Greenville Growth

[motonenterprises]

Do any of you think that Greenville will ever grow to the size of Charlotte or Atlanta? If so how long do you think it will take with the current growth patterns? Another topic to make discussion about my favorite place.

[Spartan]

Well, thanks a tricky question. If you mean get to the size that Charlotte is now, then yes. I think that in our lifetime we will see Greenville and Spartanburg grow together and become something similar to Raleigh-Durham, whith Greenville as the Primary city, which could easily be the size that Charlotte is today, and Spartanburg would probably be the size of Durham at that point. Greenville will continue to dominate in the Upstate, and probably some of western NC (Polk County, NC will likely be a part of the Greater metro before too long), and even NE Georgia (Hart, Rabun, Elbert, Stephens, Franklin).

As for Atlanta.. who knows? By the time Greenville reaches the Atlanta scale, we will probably have the Birmingham-Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte-Triad-Triangle Megalopolitan Area. By that point, Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson would be one large city, and would probably be on the verge of being a contiguous area with Atanta. I hope that I never see that day. What a mess. Sprawl will have come back to haunt everyone.

However, with all that said, I don't think that Greenville (even with Spartanburg included) would ever catch up to Charlotte and especially Atlanta. The Upstate has a whole only has a quarter the population of Atlanta. (4million to the Upstate's 1million). Charlotte is at around 1.6 million if i'm not mistaken. The trick is that Charlotte is growing just as fast as anywhere else, so we would have to oupace Charltte's growth by the 2010 census, and maintain that for 50 years to outpace Charlotte's growth. Seems unlikely to me, but hey, you never know!

[motonenterprises]

I agree it will probably get as big as Charlotte is now, but also agree that Charlotte is growing just as fast. Atlanta is a great deal larger than Charlotte. If we ever reach Atlanta's size we are gonna have one big sprawl blob like you said. Another question. By 2010 will my hometown Greenwood be considered part of the Greenville area?

[Spartan]

Well, I'm not sure. If you could get some statistics about it I might be more sure. I don't really know enough about what Greenwood's growth patterns/rates are to give an informed answer. However, as an educated guess I would say it coudl be a part of the CSA by 2010, but probaly not Greenville's MSA.

[The_sandlapper]

I could see Greenville becoming the size of present day Charlotte in my lifetime, but that goes for Charleston or Columbia as well. I don't think many people take into consideration that approximately 20 years ago Mecklenberg County was about the same size as Greenville County is today at just over 400,000. Even Wake County, NC 20 years ago was just had approximately 30,000 more people than Richland County at that same time. It was just their time to grow. So any of the fast growing NC metro's are quite catchable (meaning that all large SC metros will surpass 1million people and grow rapidly after that) within our lifetime. Atlanta has about a 20 year head start on the NC metros. Atlanta made its initial boom around the same time Houston, Dallas, & even Tampa (to a lesser extent) which explains why today they all have similair metro populations. Right now in the south we see Charlotte, Austin, Nashville, Jacksonville, Orlando, & Raleigh making there move into the national spotlight. These places all initially boomed about 20 years ago. The next peer group I think will be Greenville, Columbia, Charleston, Myrtle Beach (heading toward the Vegas model "tourist" growth), Huntsville, AL, & probablly even Knoxville. But imo I think Atlanta's a stretch the day metro Greenville carries over 4 million people youre right Spartan I-85 will be one city called BirmingLantaVilleCharBoroLeigh. And it will probablly rival the initial megalopolis of the NE-mid atlantic Boston to DC.

By the way I am really curious what are the present day growth patterns of the 3 largest SC metros, does anyone have any other data besides the census? I know proximityonline carries these stats and all three areas are growing pretty much at the same rate.

[Spartan]

I think Lexington County had the fastest growth in the state. That in itself says alot.

[The_sandlapper]

I think Lexington County had the fastest growth in the state. That in itself says alot.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is that from this year?

[Spartan]

No clue. It was probably based on the 2000 census. I just remember that fact.

[ResearchMan]

Well, I'm not sure. If you could get some statistics about it I might be more sure. I don't really know enough about what Greenwood's growth patterns/rates are to give an informed answer. However, as an educated guess I would say it coudl be a part of the CSA by 2010, but probaly not Greenville's MSA.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was on Carolina Business review the other week talking about using

household credit records to identify where certain people live. A

large religous school from Greenville heard the broadcast and called

asking about using credit records to identify prospecitve clients. I

had them give me a list of zip codes where the current students

come from. Right now they have kids coming from the Charlotte

burbs over to Greenville every day. I suggested instead they

focus on credit records of parents within a 45 minute drive. Parochial

schools have loyal customers.

An interesting map of the area in the 85 corridor may be seen at <br>

http://www.scgis.com/business_intelligence...lbusinesses.jpg

This is a map of all south Carolina block groups. I removed blocks

under a certain size to identify rural SC versus urban. I then cut

out each business in the state to see urban vs rural business.

But the 85 corridor easily stands out as the most urban. This

was from a talk for the Rural Development Council. If anyone

is interested I can pull up the greenville drive-time map.

[Spartan]

I would definately be interested in seeing that drive times map.

That map is very telling of the urbanity in SC. GIS is great stuff.

[ResearchMan]

I was asked to speak about rural South Carolina which I know

little about. In prep for my talk I thought a long time about

how to show what is urban and rural . I ended up with letting

the Census bureau be the expert. I may do the south east

later today. That would be a nice map.

In the rural/urban locations I profiled all businesses to examine

frequency of industry. For example in rural SC 15 percent of licensed

businesses are churches. Across the state that number is

slightly more than 5 percent. I've written up about 15 percent

of this talk at http://www.scgis.com/index_scbiz.htm. There are

things like drive times from fire stations across the state.

Easy to see where not to put a business. Tell me what

you think.

[Spartan]

That is an interesting analysis. Does the fire station data inclued volunteer fire departments? Just looking at some areas I am familiar with, it seems that some volunteer stations might be missing.

[ResearchMan]

This data came from licensed entities. Which department was it?

I analyzed about 180,000 businesses. I'm toying with a clustering

idea on how to show business by clusters of industry. A hot

item since the Palmetto Project's Porter study of the SC

economy.

[Spartan]

There is one in Cherokee County... I think its called Buffalo # 2? Its near Blacksburg, north of 85.

There are two others called Glendale #1, and #2- Its hard to explain exactly where they are, but I can tell you they are in Spartanburg County towards the eastern side of the City. They don't appear to be there, but its hard for me to get my bearings exactly without county lines.

All 3 of these are volunteer.

[Spartan]

Please direct all discussion on the Upstate Growth Study from Clemson to this thread in the South Carolina general forum due to the regional nature of this topic. Thanks!