There's a cool graph at the Institute for Emerging Issues that shows changes in North Carolina counties from 1970 through 2030. The categories are population, population density and per capita income. What's really cool about the graph is that you can set it to play and it shows you how each county has changed in relation to the others over time. So you can see that a handful of "urban" counties were pretty much clustered together in terms of population in 1970, with Mecklenburg having 350,000 residents, Guilford 290,000, Wake 230,000, Forsyth 220,000 and Cumberland 210,000. Then in the 80s and 90s Mecklenburg and Wake literally exploded in population and that trend is expected to continue so that by 2030 Mecklenburg will have 1.39 million people and Wake will have 1.46 million people. Compare that to 590,000 for Guilford and 440,000 for Forsyth and I'd say we'll be living in a bucolic paradise by comparison.
and compare that to today:
and 2030:
Things don't seem to be trending well for Forsyth, huh? Actually that's kind of simplistic thinking because you also have to take into account cost of living and I suspect that if Mecklendburg and Wake have almost 1.5 million residents apiece the cost of living there will be sky high. Of course that helps explain why the income for some smaller population counties like Orange and Chatham are expected to be higher than the counties like Guilford and Forsyth; work in Wake but commute from a more sedate county like Chatham (sedate being a relative term). Huh, sounds a lot like the Northern Virginia I left five years ago.
