Well that’s why I didn’t just mention MSA. Things like Urban Area and GDP matter too. Like I said, context.
But for the week of Penn Relays, nothing really happens at Franklin Field. It’s a teeny-tiny, wonderful place but it’s not like it’s a stadium that get used by any relevant portion of the city (save for three days out of the year)
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Of course. I’m not arguing that. Raleigh is growing much faster and will continue to leave Richmond in the dust. Overall I’m just saying there’s a bigger picture that has to be included when trying to compare cities actual size besides just the municipality population.
Yea, but they also have other venues, like the Palestra (if you love basketball, it should be on your bucket list), the Liacouras center (Temple) and a bunch of downtown adjacent arenas (St. Joes, LaSalle, Drexel).
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The bigger picture is Richmond used to be a perfect foil for Raleigh but it isn’t now.
Yeah they’re all great they just don’t really count as downtown arenas/stadiums like people are talking about. Reynolds is essentially the same as some of those and it’s just as close if not closer to the core of downtown.
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DoSo is a mile from edge of downtown.
Broward County is much bigger pop wise.
The UA (urban area) of Raleigh is also larger than Richmond’s.
Yes. I know that, but it’s essentially dense suburbia forever. FTL itself does not have a large central city, and the city itself is not huge.
I believe there is a moratorium on annexations in Virginia since 1979. So Richmond has no ability to expand outward. Growth can only occur within frozen city boundaries.
Comparing Raleigh to Richmond also highlights how far Raleigh is behind on transit. Richmond Atleast has some BRT up and running.
I know that. Raleigh is larger and is growing faster yes. My point was, just looking at municipality populations is deceiving because Raleigh and Richmond are much closer in size then just the city populations (470k vs 226k) would indicate.
One can make that argument, and I know where you are going with it, but Richmond just doesn’t have the sheer amount of development and population around it that moves Raleigh to next level.
Richmond city’s land area is much smaller than Raleigh’s, and the separate city and county model in VA prevents Richmond from growing, so I understand that. It used to be true that the two cities were more comparable if we erased all invisible boundaries, but greater Raleigh has blown past greater Richmond in the last few decades and hasn’t looked back as it distances Richmond statistically.
Certainly Richmond has older and denser grid “bones” than Raleigh, but even that distinction is narrowing from a data standpoint as Raleigh’s core and entire limits becomes more densely populated.
In my lifetime, Richmond was larger than Raleigh using all data/measuring methods, but it’s no longer the case.
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Having grown up there, and having to travel there every 3 months or so, FTL is a bigger city in every way then Raleigh. The DT core is more of a DT, the sprawl is more sprawlly. Flagler Village is growing into its own thing, and the beach towers are their own density.
Sorry. I disagree with you about the downtown core of FTL. It’s basically the Las Olas area surrounded by housing, a lot of which is sfh.
Beyond that, all of the suburban stuff is way more than Raleigh’s suburbs. Part of that suburbia is the Florida Panther’s hockey team that sits between the Everglades and a ginormous outlet mall. After all, that’s what we were talking about.
So… how about them Canes? Wouldn’t it be nice if we either got a new arena near DTR, OR urbanized the area around the existing arena.
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The Downtown urban core is extending through Flagler Village right now, all the northwest toward sistrunk and north toward Sunrise, where the Sears used to be. It is extending South toward 17th. Sawgrass mall, what you are talking about is 10 miles away, like going to RTP or Durham here.
Well, I don’t see it the way that you do. I split my time between Raleigh and South Florida, and I was in downtown FTL just the other week.
My point of noting the Panther’s arena was that FTL/Broward is an example of having a sport arena on the very edge of nowhere.
Not sure this means anything, but here you go:
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