North Carolina benefits from being an outlier of major population centers. The cost of living and doing business is lower than the bigger urban areas but shipping and transportation costs to access the larger populations are still low enough to make location in NC a net benefit. And, with all due respect to the zealot new urbanists, many choose to live the lifestyle vs crowded and expensive cities. With modern technology and transportation, it isn't necessary to be in NYC or Chicago to be efficient.

The triangle grows because it values education and provides a high quality educated work force for high paying jobs. Charlotte has banking, and access to capital is a major growth catalyst. Those are things OKC needs to emphasize..education at all levels as a priority and availability of investment capital. We need to leverage our natural resources while we have them and invest back into growth....not keep cutting as per tea partiests. There is a time to save and a time to invest. This is a time in OK and OKCs history we need to invest so we can save when we really need to.