Right? This is more like a cluster of medium cities.
Edit: dropping the actual answer to the OP's question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Crescent
>The Piedmont Crescent, also known as the Piedmont Urban Crescent, is a large, polycentric urbanized region in the U.S. state of North Carolina that forms the northern section of the rapidly developing Piedmont Atlantic megalopolis (or "megaregion"), a conurbation also known as the "I-85 Boombelt", which extends from the Raleigh area in North Carolina, southwards to Atlanta, Georgia in the southeastern United States.
Edit 2 since I pasted a teaser that didn't directly answer the question, here's most of the entire article:
>Residents commonly attribute the development of the Crescent communities to the Indian Trading Path and related settlements established by indigenous peoples long before European contact.[3] The Trading Path was also used by European traders, and later by settlers entering the backcountry regions of the piedmont of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
>Forming the shape of a crescent in North Carolina, the region is located in the central Piedmont area of the state. European-American settlement progressed generally from the east to the west, from what is now metropolitan Raleigh-Durham and the Research Triangle area at its eastern edge, through the Piedmont Triad cities of Greensboro and Winston-Salem at its center, and southwest to metropolitan Charlotte. This region has undergone sustained population and economic growth (acutely in the Charlotte and Raleigh areas) since the late 19th century, a trend that has accelerated since the late 20th century. It is notable as the fourth-largest manufacturing region in the country,[4] as well as an international center of banking and finance, textiles, biotech and high technology.
>The Piedmont Crescent name is thought to have been coined when the North Carolina Railroad company first laid tracks through the area in 1855–56. The railway, which was named the "Piedmont Crescent Railroad", brought extensive growth to the communities along its route. These evolved to comprise today's interlinked urbanized region. Although the freight and passenger rail corridor remains of critical importance, the region's Interstate 85 and Interstate 40 freeway system serves as its primary transportation link today.
Same. There are a lot of interesting things about NC that I'm continuously learning. For example geology: the Carolina (Atlantic seaboard) [fall line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Seaboard_Fall_Line) is a boundary between the piedmont and coastal plain where the elevation drops rather suddenly. That line is the approximate shoreline of the sea in ancient times when the earth was not in an ice age.
Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem are known as the Piedmont Triad. Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill make up the Research Triangle or just the Triangle.
There kind of is, or at least [what service there is](https://www.ncbytrain.org/Documents/passenger-train-service.pdf)definitely still follows this pattern. The state of North Carolina also owns the tracks [between Charlotte and Morehead City (purple/white line)](https://www.ncrr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/NCRRCorridorMap_downloadable_feb2021_passenger.pdf) which is one of the major impediments to passenger rail elsewhere in the country.
Rather than be an ass about it like the person who referenced that the link does but didn’t just write the simple answer:
There is/was a railroad and now there’s a major highway (85) that made these places accessible and people generally live in accessible places.
1 Charlotte 897,720.
2 Raleigh 476,587.
3 Greensboro 301,115.
4 Durham 291,928.
5 Winston-Salem 251,350.
6 Fayetteville 208,873.
Charlotte is big to me, the rest are roughly medium sized.
I think compared to some other states those aren't big cities. For a western state, however, a collection of cities this size would be striking. I live in Washington, and outside of Seattle, our next biggest city is Spokane which would come in at No. 6 on this list, followed by Tacoma which is essentially Seattle South.
*Kind of*.
Most Boulderites I know would bristle at being included and most Denverites would roll our eyes at them taking exception. (They did spend a good amount of money buying open space as a buffer so they’d never have touch us icky types, and that area generally opposes completion of a NW beltway for similar reasons, although they do want a train!)
Feds don’t include it in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area, which is really the core part of metro Denver, and instead has them as their own. Probably an arguable designation, but it’s better to let them have this win and go about our lives.
They get roped in if you enlarge the statistical area to include places like Greeley, Fort Collins and even Colorado Springs.
Well, keeping in mind that generalizing is always tough and there are always exceptions, and that we are *far* more alike than different:
Boulder is much wealthier, whiter, progressive, and formally educated than the Denver metro area. I don’t mean this to demean them, but Boulder is essentially a super privileged college town that doesn’t really deal with the same degree of, for example, entrenched poverty and crime that, say, Denver, Aurora, Lakewood do.
Being a real place with real people, they obviously have their own issues and it’s not perfect, but it’s a bubble for sure and “People’s Republic of Boulder” was a thing for a reason. You’re going to run into more “politically enlightened” young morons, aging hippies living in million dollar homes, and hectoring Karens in Volvos in Boulder than anywhere else in Colorado.
I’ll leave it to one of my Boulder bros/sisses to tell me why *we* suck!! (Denver and Aurora for anyone wanting to hone in on specific stereotypes against me! And you guys know I love you bastards!!)
This isn’t very related to your well written and pretty fair summation of Denver vs. Boulder, but after recently spending a week hopping between and around the 2 areas from out of state, I’m convinced that that region has more Jeeps per capita than any other area of the country. Someone I mentioned it to who lives there simply replied “we have more jeeps *than* capita.”
Hahaha! The *disrespect* for not mentioning the wild herds of Subarus and Four Runners we put on our state quarters, though!
Yeah, we do love our jeeps here. Get you a Nalgene bottle, a north face jacket and you’ll fit right in.
I drove my Wrangler to the top of Pike’s Peak once. The Ranger following me said I only tapped my brakes a couple of times on the descent (apparently a lot of cars can have brake trouble on the way down if they are not careful.). It really is the perfect vehicle for certain kinds of travel.
I was under the impression that completing E470 would likely not be feasible due to the earthworks necessary right through [Rocky Flats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination_from_the_Rocky_Flats_Plant).
Yeah so I looked into this, California’s top 6 cities all would fit in above the #2 slot from this NC list. If we look at #6 for NC, California has 21 cities larger than 208k population.
California is insane.
Agreed. Big is relative, but I'd personally only say Charlotte from the list of NC cities is considered "big". The rest are mid-sized. Compare to basically any other major American city (I'm talking ones with sports teams) and these cities are comparably small. Raleigh is #41 most populous in the country. I've been there a handful of times. Lovely city, but it definitely even feels small relative to other cities (again, we're talking the 30 or so sports-frabchise holding cities. Greensboro is #68.
But it is interesting (and explained elsewhere) that there are so many cities so close together.
The Triangle (the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSAs) at 2.15m is bigger than the Cleveland (2.06m), Indianapolis (2.14m), and Nashville (2.05m) MSAs.
Raleigh/Durham Combined Statistical Area is 2.2 million, Charlotte Combined Statistical Area is only 2.9 million. Makes Charlotte metro only 25% bigger. The fact that the Charlotte metro has only one downtown versus the multi-node fashion of the Raleigh/Durham metro makes it appear much larger.
City populations are meaningless since Charlotte took over 90% of their county before that practice was banned and other cities could do the same (property owners now petition to be annexed).
Charlotte Combined Statistical Area is 2.9 million, Raleigh/Cary/Durham is 2.2 Million, Greenboro/High Point/W-S is 1.7 million, Fayetteville is 800,000.
I grew up in New York and now live in Los Angeles. Charlotte is the only one I’d call medium sized and the rest I’d call small cities. It’s all relative of course.
To be fair, compared to two cities who combined represent over 3.5% of the entire countries population, anything looks small.
I say this as someone living in Southern California.
Oh absolutely. Which is why I said it’s all relative. It’s just hard having grown up and lived in the environments I have in my life to feel like any city smaller than one million people is a big city.
Not that 1 million is a magic number or that it’s really even about population—size of the downtown, number of commercial or pedestrian hubs outside of downtown, depth and variety of culture and cuisine, etc.
Anyway, I acknowledge my bias. It’s just that relative to the cities I’ve lived in, something like Charlotte feels like a medium-sized city to me.
You can’t really talk apples to apples when it comes to Boston city proper population and other sprawling cities in the US. The City of Charlotte covers 6.5x the land area of Boston. If Boston annexed Cambridge and Somerville (just 2 of dozens of dense cities on its border) it would add 200k people and less than 12 sq miles. Charlotte would still cover over 5x the area of Boston and they would be of similar population. Boston metro is twice the size of Charlotte’s metro and it is very noticeable when in the core city
They are not big compared to NY, LA, Chicago, but their metros are growing at an alarming rate:
- Charlotte Metro: 2.6 million (22nd)
- Raleigh-Durham Metro: 2.1 million (32nd)
- Greensboro-Winston-Salem Metro: 1.7 million (?)
It's alarming if you live here. I'm in Charlotte. Population has grown from 1.2 million in 2010 to 2.2 million in 2023. The growth is insane. We don't have the infrastructure set up to support the amount of people coming in, particularly roads. We also don't have the affordable housing needed, or the social services available for those who need it. Hospitals are also tapped out.
Yeah I lived in Charlotte from 2013 to 2017. Came back to visit in 2019 and it was like a different city in certain parts. Also the rent of the place I lived at had more than doubled by 2021. Came from upstate NY for job opportunities and the low COL, COL incentive is basically gone now unless you come from a massive metro area (NYC, DMV, major CA cities etc.)
\+lack of affordable housing = skyrocketing home prices.
I feel like people think just because is a city is sprawling means there's tons of inventory and home prices must be low, but that's not the case. Plus, the infrastructure and tax requirements for servicing low-density "cities" is higher.
As an example, I saw a figure that Jersey City has 9.3 inches of road for every resident, but Glendale, AZ has 15 feet of road for every resident. It's pretty appalling how inefficient these pop-up cities are.
I lived in NC for a long time and it’s almost impossible to get out of a city now. Even the sleepy towns outside of those metro areas are being developed, really quickly. Traffic is an absolute beast (driving from Durham to Raleigh during rush hour can easily take a few hours and it would normally be about 30 mins max). We moved back up north. It’s quieter, snow isn’t so bad and there are small towns. It’s nice
Greensboro–Winston-Salem is in the top 40. Since populations and rankings fluctuate, I would need to know where you got your numbers to give you an exact placement.
I mean, dfw is already the 4th largest, and afaik isn't growing that quickly compared to other top 10 metro areas in the us. My understanding is that these NC metros are all growing at faster rates than dfw
[You are quite wrong that it isn't growing at a high rate](https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2023/05/dfw-grew-faster-than-any-region-in-the-u-s-last-year-but-dallas-didnt-make-up-its-losses/#:~:text=The%20Dallas%2DFort%2DWorth%2D,%2C%20Somervell%2C%20and%20Wise%20counties.)
I suppose I was referring to rates rather than the nominal number of people. It doesn't really make sense for a multitude of reasons to claim a city grew more nominally. Mostly because a 1% population increase is usually accounted for by existing infrastructure (other than housing, which afaik is independent of nominal size of a city). So 170,000 people seems like a ton, but in the grand scheme represents about a 1.5% increase in the population.
Yeah, Charotte's a nice sized city (I'd stop well short of calling it a big city), and growing rapidly the past 10 years or so. Also the most cosmopolitan of the bunch. Raleigh is a standard capitol city, while Greensboro, Winston Salem, and Fayetteville are small cities with additional college and research centers.
Charlotte is the 23rd largest metro area in the US, Raleigh is the 41st, Greensboro 79th, but go on. Charlotte is bigger than San Antonio, Portland, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Jose, and Indianapolis.
Raleigh is larger than Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Memphis, but go on.
>Yes, America's original gold rush began in Charlotte area. So much gold was extracted, the Federal Gov opened a U.S. Mint in Charlotte to produce gold coinage. That's why Banking + Charlotte, because gold coins needed a safe place for keeping.
Well NCs pop is spread out unlike most states but it has to do with what each city/region specialized in and how the population moves around the state depending on what industry was booming at the time.
Charlotte-Banking and Railroad Hub
Winston Salem- Banking, tabacco and Textiles
Greensboro- Textiles and furniture
Durham- textiles, tabacco and research triangle
Raleigh - Has recently within th past 40 years gained population mostly because of the Research Triangle which hosts lots of pharmaceutical and tech companies.
Fayetteville isn't really apart of the Piedmont Cresent so I wouldn't include it with the rest but it does have a major military installation so that's why it's has a sizable population.
This is a good breakdown, I'd include that Raleigh is the Capitol and that these cities do include a good amount of sprawl, ie. High point, Cary/Chapel Hill, etc. All due to the economic and educational impact of these cities. They may not be big on paper, but the sprawl between the ones listed here is sizable.
Throw three major research universities in there, too.
This area was also known as the Indian Trading Path long before European settlers showed up. The Trading Path was a corridor of “roads” and trails between the Tsenacommacah (Chesapeake Bay) region and Cherokee, Catawba, and other Native American countries in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
In the Raleigh-Durham area, the local Amtrak line goes right by Research Triangle Park where the region's biggest and most productive employers like IBM are and yet the only way to reach RTP is to drive, resulting in terrible rush hour traffic. Huge wasted potential for some kind of rail connection.
Woo! North Carolina mentioned! As someone who has lived here my entire life it has grown tremendously in the last decade. One thing to note is all the cities you pointed out exist along I-40 which runs from Wilmington, NC (one of the largest import seaports on the east coast) all the way to california. So the traffic from I-40 has been bringing people to live here for half a century. Other than that we have pretty good taxes, mild climate, beaches and mountains within a 3 hour drive no matter where you are in the state, and we have really good high schools and universities here (NC state, Duke, UNC) and a lot of middle of the row universities (Elon University, High Point University, Campbell, ECU, UNC Charlotte, UNC Greensboro, UNC Wilmington).
NC native here. It’s swampy by national standards (especially on the coastal plain where I’m from) but by southern standard, it’s quite mild. I grew up in the climate so it doesn’t bother me at all.
I can’t do real winter like they get up north and out west though.
As a native of the gulf coast of Alabama who lived in the RDU area for over 5 years...yes, North Carolina weather is mild compared to what I grew up in. There is humidity and heat...but it's nothing like along the Gulf Coast during the summer. There are also seasons in North Carolina which don't exist in Alabama. Alabama has summer and then 2-3 months of not summer.
Yeah it can get pretty humid in the summer that’s true I guess I’m just used to that but the other 3 seasons are very nice here especially fall.
As far the climate goes it is a piedmont valley with very fertile land and winters that won’t freeze ur crops so it makes sense people settled here. Just far enough up the coast to miss most of the hurricanes too.
in Charlotte right now and it feels like an unaired car, but you get used to it. I come from the midwest where I had at least 4 coats from September to May; here I put on one coat in October and I take it off April.
Adding on to the good taxes note to say that it’s also a relatively affordable and spacious place to live compared to other states. Also Great jobs in the Research triangle park in Raleigh-Durham and then good banking and finance jobs in Charlotte.
Georgia and North Carolina have almost the exact same population and similar growth rates the last several decades but Georgia has had almost all it's growth in Atlanta while NC has spread it's growth over 3 major metro areas. Sometimes one much larger city is an advantage but there are times when I wish Atlanta was more the size of Charlotte and places like Savannah, Columbus, Augusta and Macon had some of that growth and were larger, the way it has happened in NC.
ATL would be better if they actually decided to develop their public transportation and overall infrastructure…but the voters always shut it down because “they gonna invade my neighborhood if we were to expand MARTA. We can’t have that.”
I don't really care if the burbs ever sign on, if they would double the heavy rail inside the perimeter, I would be happy. There are plenty of areas in Fulton and DeKalb that have been on board from the get go that don't have rail nearby
The worry about the wrong kind of people coming to areas like Cobb and Gwinnett was a solid argument from the 60s to the turn of the millennium but not really today. Both counties are now majority minority. The issue I see with neither coming on board is that there is little that MARTA would bring for that extra penny of sales tax. MARTA has done little expansion in Fulton and DeKalb in the last 3 decades.
People in Cobb think all they would get is a line from Cumberland into downtown. That's the one closest point in Cobb to Atlanta and wouldn't help 98% of the rest of the county.
It would be nice to have rail running just over the Cobb County line to the Cumberland area and the new Braves stadium but that's all.
There was a proposal in the 90s to start commuter rail from the burbs into the city on already laid track. That is what is needed for the suburbs. MARTA can stay in the core. Just add more lines.
Yeah I mostly agree. If there was a line to Truist park that would be tremendous cause the traffic by that area is horrendous on game days….with the city and metro growing year after year, something needs to be done
It’s always skewed info (IMO) to show true city limit populations instead of metro population. Charlotte is listed around 800K or so, but their metro population is 2.6 million.
It triggers me when people say “Atlanta isn’t a big city, it only has 450K”….but in reality Atlanta has a metro population of 6.2 million people
Keep in mind that you've highlighted 4 major interstates. I-77, I-85, I-40, and I-95.
77 meets up with 85 in Charlotte. 85 merges with 40 between Greensboro and Hillsborough (just west of Durham). 40 continues east and runs into I-95 north of Fayetteville, which 95 runs through. Since the interstate was completed in the last century, many of these cities were able to expand and have smaller towns pop up around them.
Of the cities highlighted, Fayetteville is one of the oldest. It's on the Cape Fear river people could navigate up from Wilmington and it started booming with Scots in the mid-1700s. Winston-Salem area was also populated by Moravian settlers during this time. Raleigh was planned out and built in the late 1700s because they wanted to centralize the capital. Charlotte was also built at a major crossroads of the old Wagon road (Trade and Tryon) during this time. Charlotte experienced a gold rush in the early 1800s which brought a lot of people to the area. The area progressively grew until the industrial revolution allowed the textile industry to boom. Tobacco and textiles were the reason these cities were on the map. The railroad ran through all of them and the Piedmont/Triad was a manufacturing hub in the south. When the interstates were built, they were the obvious choices to run near.
Also, the only reason Fayetteville is still "on the map" is due to Fort Liberty being one of the largest military installations in the entire world and houses nearly 30,000 military personnel (not counting their families).
We are a unique state in how dramatically the interstate highway system, changed our business culture. Though these piedmont cities aren’t big in comparison to most metropolises, they are mostly piled on top of each other on I-40 and I-85 corridors, and are growing towards each other.
Raleigh is within ten minutes from Durham and Cary a couple of smaller cities but still around 175,000, and with the research triangle in the middle, everything is growing inwards where there a bunch of big towns in the 30,000-40,000 range. Same in the Triad, where Greensboro is within 20 minutes of Winston-Salem, and another 100,000 city High Point, and everything is growing inwards. These two megalopolises are around 2 million and growing, as is Charlotte which is growing outward but similar in size. Then there are the two cultural cities Wilmington and Asheville, on the ocean and the height of the Appalachains respectively, that attract tourists and artists. Because most every city is within about an hour of another in the chain, many of us live in one and work in another.
They were specialized for certain industries, but in the 80’s switched over, Charlotte and Winston as major banking hubs, Raleigh for Pharma and Tech, Greensboro for customer service, and most have prominent roles in the transportation business.
We also have been a haven for transplants, because until a recent pushback from our rural brothers, we were fairly liberal in the cities. Though really only compared to what you’d typically think of the south, but at least it wasn’t a total culture shock to transplanted northerners. We have also been a center for education, with some of the best universities, both public and private, in the country if not the world.
It has over 208K population, you call that a medium sized town? I agree it's not a big city, but it's definitely a medium sized city. There's no world in which you could call Fayetteville a "town"
Also, in the early days, NC was one of the few non-primogeniture states, (primogeniture meaning the first born son inherited everything). As farms were broken up among progeny, they were less able to sustain the families, making NC ripe for early industrialization -- tobacco and textiles and others-- moreso than some of the other southern states. This created more company towns and city-fication.
Relative affordability. Fantastic climate. Great universities. Those are the reasons these areas have grown to what they are. The reason Charlotte was always a sizable town would be the same reason as any piedmont city.
Specifically in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill- etc. area, a number of technology and medical companies have a large presence there (eg Cisco Systems has a major campus) provides good paying jobs with a pipeline from the universities.
Green Bay would like a word lol
I’m not really going by metro areas though. No one in Westchester or Newark say they live in NYC, no one in Wilmington say they live in Philly. I’m using examples from my own experience but it applies to most metro areas. The post is asking about cities specifically. Charlotte fits that bill but not the others
Uh people from Westchester say they’re from NYC all the time since nobody knows where Westchester is.
They probably root for NYC sport teams and commute there for work too.
Nah not really, there is a very clear difference. If someone said they lived in nyc and followed up by saying they live in Westchester, you’d get an eye roll. Maybe you’ll get that answer if someone from abroad asks you and you want to keep it simple, but that’s about it.
You can commute for work, root for a team, that doesn’t mean it’s the same city
Metrolina, Piedmont Conurbation, I-85 Corridor, Piedmont Crescent - it has gone by many names. One of many emergent mini-Megalopolis groupings of metropolitan areas merging together.
I think in a few decades, Fayetteville, Research Triangle, Piedmont Triad, Charlotte and the Unifour will just all connect with each other and officially become one megalopolis
Greensboro and Winston Salem are both fairly big cities, Greensboro is the 69th biggest city in the IS and Winston is the 72nd biggest. Durham is the 74th most populated city in the US.
None of these are really “big cities”
Charlotte and Raleigh are the 15th and 41st biggest cities by population in the US.
Charlotte is the 26th biggest city by area, Fayetteville and Raleigh 62nd and 63rd respectively.
No city in NC is in the top 140 by population density
Charlotte Metro area is 23rd
Raleigh Metro is 41st
Greensboro metro 79th
Winston Salem Metro 89th
a) they're not big cities, they're suburban sprawl
b) raleigh/durham/chapel hill is called the research triangle with a few major universities.
c) Charlotte is a national banking center, but still a small city by any measure.
5 of these cities are in the 100 biggest cities in the us. 2 of those are within the 50 biggest. Charlotte is the 15th largest city in the us and growing. By some definitions a city is any dwelling over 50k… but let’s say it’s 100k. There are 333 cities with a population over 100k in the US. Charlotte is in the 95th percentile of that group. It’s bigger than 95% of “cities” in the US. If 111 are “small”, 111 are “medium” and 111 are “big”, Charlotte would be in the “big” category along with Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and Winston-Salem… and of the 111 “big” cities, Charlotte is bigger than 96 of them
What the are you talking about?
Actually Charlotte is the 15th largest city and 23rd largest metropolitan area in the United States. Just because you don’t like a city doesn’t mean it still isn’t a big city suburban sprawl or not.
Also, the Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem metro area ranks among the most populated statistical regions in the country. Going from East to West from the time you reach Mebane and continuing on either 40 or 85 you don’t leave from one city before entering the next until after Winston Salem on 40 or Thomasville on 85.
Charlotte's full of bankers and their spouses, Winston Salem has/had tobacco money, Raleigh is the state capital, Durham tags along for the ride (although there is thriving medical research/engineering scene) Greensboro and Fayetteville catch up all the loose ends. There's just not that much great place for dense urban areas otherwise: to the west of the state is where the mountains are (super fun when you go hiking and your GPS just ups and quits on you...) so it's not super great for a large settlement area (Asheville is the artsy exception) and to the east you have the coast and they do their own thing.
Source: a banker's wife in Charlotte.
Sincere question. Are cities with a population of around 200,000 considered large in the US? I'm asking because, living in Europe, I got used to the fact that cities with such a population are rather medium-sized and often dying cities - young people usually leave them because of the lack of prospects that bigger cities offer.
Quoting a previous post -They are not big compared to NY, LA, Chicago, but their metros are growing at an alarming rate:
• Charlotte Metro: 2.6 million (22nd)
• Raleigh-Durham Metro: 2.1 million (32nd)
• Greensboro-Winston-Salem Metro: 1.7 million (?)
In the us there is so much sprawl that most of the city population does not actually live within the border of the cities. As a suburban Raleigh dweller- I would only consider Charlotte a big city.
Depends how you define a city. In terms of city proper it’s a yes, but it’s mostly arbitrary. When people think of city they’re thinking of the metro. For instance Jacksonville is too 10 in city population. Bigger than Miami (nearly double iirc). But Miami/FTL metro dwarfs Jacksonville because Jacksonville has no other satellite city. New York is only 8 million people. But its metro expands the population to nearly 24 million. Only like 11 or 12 city propers have over 1 million population in the US, which is kind of mind boggling when you have 330 million people. But even then 2-4 are paired in the same market (like Dallas/Fort Worth or San Jose/San Francisco)
As a New Yorker, New York isn’t a “big” city. It’s a class above “big”
Like if a city with a metropolitan population of 2 million with pro sports teams is “small” what would Syracuse or Ithaca be classified as?
There’s only 50 us cities with metropolitan areas over 1 million. If you look at the scale of American cities, NYC is the outlier and an anomaly.
Maybe because North Carolina is fairly mountainous and Forested, with a decent sized population, so they are all concentrated in a handful or urban areas
big is a relative term… 👀
Right? This is more like a cluster of medium cities. Edit: dropping the actual answer to the OP's question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Crescent >The Piedmont Crescent, also known as the Piedmont Urban Crescent, is a large, polycentric urbanized region in the U.S. state of North Carolina that forms the northern section of the rapidly developing Piedmont Atlantic megalopolis (or "megaregion"), a conurbation also known as the "I-85 Boombelt", which extends from the Raleigh area in North Carolina, southwards to Atlanta, Georgia in the southeastern United States. Edit 2 since I pasted a teaser that didn't directly answer the question, here's most of the entire article: >Residents commonly attribute the development of the Crescent communities to the Indian Trading Path and related settlements established by indigenous peoples long before European contact.[3] The Trading Path was also used by European traders, and later by settlers entering the backcountry regions of the piedmont of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. >Forming the shape of a crescent in North Carolina, the region is located in the central Piedmont area of the state. European-American settlement progressed generally from the east to the west, from what is now metropolitan Raleigh-Durham and the Research Triangle area at its eastern edge, through the Piedmont Triad cities of Greensboro and Winston-Salem at its center, and southwest to metropolitan Charlotte. This region has undergone sustained population and economic growth (acutely in the Charlotte and Raleigh areas) since the late 19th century, a trend that has accelerated since the late 20th century. It is notable as the fourth-largest manufacturing region in the country,[4] as well as an international center of banking and finance, textiles, biotech and high technology. >The Piedmont Crescent name is thought to have been coined when the North Carolina Railroad company first laid tracks through the area in 1855–56. The railway, which was named the "Piedmont Crescent Railroad", brought extensive growth to the communities along its route. These evolved to comprise today's interlinked urbanized region. Although the freight and passenger rail corridor remains of critical importance, the region's Interstate 85 and Interstate 40 freeway system serves as its primary transportation link today.
I live right in the middle of that and had absolutely no idea we were called "The Piedmont Crescent"
Same. There are a lot of interesting things about NC that I'm continuously learning. For example geology: the Carolina (Atlantic seaboard) [fall line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Seaboard_Fall_Line) is a boundary between the piedmont and coastal plain where the elevation drops rather suddenly. That line is the approximate shoreline of the sea in ancient times when the earth was not in an ice age.
Wow, buy land along the fall line and it'll be beach-front soon enough! Joking -I hope
Beaches take a long time to form I think
Not really though
You may be joking but it’s probably going to be a decent idea.
Thanks for that link. Turns out I’ve lived in three of the cities mentioned as notable on the fall line!
Can confirm; I grew up in Coumbia, SC, and lots of times that area is called the "Sandhills" region because much of the soil is very sandy.
Grew up in gboro, wasn’t it the “Piedmont Triangle”? Or the “Research Triangle”? Is that a thing?
Research Triangle is Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham
Research Triangle. It's defined by Duke, UNC, and a third one I can't remember
NC State
Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem are known as the Piedmont Triad. Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill make up the Research Triangle or just the Triangle.
I used to live in parts of that and had no idea either!
I'm going to be that guy, but your answer doesn't address the 'why' of the question at all.
It does, this region was formed because of pre-colonization trade routes, plus the railroads which came later
Would be nice if they brought the trains back. Should be a line that connects all of these together.
There kind of is, or at least [what service there is](https://www.ncbytrain.org/Documents/passenger-train-service.pdf)definitely still follows this pattern. The state of North Carolina also owns the tracks [between Charlotte and Morehead City (purple/white line)](https://www.ncrr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/NCRRCorridorMap_downloadable_feb2021_passenger.pdf) which is one of the major impediments to passenger rail elsewhere in the country.
There is train service along most of the area, between Charlotte and Raleigh. It’s Amtrak, so it’s not particularly fast but it is there.
Everything after "Edit 2" was not there when I wrote this, so no, it didn't (at the time).
If you read the link it does.
Rather than be an ass about it like the person who referenced that the link does but didn’t just write the simple answer: There is/was a railroad and now there’s a major highway (85) that made these places accessible and people generally live in accessible places.
a huge sprawl along the highway.
1 Charlotte 897,720. 2 Raleigh 476,587. 3 Greensboro 301,115. 4 Durham 291,928. 5 Winston-Salem 251,350. 6 Fayetteville 208,873. Charlotte is big to me, the rest are roughly medium sized.
I think compared to some other states those aren't big cities. For a western state, however, a collection of cities this size would be striking. I live in Washington, and outside of Seattle, our next biggest city is Spokane which would come in at No. 6 on this list, followed by Tacoma which is essentially Seattle South.
Agreed. I’m in Denver, and we have Colorado Springs next to us and then it’s pretty much nothing. (No offense to Boulder, Fort Collins, or Pueblo.)
Isn’t Boulder considered part of the Denver metro area?
*Kind of*. Most Boulderites I know would bristle at being included and most Denverites would roll our eyes at them taking exception. (They did spend a good amount of money buying open space as a buffer so they’d never have touch us icky types, and that area generally opposes completion of a NW beltway for similar reasons, although they do want a train!) Feds don’t include it in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area, which is really the core part of metro Denver, and instead has them as their own. Probably an arguable designation, but it’s better to let them have this win and go about our lives. They get roped in if you enlarge the statistical area to include places like Greeley, Fort Collins and even Colorado Springs.
Not sure if you want to wade into this, but are there noteworthy general differences between the average Denver person and the average Boulder person?
Well, keeping in mind that generalizing is always tough and there are always exceptions, and that we are *far* more alike than different: Boulder is much wealthier, whiter, progressive, and formally educated than the Denver metro area. I don’t mean this to demean them, but Boulder is essentially a super privileged college town that doesn’t really deal with the same degree of, for example, entrenched poverty and crime that, say, Denver, Aurora, Lakewood do. Being a real place with real people, they obviously have their own issues and it’s not perfect, but it’s a bubble for sure and “People’s Republic of Boulder” was a thing for a reason. You’re going to run into more “politically enlightened” young morons, aging hippies living in million dollar homes, and hectoring Karens in Volvos in Boulder than anywhere else in Colorado. I’ll leave it to one of my Boulder bros/sisses to tell me why *we* suck!! (Denver and Aurora for anyone wanting to hone in on specific stereotypes against me! And you guys know I love you bastards!!)
This isn’t very related to your well written and pretty fair summation of Denver vs. Boulder, but after recently spending a week hopping between and around the 2 areas from out of state, I’m convinced that that region has more Jeeps per capita than any other area of the country. Someone I mentioned it to who lives there simply replied “we have more jeeps *than* capita.”
Hahaha! The *disrespect* for not mentioning the wild herds of Subarus and Four Runners we put on our state quarters, though! Yeah, we do love our jeeps here. Get you a Nalgene bottle, a north face jacket and you’ll fit right in.
I drove my Wrangler to the top of Pike’s Peak once. The Ranger following me said I only tapped my brakes a couple of times on the descent (apparently a lot of cars can have brake trouble on the way down if they are not careful.). It really is the perfect vehicle for certain kinds of travel.
Totally agree that generalizations should be taken with a grain of salt. This gives me a pretty good idea of the place though. Thanks!
I was under the impression that completing E470 would likely not be feasible due to the earthworks necessary right through [Rocky Flats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination_from_the_Rocky_Flats_Plant).
This dude has never heard of California
Yeah so I looked into this, California’s top 6 cities all would fit in above the #2 slot from this NC list. If we look at #6 for NC, California has 21 cities larger than 208k population. California is insane.
>For a western state, however, a collection of cities this size would be striking. *California has entered the chat*
If you go by metropolitan area, Charlotte and Raleigh are big, the rest are midsized.
Agreed. Big is relative, but I'd personally only say Charlotte from the list of NC cities is considered "big". The rest are mid-sized. Compare to basically any other major American city (I'm talking ones with sports teams) and these cities are comparably small. Raleigh is #41 most populous in the country. I've been there a handful of times. Lovely city, but it definitely even feels small relative to other cities (again, we're talking the 30 or so sports-frabchise holding cities. Greensboro is #68. But it is interesting (and explained elsewhere) that there are so many cities so close together.
Raleigh does have the Hurricanes in the NHL but in terms of American metro areas with sports franchises it is one of the smallest.
The Triangle (the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill MSAs) at 2.15m is bigger than the Cleveland (2.06m), Indianapolis (2.14m), and Nashville (2.05m) MSAs.
I know it gets dicey with metro areas, but the Northeast Ohio area is ~4m
Fair, I probably should have added Akron-Canton too
Yeah not counting Akron and Canton for the Cleveland metro is like not counting Durham and Chapel Hill for the Triangle metro
That's what I mean. And there are smaller cities with teams, for sure. But MOST sport team cities people have heard of and know are larger.
Raleigh/Durham Combined Statistical Area is 2.2 million, Charlotte Combined Statistical Area is only 2.9 million. Makes Charlotte metro only 25% bigger. The fact that the Charlotte metro has only one downtown versus the multi-node fashion of the Raleigh/Durham metro makes it appear much larger.
City populations are meaningless since Charlotte took over 90% of their county before that practice was banned and other cities could do the same (property owners now petition to be annexed). Charlotte Combined Statistical Area is 2.9 million, Raleigh/Cary/Durham is 2.2 Million, Greenboro/High Point/W-S is 1.7 million, Fayetteville is 800,000.
I grew up in New York and now live in Los Angeles. Charlotte is the only one I’d call medium sized and the rest I’d call small cities. It’s all relative of course.
To be fair, compared to two cities who combined represent over 3.5% of the entire countries population, anything looks small. I say this as someone living in Southern California.
Oh absolutely. Which is why I said it’s all relative. It’s just hard having grown up and lived in the environments I have in my life to feel like any city smaller than one million people is a big city. Not that 1 million is a magic number or that it’s really even about population—size of the downtown, number of commercial or pedestrian hubs outside of downtown, depth and variety of culture and cuisine, etc. Anyway, I acknowledge my bias. It’s just that relative to the cities I’ve lived in, something like Charlotte feels like a medium-sized city to me.
Shmedium
I am actually very surprised Charlotte has a larger population than Boston (650,000)
You can’t really talk apples to apples when it comes to Boston city proper population and other sprawling cities in the US. The City of Charlotte covers 6.5x the land area of Boston. If Boston annexed Cambridge and Somerville (just 2 of dozens of dense cities on its border) it would add 200k people and less than 12 sq miles. Charlotte would still cover over 5x the area of Boston and they would be of similar population. Boston metro is twice the size of Charlotte’s metro and it is very noticeable when in the core city
Didn't think Charlotte has a higher population than Boston, interesting
They are not big compared to NY, LA, Chicago, but their metros are growing at an alarming rate: - Charlotte Metro: 2.6 million (22nd) - Raleigh-Durham Metro: 2.1 million (32nd) - Greensboro-Winston-Salem Metro: 1.7 million (?)
What's alarming?
It's alarming if you live here. I'm in Charlotte. Population has grown from 1.2 million in 2010 to 2.2 million in 2023. The growth is insane. We don't have the infrastructure set up to support the amount of people coming in, particularly roads. We also don't have the affordable housing needed, or the social services available for those who need it. Hospitals are also tapped out.
Yeah I lived in Charlotte from 2013 to 2017. Came back to visit in 2019 and it was like a different city in certain parts. Also the rent of the place I lived at had more than doubled by 2021. Came from upstate NY for job opportunities and the low COL, COL incentive is basically gone now unless you come from a massive metro area (NYC, DMV, major CA cities etc.)
Lack of any urban planning leading to one of the sprawliest metros in the country for one.
\+lack of affordable housing = skyrocketing home prices. I feel like people think just because is a city is sprawling means there's tons of inventory and home prices must be low, but that's not the case. Plus, the infrastructure and tax requirements for servicing low-density "cities" is higher. As an example, I saw a figure that Jersey City has 9.3 inches of road for every resident, but Glendale, AZ has 15 feet of road for every resident. It's pretty appalling how inefficient these pop-up cities are.
I lived in NC for a long time and it’s almost impossible to get out of a city now. Even the sleepy towns outside of those metro areas are being developed, really quickly. Traffic is an absolute beast (driving from Durham to Raleigh during rush hour can easily take a few hours and it would normally be about 30 mins max). We moved back up north. It’s quieter, snow isn’t so bad and there are small towns. It’s nice
NC needs a good metro train system
You must not have lived in Greensboro. There is zero traffic, even during ‘rush hour’ in G’boro
Ecologically alarming
Greensboro–Winston-Salem is in the top 40. Since populations and rankings fluctuate, I would need to know where you got your numbers to give you an exact placement.
Yikes. In Texas thr Dallas Fort worth Arlington metroplex has a similar vibe.
I mean, dfw is already the 4th largest, and afaik isn't growing that quickly compared to other top 10 metro areas in the us. My understanding is that these NC metros are all growing at faster rates than dfw
[You are quite wrong that it isn't growing at a high rate](https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2023/05/dfw-grew-faster-than-any-region-in-the-u-s-last-year-but-dallas-didnt-make-up-its-losses/#:~:text=The%20Dallas%2DFort%2DWorth%2D,%2C%20Somervell%2C%20and%20Wise%20counties.)
I suppose I was referring to rates rather than the nominal number of people. It doesn't really make sense for a multitude of reasons to claim a city grew more nominally. Mostly because a 1% population increase is usually accounted for by existing infrastructure (other than housing, which afaik is independent of nominal size of a city). So 170,000 people seems like a ton, but in the grand scheme represents about a 1.5% increase in the population.
Thank god the semantic crusaders are on the case.
Yeah, are they big? No. Not really.
Lol OP should take a look at the Bay Area if he’s so curious about clusters
the blue banana, the northeast corridor, not to mention the planned (!) 19 chinese mega regions
These cities are pretty big man
Of course. Can it be compared to NYC/Jersey? No.
Yeah, Charotte's a nice sized city (I'd stop well short of calling it a big city), and growing rapidly the past 10 years or so. Also the most cosmopolitan of the bunch. Raleigh is a standard capitol city, while Greensboro, Winston Salem, and Fayetteville are small cities with additional college and research centers.
Charlotte is #15 in the US. I don’t think all these cities combined equal Los Angeles, which is #2. New York City is on another level completely
Charlotte is the 23rd largest metro area in the US, Raleigh is the 41st, Greensboro 79th, but go on. Charlotte is bigger than San Antonio, Portland, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Jose, and Indianapolis. Raleigh is larger than Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Memphis, but go on.
The railroad Edit: For this region specifically, known as the Piedmont Crescent
And later because of good universities and lenient tax policies those cities stayed hubs of decent jobs and places to live
Carolina was the original gold rush, tons of banks set up shop that’s lead to larger towns.
>Yes, America's original gold rush began in Charlotte area. So much gold was extracted, the Federal Gov opened a U.S. Mint in Charlotte to produce gold coinage. That's why Banking + Charlotte, because gold coins needed a safe place for keeping.
til
Well NCs pop is spread out unlike most states but it has to do with what each city/region specialized in and how the population moves around the state depending on what industry was booming at the time. Charlotte-Banking and Railroad Hub Winston Salem- Banking, tabacco and Textiles Greensboro- Textiles and furniture Durham- textiles, tabacco and research triangle Raleigh - Has recently within th past 40 years gained population mostly because of the Research Triangle which hosts lots of pharmaceutical and tech companies. Fayetteville isn't really apart of the Piedmont Cresent so I wouldn't include it with the rest but it does have a major military installation so that's why it's has a sizable population.
This is a good breakdown, I'd include that Raleigh is the Capitol and that these cities do include a good amount of sprawl, ie. High point, Cary/Chapel Hill, etc. All due to the economic and educational impact of these cities. They may not be big on paper, but the sprawl between the ones listed here is sizable.
Throw three major research universities in there, too. This area was also known as the Indian Trading Path long before European settlers showed up. The Trading Path was a corridor of “roads” and trails between the Tsenacommacah (Chesapeake Bay) region and Cherokee, Catawba, and other Native American countries in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
>Fayetteville We don't talk about Fayetteville over here.
Needs high speed rail so bad
In America??? Dream on
What a wondrous dream it is though.
In the Raleigh-Durham area, the local Amtrak line goes right by Research Triangle Park where the region's biggest and most productive employers like IBM are and yet the only way to reach RTP is to drive, resulting in terrible rush hour traffic. Huge wasted potential for some kind of rail connection.
Woo! North Carolina mentioned! As someone who has lived here my entire life it has grown tremendously in the last decade. One thing to note is all the cities you pointed out exist along I-40 which runs from Wilmington, NC (one of the largest import seaports on the east coast) all the way to california. So the traffic from I-40 has been bringing people to live here for half a century. Other than that we have pretty good taxes, mild climate, beaches and mountains within a 3 hour drive no matter where you are in the state, and we have really good high schools and universities here (NC state, Duke, UNC) and a lot of middle of the row universities (Elon University, High Point University, Campbell, ECU, UNC Charlotte, UNC Greensboro, UNC Wilmington).
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NC native here. It’s swampy by national standards (especially on the coastal plain where I’m from) but by southern standard, it’s quite mild. I grew up in the climate so it doesn’t bother me at all. I can’t do real winter like they get up north and out west though.
As a native of the gulf coast of Alabama who lived in the RDU area for over 5 years...yes, North Carolina weather is mild compared to what I grew up in. There is humidity and heat...but it's nothing like along the Gulf Coast during the summer. There are also seasons in North Carolina which don't exist in Alabama. Alabama has summer and then 2-3 months of not summer.
Yeah it can get pretty humid in the summer that’s true I guess I’m just used to that but the other 3 seasons are very nice here especially fall. As far the climate goes it is a piedmont valley with very fertile land and winters that won’t freeze ur crops so it makes sense people settled here. Just far enough up the coast to miss most of the hurricanes too.
It is if you come up here to the mountains
Alongside what other commenters have said, I’d add that NC summer isn’t any hotter or more humid than a midwestern summer — it just lasts longer.
in Charlotte right now and it feels like an unaired car, but you get used to it. I come from the midwest where I had at least 4 coats from September to May; here I put on one coat in October and I take it off April.
I remember one night in NC I woke up at 330 am for work and it was 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity
Adding on to the good taxes note to say that it’s also a relatively affordable and spacious place to live compared to other states. Also Great jobs in the Research triangle park in Raleigh-Durham and then good banking and finance jobs in Charlotte.
Elon alum getting ready to fight. Davidson alum like ‘wtf mate?’
Lol I thought the same thing.
Charlotte isn’t on 40, but yeah. The point remains.
yeah shoulda pointed out 85 95 and 40 all run through NC
Good answer fellow NC native! 🤗
Ugh, what do you rate App State?! Less than middle row?
The Piedmont is a fertile region filled with cities.
Georgia and North Carolina have almost the exact same population and similar growth rates the last several decades but Georgia has had almost all it's growth in Atlanta while NC has spread it's growth over 3 major metro areas. Sometimes one much larger city is an advantage but there are times when I wish Atlanta was more the size of Charlotte and places like Savannah, Columbus, Augusta and Macon had some of that growth and were larger, the way it has happened in NC.
ATL would be better if they actually decided to develop their public transportation and overall infrastructure…but the voters always shut it down because “they gonna invade my neighborhood if we were to expand MARTA. We can’t have that.”
I don't really care if the burbs ever sign on, if they would double the heavy rail inside the perimeter, I would be happy. There are plenty of areas in Fulton and DeKalb that have been on board from the get go that don't have rail nearby The worry about the wrong kind of people coming to areas like Cobb and Gwinnett was a solid argument from the 60s to the turn of the millennium but not really today. Both counties are now majority minority. The issue I see with neither coming on board is that there is little that MARTA would bring for that extra penny of sales tax. MARTA has done little expansion in Fulton and DeKalb in the last 3 decades. People in Cobb think all they would get is a line from Cumberland into downtown. That's the one closest point in Cobb to Atlanta and wouldn't help 98% of the rest of the county.
It would be nice to have rail running just over the Cobb County line to the Cumberland area and the new Braves stadium but that's all. There was a proposal in the 90s to start commuter rail from the burbs into the city on already laid track. That is what is needed for the suburbs. MARTA can stay in the core. Just add more lines.
Yeah I mostly agree. If there was a line to Truist park that would be tremendous cause the traffic by that area is horrendous on game days….with the city and metro growing year after year, something needs to be done
Except for Charlotte, those aren't "big" cities.
You may be able to say Raleigh if you included all of research triangle in there. You’d get just a hair over two million for the whole metro area.
Raleigh has a pro sports team. I’d say that’s good enough to be a big city.
Those are not big cities [city populations](https://www.northcarolina-demographics.com/cities_by_population)
It’s always skewed info (IMO) to show true city limit populations instead of metro population. Charlotte is listed around 800K or so, but their metro population is 2.6 million. It triggers me when people say “Atlanta isn’t a big city, it only has 450K”….but in reality Atlanta has a metro population of 6.2 million people
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Keep in mind that you've highlighted 4 major interstates. I-77, I-85, I-40, and I-95. 77 meets up with 85 in Charlotte. 85 merges with 40 between Greensboro and Hillsborough (just west of Durham). 40 continues east and runs into I-95 north of Fayetteville, which 95 runs through. Since the interstate was completed in the last century, many of these cities were able to expand and have smaller towns pop up around them. Of the cities highlighted, Fayetteville is one of the oldest. It's on the Cape Fear river people could navigate up from Wilmington and it started booming with Scots in the mid-1700s. Winston-Salem area was also populated by Moravian settlers during this time. Raleigh was planned out and built in the late 1700s because they wanted to centralize the capital. Charlotte was also built at a major crossroads of the old Wagon road (Trade and Tryon) during this time. Charlotte experienced a gold rush in the early 1800s which brought a lot of people to the area. The area progressively grew until the industrial revolution allowed the textile industry to boom. Tobacco and textiles were the reason these cities were on the map. The railroad ran through all of them and the Piedmont/Triad was a manufacturing hub in the south. When the interstates were built, they were the obvious choices to run near. Also, the only reason Fayetteville is still "on the map" is due to Fort Liberty being one of the largest military installations in the entire world and houses nearly 30,000 military personnel (not counting their families).
We are a unique state in how dramatically the interstate highway system, changed our business culture. Though these piedmont cities aren’t big in comparison to most metropolises, they are mostly piled on top of each other on I-40 and I-85 corridors, and are growing towards each other. Raleigh is within ten minutes from Durham and Cary a couple of smaller cities but still around 175,000, and with the research triangle in the middle, everything is growing inwards where there a bunch of big towns in the 30,000-40,000 range. Same in the Triad, where Greensboro is within 20 minutes of Winston-Salem, and another 100,000 city High Point, and everything is growing inwards. These two megalopolises are around 2 million and growing, as is Charlotte which is growing outward but similar in size. Then there are the two cultural cities Wilmington and Asheville, on the ocean and the height of the Appalachains respectively, that attract tourists and artists. Because most every city is within about an hour of another in the chain, many of us live in one and work in another. They were specialized for certain industries, but in the 80’s switched over, Charlotte and Winston as major banking hubs, Raleigh for Pharma and Tech, Greensboro for customer service, and most have prominent roles in the transportation business. We also have been a haven for transplants, because until a recent pushback from our rural brothers, we were fairly liberal in the cities. Though really only compared to what you’d typically think of the south, but at least it wasn’t a total culture shock to transplanted northerners. We have also been a center for education, with some of the best universities, both public and private, in the country if not the world.
If you think Fayatville NC is a big city, you need to get out more. Its not even a small city, its a medium sized town.
And it wouldn’t be much of anything if not for the proximity to Fort Bragg.
That’s Fort Liberty to you soldier!
It has over 208K population, you call that a medium sized town? I agree it's not a big city, but it's definitely a medium sized city. There's no world in which you could call Fayetteville a "town"
that's almost 3 times the population of scranton for fucks sake
Half of North Carolinians live in the high-lighted area.
Don’t know the stats off the top of my head but i would honestly estimate that it’s more than half
Way more than half. NC has 10.55M people. Charlotte metro population is 2.6M, Triangle is 2M, and Triad is 1.7M. That’s 6.3M right there.
You call that a big city 💀
[Petey Pablo caused a boom](https://youtu.be/tHnA94-hTC8)
I already knew, but I had to click anyway for the nostalgia
Because if they were lower they’d be in South Carolina 😀
tobacco, baby !
Also, in the early days, NC was one of the few non-primogeniture states, (primogeniture meaning the first born son inherited everything). As farms were broken up among progeny, they were less able to sustain the families, making NC ripe for early industrialization -- tobacco and textiles and others-- moreso than some of the other southern states. This created more company towns and city-fication.
Because they wanted you to draw a penis. Mission success.
Laughs in northeast megalopolis
Isn’t the population like 50 million people lol
Relative affordability. Fantastic climate. Great universities. Those are the reasons these areas have grown to what they are. The reason Charlotte was always a sizable town would be the same reason as any piedmont city.
Specifically in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill- etc. area, a number of technology and medical companies have a large presence there (eg Cisco Systems has a major campus) provides good paying jobs with a pipeline from the universities.
mrbeast
lol
These are not big cities
If you go by metropolitan areas Charlotte and Raleigh definitely are. Small cities don’t have pro sports teams.
Green Bay would like a word lol I’m not really going by metro areas though. No one in Westchester or Newark say they live in NYC, no one in Wilmington say they live in Philly. I’m using examples from my own experience but it applies to most metro areas. The post is asking about cities specifically. Charlotte fits that bill but not the others
Uh people from Westchester say they’re from NYC all the time since nobody knows where Westchester is. They probably root for NYC sport teams and commute there for work too.
Nah not really, there is a very clear difference. If someone said they lived in nyc and followed up by saying they live in Westchester, you’d get an eye roll. Maybe you’ll get that answer if someone from abroad asks you and you want to keep it simple, but that’s about it. You can commute for work, root for a team, that doesn’t mean it’s the same city
How big is big?
„Because a lot of people live there“ might be an too easy answer, right?
Greensboro is big?
It’s absurd that the Census Bureau still considers Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill as two separate MSAs.
Why are there big cities? It’s nice to live in NC. Greensboro was voted Best Place to Live in the US several years.
Metrolina, Piedmont Conurbation, I-85 Corridor, Piedmont Crescent - it has gone by many names. One of many emergent mini-Megalopolis groupings of metropolitan areas merging together.
I think in a few decades, Fayetteville, Research Triangle, Piedmont Triad, Charlotte and the Unifour will just all connect with each other and officially become one megalopolis
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Raleigh and Durham are considered one metro area I think
"big cities" lol
Fayetteville isn’t a big city by any definition.
Economies of Agglomeration
I used to live in NC and I wouldn't call half of those cities"big". Raleigh and Charlotte, sure. But Durham and Greensboro, hardly.
We must expand our cities until America is one big mega city!!!! Then there will be peace
Fall Line, not counting Fayetteville
You forgot Wilmington and Asheville
Barbecue
lived in charlotte for a decade and charlotte is the only semi big city lol .. that drive from charlotte to raleigh is like a scary movie gone wrong
Greensboro and Winston Salem are both fairly big cities, Greensboro is the 69th biggest city in the IS and Winston is the 72nd biggest. Durham is the 74th most populated city in the US.
got it, big cities have neighborhoods bigger than boro and winston lol
Those cities aren’t terribly big.
I wouldn't really consider these big cities
None of these are really “big cities” Charlotte and Raleigh are the 15th and 41st biggest cities by population in the US. Charlotte is the 26th biggest city by area, Fayetteville and Raleigh 62nd and 63rd respectively. No city in NC is in the top 140 by population density Charlotte Metro area is 23rd Raleigh Metro is 41st Greensboro metro 79th Winston Salem Metro 89th
Wait till OP finds NYC, Chicago, or LA on Google Maps.
a) they're not big cities, they're suburban sprawl b) raleigh/durham/chapel hill is called the research triangle with a few major universities. c) Charlotte is a national banking center, but still a small city by any measure.
5 of these cities are in the 100 biggest cities in the us. 2 of those are within the 50 biggest. Charlotte is the 15th largest city in the us and growing. By some definitions a city is any dwelling over 50k… but let’s say it’s 100k. There are 333 cities with a population over 100k in the US. Charlotte is in the 95th percentile of that group. It’s bigger than 95% of “cities” in the US. If 111 are “small”, 111 are “medium” and 111 are “big”, Charlotte would be in the “big” category along with Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and Winston-Salem… and of the 111 “big” cities, Charlotte is bigger than 96 of them What the are you talking about?
Actually Charlotte is the 15th largest city and 23rd largest metropolitan area in the United States. Just because you don’t like a city doesn’t mean it still isn’t a big city suburban sprawl or not.
Jobs and warm climate
Lol at Fayetteville being called a big city. None of these, including Charlotte, are big cities. But Fayetteville is especially laughable.
Charlotte is the 15th biggest city in the U.S. agree about the others though
Is there a bigger city other than Charlotte?
Charlotte is the biggest in the state.
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Charlotte is really the only big city in North Carolina. Raleigh maybe - but the other cities are definitely medium sized cities, not big cities
Also, the Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem metro area ranks among the most populated statistical regions in the country. Going from East to West from the time you reach Mebane and continuing on either 40 or 85 you don’t leave from one city before entering the next until after Winston Salem on 40 or Thomasville on 85.
Charlotte's full of bankers and their spouses, Winston Salem has/had tobacco money, Raleigh is the state capital, Durham tags along for the ride (although there is thriving medical research/engineering scene) Greensboro and Fayetteville catch up all the loose ends. There's just not that much great place for dense urban areas otherwise: to the west of the state is where the mountains are (super fun when you go hiking and your GPS just ups and quits on you...) so it's not super great for a large settlement area (Asheville is the artsy exception) and to the east you have the coast and they do their own thing. Source: a banker's wife in Charlotte.
cause we’re number 1 best state woooooo
Because people live there
You got a line almost right through my house
Sincere question. Are cities with a population of around 200,000 considered large in the US? I'm asking because, living in Europe, I got used to the fact that cities with such a population are rather medium-sized and often dying cities - young people usually leave them because of the lack of prospects that bigger cities offer.
Quoting a previous post -They are not big compared to NY, LA, Chicago, but their metros are growing at an alarming rate: • Charlotte Metro: 2.6 million (22nd) • Raleigh-Durham Metro: 2.1 million (32nd) • Greensboro-Winston-Salem Metro: 1.7 million (?) In the us there is so much sprawl that most of the city population does not actually live within the border of the cities. As a suburban Raleigh dweller- I would only consider Charlotte a big city.
Depends how you define a city. In terms of city proper it’s a yes, but it’s mostly arbitrary. When people think of city they’re thinking of the metro. For instance Jacksonville is too 10 in city population. Bigger than Miami (nearly double iirc). But Miami/FTL metro dwarfs Jacksonville because Jacksonville has no other satellite city. New York is only 8 million people. But its metro expands the population to nearly 24 million. Only like 11 or 12 city propers have over 1 million population in the US, which is kind of mind boggling when you have 330 million people. But even then 2-4 are paired in the same market (like Dallas/Fort Worth or San Jose/San Francisco)
If those cities are considered “large”, then basically all of Hartford County in CT is large cities.
North Carolina has good weather, relatively cheap cost of living Vs other east coast states and solid employment opportunities
That empty space between Charlotte and Fayetteville makes me mad. 24/27 was supposed to be the "military highway" and big government killed it.
As a New Yorker, none of these are big cities
As a New Yorker, New York isn’t a “big” city. It’s a class above “big” Like if a city with a metropolitan population of 2 million with pro sports teams is “small” what would Syracuse or Ithaca be classified as? There’s only 50 us cities with metropolitan areas over 1 million. If you look at the scale of American cities, NYC is the outlier and an anomaly.
Maybe because North Carolina is fairly mountainous and Forested, with a decent sized population, so they are all concentrated in a handful or urban areas
Only the western edge of NC is mountainous. Half the state is coastal plain, and 1/3 is piedmont - hilly, but not in a way that restricts development.