I was just in Nashville (TN that is not the town to the east) and was talking to 2 Urbanplanet guys who know alot about development and one works for the Nashville Post. We were talking about NC Charlotte and Raleigh Durham and they knew that Raleigh Durham together was bigger than metro Nashville. I was impressed as many do not know that and I said because it has 2 large anchor cities they don’t get the name recognition of a Nashville. But I said watch out Raleigh might be the dark horse for a MLB team but they might just win it. While I was out there on the local news they mentioned the state of TN has $81.7 Billion in unfunded infrastructure projects across the state bigger than the entire state budget. Metro Nashville just jacked up their property taxes and people were on tv business owners saying their taxes went up 4-5x despite the rate being dropped. Nashville does not have the money for a MLB team and was interesting to hear they knew the Triangle was bigger than metro Nashville.
Interesting! I would think though that just about every state has a huge list of unfunded infrastructure project. Not that I know that, just a wild guess!
Apex has placed a moratorium on data centers until they can get a handle on the required aspects of such a center. Here is the article. Apex data center project scrapped after community pushback :: WRAL.com
This is an interesting index of cities because it’s not looking at growth, instead its analyzing the future framework/resilience to enable success. When you combine this with a high level of capital investment the Triangle is seeing, the puzzle pieces for long term prosperity really come together.
(Durham ranked #2)
My concern is as long as this appears to be taking by the time MLB gets around to this in 3 or so years Nashville will have found a way to get organized and replenish the coffers!
Raleigh’s housing policies got a shout-out in The Atlantic this week.
“And in the past few years, some states and cities have managed to avoid repeating California’s mistakes. In 2021, Raleigh, North Carolina, responded to a wave of new residents by relaxing its zoning laws for multifamily housing. Over the next three years, the city built 60 percent more housing units annually and experienced half of the rental-cost growth than it had during the previous five years, according to data gathered by Alex Horowitz, a project director for housing policy at the Pew Charitable Trusts. In recent years, similar stories have played out in places as diverse as Austin, Minneapolis, and New Rochelle, New York. What these cities have in common is that their new pro-housing laws came with less restrictive labor and affordability requirements—if any—and, because they were passed at the city level, didn’t encounter resistance from local governments. True YIMBYism has been tried, and it works.”
Found this related to Strong Towns, Raleigh and the Bottom-Up Revolution.
No real surprise that Raleigh/cary was one of the fastest growing metros last year growing 24 percent. Business insider article https://apple.news/AjA_EL1PyR5SVo40ecjPp3Q
I dropped a few charts in the population topic for reference.
NYT article on Raleigh
link for those 
Wake County has more people than Mecklenburg County, is growing by more people, and ranked higher in growth. Mind blowing. I think of Charlotte as this bigger city with taller buildings. But naw. It ain’t bigger at all. At least not at the county level. I knew I liked Raleigh better anyway. But this was an interesting chart.
Just came here to post this! 
Decent list, happy to see The Rialto get more love!
Tbf Meck has a population density ~1.5x Wake (Meck: 2,355/sq mile; Wake 1,506/sq mile)
Solid write up. Edit beer was a odd choice though
Wake County has been the most populous for awhile… Not the same thing as Raleigh vs Charlotte tho
It still made me smile…
Yeah, only 6 years old. Pretty new 
New as in the 2026 estimate officially put us over 500k… It usually doesn’t come out until July each year.
There are different teams with their own estimates. Raleigh’s 499K+ number is the Census estimate for July, 2024. The next estimate to be released by the Census will be for July, 2025. The state also has its own demographers, and they will have their own estimates. I suspect that the wiki number you see is likely either a state estimate or another demography group’s work. For the 2025 Census estimate yet to be realeased, I expect to see the city of Raleigh land somewhere around 509K, give or take.