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Urban Region Population


architect77

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Over the years Charlotte has been known as the center of either the 5th or 6th largest urban region in the United States. In other words, more than 6 million people lived within a 100 miles radius of Charlotte.(And that was in the early 90's) Does anyone know how it ranks now?

This extraordinary statistic is easy to understand: When you do a 100 mile sweep in all directions, you would get CLT's 2,000,000, the Triad's 1,500,000, Greenville/Spartbg's 1,000,000+, Columbia's 500k+, etc.

How does it rank today?

1) NY Metropolitan area 21,500,000

2) LA, Riverside, Inland Empire 18,000,000

3) Chicago 9,000,000

4) Philadelphia 7,500,000

5) Bay Area, CA 7,000,000+

6) Washington/Baltimore 6,000,000

This reaffirms the I-85 Corridor's designation as the hottest stretch of interstate for industry and business also.

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You know, I've heard this mentioned every now again, and I really have no idea what to make of it. Does the 100 mile radius circle have some special meaning? (I'm genuinely curious) CLT must be somewhat of an anomaly in that there are so many "centers" within it's 100 mile radius that it can't enjoy any kind of true "central" status itself, not until it doubles in size anyway. As far as NYC and Philly, do they seperate out the overlap with these two areas?

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^Well no, I don't think it means anything. If you ask someone living in Greensboro, Columbia or Winston-Salem if they consider themselves part of the "Charlotte Urban Region" I am going to confidently say the answer will be in the negative.

For those of you who like to quantify these things this equates to 31,400 square miles or 219 people per sq/mile. Not exactly urban when compared to the other regions listed above.

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The 100-mile Radius does have its importance with respect to shipping and logisitcs. It allows many companies to guage an area's population within an hour and a half drive and gives a great indication as to where to locate certain distribution hubs.

^^^This is the reason Charlotte is the 6th largest region for shipping and distribution in the US. We are close to ports and neighboring metros all within a short drive. This makes us extrememly attractive from a business standpoint. However, for population density and bragging rights, I would have to argue that it is a very silly statistic to boast about.

W/S, Columbia, Greensboro, GSP, etc all consider themselves to be one unto themselves, which in every respect they are. (again, this is except from the distribution side of the equation)

A2

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The 100-mile Radius does have its importance with respect to shipping and logisitcs. It allows many companies to guage an area's population within an hour and a half drive and gives a great indication as to where to locate certain distribution hubs.

Agreed, it should probably be renamed to "Logistical Region Population" or something along those lines. The numbers really do have a reason to exist, but for our practical purposes it doesn't mean a whole lot. A company like UPS would obviously benefit from having a large hub in the center of an area like this so it is helpful to a degree.

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George Shinn used the 100 mile radius population to sell the city of Charlotte to the NBA. According to George, he had numbers that suggested that was the greatest distance someone would be willing to travel to see a professional sporting event.

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George Shinn used the 100 mile radius population to sell the city of Charlotte to the NBA. According to George, he had numbers that suggested that was the greatest distance someone would be willing to travel to see a professional sporting event.
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For me it's merely an interesting statistic. As for its relevance, I imagine that it could be of some significance when looking at nuclear plant safety, environmental pollution studies, and marketing of products and businesses. Radio and TV markets especially would be interested in this.

Amazingly, there are hundreds if not thousands of people that commute from Richmond, VA to Washington everyday which is 100 miles away. (Less related- apparently many Raleigh residents actually work in DC/Maryland and fly back and forth 3-4 times every week- I guess the 28min. flight isn't too much worse than sitting in traffic for one hour or more )

And with so many classifications in the demographics of metro areas today, it's not anymore irrelevant than some of the others.

Examples:

1) San Diego has long bragged that it was the 5th biggest city in America. "City Limit's" maybe, but far from the 5th largest metro.

2) Atlanta's metro area used to be 18 counties back in the early nineties, then it was 21 counties in 2000, now it's 28 counties.

3) Even Charlotte's 13 county "Charlotte Region" was invented by those recruiting business and industry to the region.

4) I read somewhere that Richmond's population of 1 million comes from an incredibly large area which can be misleading.

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^As far as Richmond's population goes, its metro population is somewhere around 1.2 million if I remember correctly, and the determination of its MSA isn't any different than how other MSAs get their figures. In 2000, the city's urbanized around population was over 800K, so I can't imagine how someone would think that a metro area population of 1 million+ would be a stretch.

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Richmond's population isn't that misleading, its in a pretty significant urban area. You've got Henrico County with about 285,000 (all of these are 2006 estimates from the US Census), City of Richmond with 193,000, Chesterfield County with 297,000, and Hanover County with 100,000, not to mention Petersburg City (32,500), Hopewell City (22,700), and Colonial Heights City (17,680).

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Is it just me or would the Triad be a better "center" to the urban mass because within 100 miles you would also have the whole of the Triangle metro, Charlotte, and the Triad. Seems that having the Triangle in there would have more impact than Columbia and Greenville/Spartanburg. I guess it doesn't really matter though.

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What gives Charlotte an advantage here would be its location; it's got access to a large bulk of the population of two states, rather than just essentially covering one in the case of the Triad.

Plus Charlotte's bigger, so it gets to bully the Triad into letting it be the star. ;)

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What gives Charlotte an advantage here would be its location; it's got access to a large bulk of the population of two states, rather than just essentially covering one in the case of the Triad.

Plus Charlotte's bigger, so it gets to bully the Triad into letting it be the star. ;)

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CLT is of course a major distribution center, though so is GSO, when A2 originally commented on that I was attempting to find stats on this kind of thing and was unsuccessful, so I suppose saying GSO is also a major distribution center is anecdotal at best. However, this fact must be part of the reason FedEx is making it a hub (in addition to other advantages such as low cost and congestion). Or do I have the cart before the horse on that assumption?

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CLT is of course a major distribution center, though so is GSO, when A2 originally commented on that I was attempting to find stats on this kind of thing and was unsuccessful, so I suppose saying GSO is also a major distribution center is anecdotal at best. However, this fact must be part of the reason FedEx is making it a hub (in addition to other advantages such as low cost and congestion). Or do I have the cart before the horse on that assumption?
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^ Do you happen to know why RDU was the original choice? Seems a more natural fit at PTI since is it less busy than RDU and therefore less interference/delays from commercial flights. To get even more off topic, several neighborhoods in GSO protested FedEx as well, but I guess they didn't have as much clout as the Caryites...

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