A group of Purdue engineering students found that it takes 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but it turns out getting to Raleigh’s true geographic center isn’t as easy.
Ryan Cooper, a Geographic Information System (GIS) analyst with the City of Raleigh Parks Dept., sat down with his spatial software to try + get to the bottom of finding Raleigh’s center after his friend Jed Byrne posed the question on Twitter.
The answer he found might surprise you — it’s not downtown, and it’s not even inside the beltline. Ryan determined the center of Raleigh lies in North Hills, somewhere around 400 Dartmouth Rd.
The reason that he couldn’t pinpoint one exact location with full confidence is because the JavaScript tool he was using had 3 different algorithms for defining the center. He applied each different algorithm + each came up with a slightly different center, though all very close to each other in the same general area of North Hills.
You can see his full report + the explanation of his work here.
What area in Raleigh is the center of your universe? Tag us on social media @RALtoday and let us know.