services, to not include them into the tax base.

On a separate note, I’ll never understand the city limits swap in land between Raleigh and Durham, and Wake and Durham Counties near the US 70 corridor.

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Statistics can be misleading. Come up with all-in numbers for water, sewer, road/transit, school construction, etc to increase the ITB population of Raleigh from about 130,000 today to 400,000… in other words, a scenario where everyone living in Raleigh OTB moves ITB. That’s a study that I would consider significant. I think – no, I’m certain – you’ll find that the water and sewer load alone would completely overwhelm what’s underground ITB (in part because the city’s primary water source is OTB northside). Oh, and don’t forget that many of the people who live in Raleigh OTB are actually working in or near RTP, so you’re effectively increasing their distance to work. Only a percentage of them, perhaps less than half, are addressable by mass transit.

Last I heard, the City estimated it has $500 million (not a misprint!) of capex ahead of it ITB just to maintain the status quo for water and sewer, due to aging pipes that don’t reflect modern standards. I can tell you that a lot of that money ultimately comes from north of 440.

The fact is, only about 13% of Wake County population lives ITB Raleigh. That number continues to decrease. There’s a reason, even if many people who post on this board don’t see it or agree with it.

Would be interesting to see North Raleigh (north of 440, that is) secede from Raleigh into a new city, and then we would see how their finances compare. Ain’t nobody downtown floating that idea.

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I don’t have the historic area of Raleigh over time but maybe somebody over at the city of Raleigh might have that data as it seems like I have seen a map depicting that some years ago. But as of earlier this year Raleigh has 93901 acres which comes to 146.72 square miles.

Some of that area that you mention in NW Raleigh is part of the Falls Lake Watershed and will never be annexed no matter what (some neighborhoods south of I540). In fact some of that area that you say will never be annexed has been getting annexed in small portions recently. If you look close enough a lot of those lots are over an acre in size and developers can acquire 4 or 5 lots they can build maybe 15 or 20 houses on it. So I would not say never as it is slowly occurring right now, but I will admit that it will take a long time. Also note that if the city did annex most of that area it would probably only add at most a few thousand people to Raleigh as the lots are big and everything is single family homes. Not all that significant really.

Currently Durham, Clayton, and Angier have encroached into Wake County (bringing the total to 15 municipalities). Cary, Raleigh, and Wake Forest have encroached into the neighboring counties. County lines are simply ignored by most cities. They go by urban service areas that eventually become ETJ’s and then annexed over even more time. It’s basically whoever gets there first…

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