Looking for family fun? Raleigh ranks 43rd best city in U.S., Durham 77th

RALEIGH – Raleigh’s the fifth most affordable U.S. city for families—but lags in other important categories, resulting in an overall ranking of 43rd, according to a new analysis from WalletHub.

The study, which measured 46 different metrics to assess how family-friendly a city would be, found that Raleigh’s educational environment and child care environment was 111th in the nation. And the City of Oaks ranked even lower when it came to a category measured by WalletHub that tracked “family fun,” finishing 142nd in that category.

Meanwhile, Charlotte ranked 58th overall and first in the nation for playgrounds per capita, while Durham ranked 77th overall and first in the nation for the city’s unemployment rate, according to the analysis.

Still, economic opportunity for teenagers and early career professionals is high in the Triangle and in Charlotte.

While Raleigh ranked 37th in the country for summer employment opportunities, both Raleigh and Durham recently appeared ranked in the top 20 cities in the United States for obtaining an early career job opportunity. And LinkedIn recently ranked the Triangle and Charlotte areas among the top four regions in the country for entry-level workers to launch a career.

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Other NC cities

Winston-Salem ranked 129th and 11th for pedestrian friendliness, its highest individual metric ranking among those included in the study. Meanwhile, Greensboro ranked 132nd overall and 18th for the total acreage of parkland per capita.

The only other North Carolina city included in the analysis was Fayetteville, which ranked 176th overall, which is the 7th worst overall ranking of any of the 182 cities analyzed, despite Fayetteville ranking 7th best in the nation for the city’s underemployment rate.

But each of these areas could see improvement, particularly in the measures pertaining to health, Dr. Anne York, a professor and program director at Meredith College, told WRAL TechWire.

“If North Carolina became one of the states that passed the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion, our health rankings would likely improve,” said Dr. York.

Wilmington was not analyzed in the WalletHub survey, but recently jumped in a rankings index for best performing cities and appeared among the top 80 regions across the globe for its startup ecosystem, and second-best globally for cities of similar size.

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Behind Raleigh’s ranking

Raleigh outperformed its rankings in several of the metrics tracked by WalletHub, including cost of living, parkland acreage per capita, and the number of mini golf locations per capita. The city’s air quality ranking also outperformed its overall ranking, at 34th, and the city also ranked 38th for the number of pediatricians per capita.

But the city ranked among the bottom half in the nation when it comes to infant mortality rate, the share of uninsured children, the rate of family homelessness, the cost of childcare and the number of childcare workers per total number of children under the age of 14, walkability, and bicycle mobility score. The city also took hits on measures of “ideal weather” and water quality, as well as the city’s access to healthy foods.

And though the city ranked 10th overall in a measure of cost of living, and 5th overall in the study’s affordability category, the city ranked 56th when it came to housing affordability. Across the Triangle, the Triangle Multiple Listing Service’s housing affordability index is at an all time low.

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What’s at stake

“As shelter is an essential human need and as housing already differs from normal economic goods and normal economic markets, ordinary people find themselves being squeezed,” said John Quinterno, a professor at Duke University. “More and more of their income is consumed by housing costs, which limits what they can spend on other items or services.”

“Even if the Triangle is performing relatively better or is seemingly more “affordable” than other metro areas,” said Quinterno, “The current trajectory that we are on may be beneficial for people who own assets like housing, but it isn’t desirable for the community as a whole.”

When housing costs rise, younger people in professional roles may seek to live elsewhere, or families may seek to move to different suburban or exurban communities, Quinterno noted.

It’s not just the cost of homeownership that’s on the rise. The cost of renting an apartment is up in the region, including by nearly 20% in Wake County.

Triangle’s apartment crunch worsens – vacancy down, and price of rent jumps 20%

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the typical American, on average, moves about a dozen times. But with a reshuffling of work place and work space due to a changed workplace environment following the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, that trend may be accelerated as an increasing number of professional workers choose to work remotely or in a hybrid work environment, allowing them to move to other places.

“These dynamics also lead to displacement and impose real burdens on workers in service or supporting jobs that pay less and can’t work remotely,” said Quinterno. “Those people likely will be pushed to live farther and farther away from the urban cores, resulting in longer commutes and more environmental damage. These dynamics also fray civic bonds.”

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Behind Durham’s ranking

The City of Medicine ranks 77th overall, according to the WalletHub analysis on family-friendliness. But Durham ranks 131st among measures of health and safety in the study.

Consider: the City of Durham ranks 160th for water quality, 106th for access to healthy foods, 131st for pediatricians per capita, 114th for family homelessness, and 151st for the percentage of uninsured children. And the city also ranks 124th for infant mortality, 101st for pedestrian fatality rates, and 106th for driving fatalities per capita. In the metric that measures violent crimes per capita, Durham ranks 134th, and on property crime per capita, the city ranks 129th.

And, similar to Raleigh, the city ranks 105th for child care costs and 120th for the number of childcare workers per the total number of children under age 14.

There are measures where Durham outperforms its overall ranking, and outperforms other North Carolina cities. Durham ranks 13th for summer learning opportunities and 19th for cost of living. And the city ranks first in the nation for its unemployment rate, measuring 3.0% in the WalletHub analysis. The city has one of the nation’s best COVID vaccination rates, and is seen as the 33rd best city for sports fans.

Still, a recent index tracking the nation’s best performing regions ranked the Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan statistical area 11th best in the nation, up 32 spots from the prior ranking, while Raleigh’s rank fell.