Raleigh/Cary and Durham Metro population data since 1970

[rnc2mbfl]

Originally Posted by Sherifftruman

Ok I went and found the original publication this is from, here: https://cdm16062.contentdm.oclc.org/...oll9/id/334541

This is super interesting to me and wow, they really did totally miss the boat on western wake. By a factor of 10 for the most part across the board.

Thanks for posting this!

That's very interesting and thanks for sharing it with us.
Other than totally missing the boat on suburban Wake County, some other observations:

1. They pretty much nailed Chapel Hill/Carrboro combined estimate for 2020 on the low end estimate.
2. Oddly, they pretty much nailed Orange County's 2020 number if you go with their high end estimate.
3. They seem to have done the best estimating for Durham. Both the city and the county fall between their high and low projections.
4. When you consider that the 1.14M was the high estimate for the Triangle in 2020, they REALLY underestimated overall growth of the metro.
5. While they did project that Cary would be Raleigh's largest suburb, they also estimated that Garner would be its second largest. That was a complete miss.
6. They really blew it on Wake County's projection for 2020. Even if you add the low and high estimate together, you are still lower than the actual 2020's Census count. I guess it w really difficult to imagine how much Wake would grow.

All in all, Wake has particularly outgrown projections from all sorts of sources. Even as Wake was passing Mecklenburg a few years ago, NC demographers will still showing Meck staying larger than Wake for decades to come.

[paytonc]

The most striking thing about the map is its accuracy, considering it's 53 years old: at very first glance, it looks like it could be current. It's only when looking closer that you realize a bunch of things that are off.

The biggest is this:

Originally Posted by toot68

Construction on Jordan Lake started 4 years after this and Falls Lake 9 years later.

Considering how much this region has grown, we've been pretty well supplied with water by these two large reservoirs. They may have underestimated how much driving we'd be doing today, but they did get the water needs right. This is also one of the earlier maps I'd seen with the "Crabtree Creek Watershed Lakes" shown - the series of parks and lakes dotting west and north Wake, from Bond Lake to Shelley Lake.

Originally Posted by rnc2mbfl

It's also interesting to see that growth was expected to be more symmetrical/balanced between Raleigh and Durham, and that was not an unreasonable presumption at that time. All in all, Wake's growth potential was really underestimated.

Yes, the imbalance between Durham and Wake probably couldn't have been foreseen then, though by the 1980s (by my recollection) Wake was definitely on a faster trajectory.

Much of the book is given over to soil surveys, which is a factor most non-geologists and non-farmers don't give much thought to. But it amply pointed out that RTP sits within the Triassic Basin, whose poor drainage made it unsuitable for farming or septic systems - but fine for cities with sewerage. Though... if the goal was to pave over (in a sense) the Triassic Basin, why not push growth to West Cary earlier?