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The population boom in the Triangle


willrusso

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WRAL story about Wake County's booming population growth. 30 new homes are built in Wake County every day and Raleigh City proper is the most popular location. Also, a boom is expected in Knightdale along the US 64 bypass. Wake County's population is expected to surpass Mecklenburg's in 7 years.

READ FULL STORY HERE: http://www.wral.com/news/4777944/detail.html

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It is larger in land area, but I would be interested to know the population density of the two counties. Wake still has quite a bit of undeveloped land to the east and south. I am not too familiar with Mecklenburg.

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Check out the news Blurb here from Raleigh's WRAL news. WRAL TV NEWS Raleigh city proper continues to be the hottest area for new home growth where average new home costs are over 200,000. Knightdale and Zebulon along with eastern and northern wake will continue to see the greatest growth.

Projected Wake County growth WAKE CTY. CENSUS PROJECTIONS

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It is larger in land area, but I would be interested to know the population density of the two counties.  Wake still has quite a bit of undeveloped land to the east and south.  I am not too familiar with Mecklenburg.

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Mecklenburg (July 2004 pop)

[*]Population - 768,773

[*]Land Area - 526 miles

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Thanks for posting that metro and it does help, but I guess my previous post was not really what I wanted to ask.

I think I should have asked about population density in relation to land area actually developed. I don't know if this is actually possible. However, if Wake were only 526 square miles, the density would be 1376 people/mile and still less dense than Mecklenburg. I think this is a better gauge on population than just total persons.

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I can certainly appreciate the bragging rights that go along with being "most populated" county in the carolinas. However IMO this is kinda like comparing Charlotte and Atlantas population. Charlottes is higher, but the general public hears more about Atlanta and more people still call Atlanta home. (though most of them live in atlanta metro). Mecklenburg might become 2nd in rank so far as numbers go but its prominance as a leader in this state will not change.

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Prominance as a leader in a state is somewhat subjective. Are we talking pro sports teams vs. college sports...are we talking financial business vs. high-tech business...number of tall buildings???

As far as population is concerned, if the Triangle ever passes the Metrolina region in numbers, will you still have a defense to this statement?

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When the vast majority of this is trending toward suburban sprawl development in Wake Co, is this really something we want? I hope that increasingly urban market development forces and transit planning will change the path we are on, but I'm not so optimistic right now. I know they have certain advantages, but IMO Clt-Meck & CATS are doing a much better job of this than the Triangle.

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Prominance as a leader in a state is somewhat subjective.  Are we talking pro sports teams vs. college sports...are we talking financial business vs. high-tech business...number of tall buildings???

As far as population is concerned, if the Triangle ever passes the Metrolina region in numbers, will you still have a defense to this statement?

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Both areas are unique. People consider numerous things when choosing an area to live. The Triangle will continue to be the place to go to college and land a tech job. Charlotte will continue to be the place to land a bank job and enjoy pro-sports. Some could care less about pro anything. I for one think they are over paid idiots for the most part. But from a business stand point it looks good on paper. Charlotte will do better (landing things like relocations high-end shopping etc) in the long run because of things like NFL, NBA etc. I think the key though is diversification. IMO the Triangle has more to offer in that area.

In the long run both areas have much to be proud of. The point I was making in regards to population was simply that most people wont think twice about whos most populated in the state. It does look good on paper though. Enjoy it when it happens.

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I can agree with that skyybutter. I guess only time will tell, but the most important issue with forumers in this area (from what I can tell) is how well we will accomodate the growth. Sprawl is terrible here and there are positive signs that this way of thinking is wrong. We just need to convince the public of the same.

The problem with Wake County is the number of municipalities here. Everyone wants their piece of the pie which discourages smarter growth. Take a look at Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce and they proudly tout their population growth. If a developer wants to buy cheaper land in Fuquay and build 200 homes, the city will not turn their head for obvious reasons.

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I can agree with that skyybutter.  I guess only time will tell, but the most important issue with forumers in this area (from what I can tell) is how well we will accomodate the growth.  Sprawl is terrible here and there are positive signs that this way of thinking is wrong.  We just need to convince the public of the same.

The problem with Wake County is the number of municipalities here.  Everyone wants their piece of the pie which discourages smarter growth.  Take a look at Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce and they proudly tout their population growth.  If a developer wants to buy cheaper land in Fuquay and build 200 homes, the city will not turn their head for obvious reasons.

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I agree with your points avery. The City of Charlotte dominates Mecklenburg County in a way that the City of Raleigh does not and probably never will dominate Wake County. Wake County has more decent sized suburbs like Cary and just a larger land area.

My brother lives in the Triangle and I really like a lot about the area. I like the great colleges and universities, the high tech jobs, and the historic intown areas of Raleigh and Durham. But the thing I do not like about the Triangle is the sprawl. It strikes as being more sprawl-oriented than Charlotte or even Atlanta in relative terms. Part of it is having more than one central urban core. Part of it is having the major employment centers in many cases being suburban around the Research Triangle Park. I just feel like I am in an endless mass of office parks, strip centers, and cul de sacs with a couple of relatively small downtown/intown areas. Neither downtown Raleigh or downtown Durham are what you would expect for a metro of 1.4 million, even in the sunbelt. I just hope the area can reverse some of this with new urbanism or something. The region has so much going for it in so many other areas.

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I think the biggest issue with the triangle is that its very decentralized. If you take someone that is not from this area and drive them from north raleigh to cary to durham to chapel hill, it all appears to be one mass city with no center at all. Of course you would have to distract that person when you approach a city limit sign so they wont see it LOL.

Raleigh, Cary, Garner, and Wake Forest all run together without any obvious breaks. There is a teeny break between extreme NW Raleigh (Brier Creek area) and Durham, but its only 2 miles or so. If that development continues along US 70, Raleigh and Durham are going to blur together even more.

Do any of you think it is a good thing to have one mass city with no breaks other than the occasional city limit sign reminding you of where you are?

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Charlotte will continue to be the place to land a bank job.

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This is a common mis-conception about Charlotte. Banking represents less than 10% of the jobs in the city. There are more manufacturing jobs in Charlotte than banking and while not nearly as large as RTP there are many tech jobs in Charlotte. For example Microsoft has its only east coast development campus employing several thousand programmers and IT staff and Duke energy has a development arm that developes nuclear and standard power plants. Both are inside the city limits.

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Both areas are unique. People consider numerous things when choosing an area to live. The Triangle will continue to be the place to go to college and land a tech job. Charlotte will continue to be the place to land a bank job and enjoy pro-sports. Some could care less about pro anything. I for one think they are over paid idiots for the most part. But from a business stand point it looks good on paper. Charlotte will do better (landing things like relocations high-end shopping etc) in the long run because of things like NFL, NBA etc. I think the key though is diversification. IMO the Triangle has more to offer in that area.

In the long run both areas have much to be proud of. The point I was making in regards to population was simply that most people wont think twice about whos most populated in the state. It does look good on paper though. Enjoy it when it happens.

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Charlotte may have pro sports, but the Triangle (Raleigh in particular) have Charlotte beat by a long shot as far as pro-arts/ performing arts goes. The Triangle is the cultural center of the state now.

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Raleigh always mentions RTP as the reason its downtown is not as developed as Charlotte's, while Charlotte has a great number of huge suburban office parks too. RTP employs 36,000. Arrowood Rd area employs twice as many people as RTP and employs more people then Uptown (over 65,000) and then there is the University Research Park which is the 5th largest Research Park in the country.

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Raleigh always mentions RTP as the reason its downtown is not as developed as Charlotte's, while Charlotte has a great number of huge suburban office parks too. RTP employs 36,000. Arrowood Rd area employs twice as many people as RTP and employs more people then Uptown (over 65,000) and then there is the University Research Park which is the 5th largest Research Park in the country.

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Dont bother....you know how people in the triangle are about RTP....

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University Research Park is a misnomer. The vast majority of the businesses that have located in there do not do research & development. They are service related companies, a few server farms, and some HQs. Basically anyone who wants to lease a spot in there, can.

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Before this topic gets out of control on the whole Charlotte vs. Raleigh thing, let's all agree that both areas have different things going for it. Currently, the Triangle would like to see more centralization in its growth, particularly in the downtowns of Durham and Raleigh. Yes, Charlotte is doing a better job at it no matter what anyone say with regards to that point, but I think Raleigh is on the right track. I do think its future hinges on one more large commitment to downtown before it explodes and creates some legitimacy to the "downtown renaissance."

With regards to pros and cons, we could debate this until the forum topic reaches 12 pages. Everyone likes to support their hometown and will find ways that their city is superior...that's why we decided to call our respected cities home.

With regards to jobs, both regions are doing extremely well. The unemployment rate in Raleigh is low which means that their must be enough jobs here eventhough they are not Fortune 500 companies. I don't know too much about University Research Park or Arrowood, but Charlotte is bigger so there will obviously be more jobs as a whole. Many of our jobs are tech related which do employ many employees that work from home. We also have a huge medical industry that everyone forgets about, including doctors, pharmaceutical sales persons and R&D firms. We also have a great deal of agricultural research going on in the Triangle area. I do think all of these job markets are not what you typically see in downtown settings and that is one reason we do not have a solid core or business downtown. However, let's not forget that we are the state capital with numerous government jobs. We also have several universities here and how many people are employed here? Answer...a bunch. So to compare Charlotte to Raleigh is always going to be difficult because the two are inherently different.

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Before this topic gets out of control on the whole Charlotte vs. Raleigh thing, let's all agree that both areas have different things going for it.

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Hear, hear. As the moderator of this subforum, I have little tolerance for the Metro X vs Metro Y discussions as they often degenerate into a "my metro area is better than your metro area" argument, and accomplish nothing but making people angry. Any posts along those lines will be promptly deleted.
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University Research Park is a misnomer. The vast majority of the businesses that have located in there do not do research & development. They are service related companies, a few server farms, and some HQs. Basically anyone who wants to lease a spot in there, can.

Perhaps, but still a great number of people work there instead of working the central business district.

My statement in my post a few posts back was not meant to be an attack on Raleigh but just some facts being thrown into the mix.

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The actual paper had a map of the triangle cities showing how much area cities/towns in Wake/Durham have grown since 1990. It was quite interesting to look at, and I was kind of dissapointed the pic wasn't online. If any1 has a copy of it and a scanner please scan it and post it here! :)

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  • 2 months later...

http://www.newsobserver.com/content/news/g...0051004map.html

I found these interactive maps really interesting:

Click on "Jobs and Population, 2002" to see the curent density.

Click on "Growth in Jobs and Population" to see the growth only between 2002 and 2030.

Click on "Jobs and Population, 2030" to see their projected density.

They are really projecting a lot of job growth in RTP, but I have a feeling it is in part to sell TTA (since they came up with this model). What surprises me the most is the job growth projected from US 1 North (Wake Forst area), and US 1 South (Cary). And Western and NW Wake County are going to sprawl out of control, in part due to 540.

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