Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I think Pennsylvania and California have a clear winner, but a very prominent runner-up.
I would also include North Carolina in the domination debatable category. Charlotte dominates as a city, but by metro area Raleigh is very close on many metrics.
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The weird thing about North Carolina is that the next two rungs down the urban ladder are both multi-nodal urban areas with three cities apiece. Raleigh manages to steal most of the thunder from the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill conglomeration, but Durham still keeps it from speaking as loudly as it could. Meanwhile, Greensboro somewhat dominates the Triad metro area by default, but Winston-Salem, itself a melding of two separate towns, keeps it from reaching its apex. I really wonder what it's like in some alternate universe where Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, plus Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point all grew as two single urban entities. I'm going to guess they'd be a lot like Charlotte, just with some soul and character, considering how much history survives in all six of those cities. Although, considering the educational resources that you find in those six cities, including such heavyweights as Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem and Duke, NC State, and UNC-Chapel Hill in the Triangle, that either of those imaginary single cities would probably be pretty comparable to Boston.