Cone on Guilford Metro

I read with interest Ed Cone's editorial in the Sunday News and Record contrasting "Triadism" and" Guilfordism." Though I am not a native North Carolinian and may not have credibility to speak to this subject, I think Ed is dead on. By all appearances the real population/metro entity is one that has the airport at the center, and spreads east to Alamance County, and southeast into Davidson or even Lexington County, and including northern Randolf County. I think "metro-Guilford" is a good name for it since the fact is that Guilford has the bulk of the population and the predominance of transportation hubs.

Now, I like Winston Salem. They have a very cool downtown. I love Old Salem, and I dig Wake Forrest. But in going to Winston from here one definitely leaves one center of population and development and enters another. And Winston Salem has a whole different flavor and feel. Our college systems are quite separated from each other. And Forsyth County has it's own growing metro region.

The government definitions of metropolitan regions (and the names for them) change, and as Ed pointed out, that whole "metro area" thing is a mental construct anyway, and I think especially is rather arbitrary in our case. It would seem to me that it would be fruitful and efficient to focus economic incentives and economic planning in a way that complement the actual on ground reality. Work with what's there, not what isn't there. And it seems to me as well that the real progress that needs to made now regards the partnership between Greensboro and High Point. It is unusual anywhere in the country outside of the super metro regions to have two towns of this size in the same county, and as Ed points out they are now pretty much blending together as one while yet remaining distinct entities.

As a note, I was on top of Moore's Knob at Hanging Rock State Park last Sunday - that very windy day - and it was the first time I was able to see clearly Winston Salem, High Point, and Greensboro with fairly low power binoculars. Often when Greensboro is visible from atop Moore's knob it is very late in the day when the sun is setting with the light bouncing off the glass buildings. Anyway, the point of this is that the difference and distance geographically between "Greensboro/High Point" on the one hand and "Winston Salem" on the other is quite marked looking from afar.

Joel