The Research Triangle: From Tobacco Road to Global Prominence 9780812207514

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Metropolitan Portraits explores the contemporary metropolis in its diverse blend of past and present. Each volume describes a North American urban region in terms of historical experience, spatial configuration, culture, and contemporary issues. Books in the series are intended to promote discussion and understanding of metropolitan North America at the start of the twenty-first century.

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THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE From Tobacco Road to Global Prominence W I L L I A M

M .

R O H E

University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

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Copyright  2011 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rohe, William M. The Research Triangle : from Tobacco Road to global prominence / William M. Rohe.—1st ed. p. cm.— (Metropolitan portraits) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4343-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.). 2. Research Triangle Park (N.C.)— History. 3. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.)—Economic conditions. 4. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.)—Social conditions. 5. Regional planning—North Carolina—Research Triangle Park Region. I. Title. II. Series: Metropolitan portraits. F262.R27R64 2011 975.6⬘55—dc22

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For Jamie, Devon, and Kyla, who make my world go around

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c o n t e n t s

Preface

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Introduction 1 1

Early History

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2

The Birth of the Research Triangle Metropolitan Area 61

3

Population Growth and Its Impact

4

The Evolving Research Triangle Economy 139

5

Urban Development and Planning 177

6

Where Are We Headed? 235

93

Notes 249 Index 281

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p r e f a c e

All the books in the Metropolitan Portraits series reflect the backgrounds and interests of their authors. This book reflects my background as a professor of city and regional planning and my interests in urban development and redevelopment. My desire was to write a book that would provide both academic and nonacademic readers a broad understanding of the area, including its fascinating history, the key projects that resulted in the development of the metropolitan area, the explosive population growth and diversification of the area, the transformation of the area’s economy, and the physical development and planning of the area. As a professor of planning I also wanted to offer a critique of the growth and development of the area and contribute ideas as to what needs to happen for the area to continue to be an attractive place to live and do business. In my initial broad thinking about the book, I wanted to convey two key ideas. The first is that the Research Triangle, more than most other areas, has been the product of ambitious publicprivate planning and development initiatives. It did not just develop on its own, it was created, and it continues to be created. The second idea is that the local public, nonprofit, and private leaders are striving to create a world-class region. I do not mean to suggest that the region has necessarily achieved world-class status, only that that is the goal being pursued by area leaders. Given the breadth of this book, I had to leave out a lot. Each chapter could easily be the subject of one or more books. I

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apologize in advance to those who feel that their contribution, their issues, or their community was ignored or given short shrift. The shape of a metropolitan area is the result of a large number of individual actions. One of my particular regrets is that I was unable to identify and acknowledge many individuals who have made important contributions to the development of the area. I hope others will be moved to delve more deeply into their contributions to the area. There is so much more that can and should be written about the Research Triangle. Many people provided valuable assistance in producing this book. I want to thank Judith Martin and Bob Lockhart for developing the Metropolitan Portraits series and for offering me the opportunity to write about the Research Triangle. Judith also provided valuable editorial comments on each chapter of the book. Her enthusiasm and encouragement are greatly appreciated. Executive Assistant Debra Hill of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill also provided valuable assistance in transcribing interviews, digitizing excerpts, and editing and commenting on this book. Several very capable graduate students provided research assistance: Matt Dudick, Alice Gugelmann, Katharine Hebert, Kevin Neary, Kate Newman, Audrey Stewart, and Beverly Wilson. Finally, I would like to thank the following local leaders and astute observers who offered their knowledge and insights in the interviews I conducted for this book: Ted Abernathy, David Bonk, Jim Goodmon, Charles Hayes, John Hodges-Copple, Jonathan Howes, David King, Sydney Miller, Dave Moreau, Elisabeth Rooks, Pearson Stewart, Tony Waldrop, Pam Wall, Rick Weddle, Jesse White, Smedes York, and Ted Zoller.

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Introduction The Research Triangle area, defined here as the seven counties that form the Raleigh-Cary and Durham–Chapel Hill metropolitan statistical areas in North Carolina, offers an intriguing metropolitan growth case study. First, it is a relatively new metro, having largely developed over the past fifty years. So its growth represents more contemporary, rather than historical, circumstances and actions. Second, over the past two decades the Research Triangle has been one of the fastest growing areas in the United States: in 1960 the combined population of the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan statistical areas was 238,000; by 2009 it was almost 1.7 million. Between 2000 and 2009 the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area was the second fastest-growing in the country. The Research Triangle metro thus presents an excellent opportunity to examine the impacts of rapid population growth.1 Third, the Research Triangle area has received multiple accolades as one of the country’s best places to live and do business. It is a place that has grown rapidly but has managed, so far, to maintain a reputation for offering a high quality of life. What explains the success of the Research Triangle and what are its prospects for the future?

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Figure 1. Research Triangle metropolitan area (map by Peter Zambito).

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE The Research Triangle is different from most other metropolitan areas in several interesting and important ways. It was not formed by the largely market-driven expansion of population and development from a single large central city, such as Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, San Diego, and most other U.S. metropolitan areas. Rather, the Research Triangle’s growth is largely the result of a public and private planned research park and related investments in transportation infrastructure. There has been a level of intentionality in the development of the Research Triangle that surpasses that of other metropolitan areas.

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The Research Triangle’s key historical event was the creation of the Research Triangle Park (RTP) on four thousand acres of ‘‘scrub pine and opossums’’ located between the communities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—each town home to a major research university. This planned intervention was primarily responsible for the area’s rapid growth and melding the surrounding towns into a metropolitan area. The RTP is currently home to 145 businesses and other organizations with a total of thirty-nine thousand employees. Major businesses include IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco Systems, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The park is also home to Research Triangle Institute International (RTI), the nation’s second largest independent nonprofit research organization. The local importance of the RTP is underscored by the use of the name ‘‘the Research Triangle’’ to refer to the area. Most other metros are named after their dominant city such as the Portland metro or Chicagoland. This book explores the circumstances and people behind the creation of the RTP and its role in the region’s physical and social development. It addresses such questions as: What led to the RTP’s creation? What contributed to its success? How has it shaped the region? And what role does it play in the lives of people who live in the metropolitan area? Another distinct feature of this metropolitan area is that it is composed of distinct cities and towns with very different histories, economies, and personalities. Among the larger cities, Raleigh is the oldest with an estimated 2009 population of approximately 405,800 residents.2 Created to be the state capital in 1792, it has a reputation as a fairly conservative community populated by government bureaucrats, business people, and RTP employees. Durham, founded in 1869, grew up around a train station and thrived on cigarette manufacturing and textile mills. Its estimated 2009 population was approximately 229,200. With the

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largest black and Hispanic communities among the Triangle’s cities and towns, Durham has a reputation, despite Duke University’s presence, as a gritty, working-class community. Chapel Hill, with an estimated 2009 population of approximately 53,500, is the smallest of the three communities that form the corners of the Research Triangle. The town, dating back to the founding of the University of North Carolina in 1793, is known as a liberal college town. Beyond these three communities there are others in the region including the town of Cary, which grew from a population of 1,400 in 1950 to an estimated 136,600 in 2009. This book describes the diverse histories and characteristics of the area’s constituent communities, as well as the benefits and the challenges posed by that diversity. It asks, to what extent do the residents experience and identify with the region as a whole or only with their own individual towns? How can the region grow and develop while holding onto its distinctive attributes, such as each town’s unique personality, its lush natural environment, and easy access to employment, recreation, shopping, and cultural opportunities? The Research Triangle area’s spatial structure is also unlike that of many other metro areas. Its geographic center is a very low-density research and development park, not a diverse, highdensity city center. Visitors to the area who set out to see the acclaimed Research Triangle Park often return disappointed because very little can be seen from the main roads. Driving through the RTP is more akin to driving through a state park. The roads are lined with loblolly pines and occasional signs announcing the entrance to IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, or other global corporations and research and development facilities. Adding to the area’s distinctive spatial structure is the very low density of its towns and cities. Single-family homes, often on relatively large lots, are the dominant form of residential development. Moreover, these homes have been relatively affordable

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compared to many metro areas. Each of the towns and cities has a downtown commercial core, but until very recently these cores have contained very little in the way of multifamily housing. The multifamily housing that does exist tends to be recent construction built in peripheral areas. This pattern of dispersed, low-density development has certainly contributed to the area’s rural and small town ambiance and appeal. However, as the region has continued to grow, it has resisted efforts to achieve more sustainable compact development and to expand public transit. The ongoing effort to build a light rail system, for example, was stalled when the projected ridership could not justify the costs. Efforts are being made to increase development densities around the proposed transit stops. This book explores how the historically dispersed, low-density development impacts the lives of current residents and inhibits the area’s ability to achieve a more sustainable twenty-firstcentury development pattern. It also offers suggestions on what needs to be done to change this pattern. The Research Triangle is more immersed in the knowledgebased economy than most metropolitan areas. The percentage of people holding graduate degrees is one of the highest in the country.3 The area’s share of the workforce in knowledge-based occupations is also among the highest.4 A recent ranking of the fifty-five largest metropolitan areas listed the Raleigh-Cary metro area as the most educated based on factors such as the number of residents with college and advanced degrees. Clearly, this has much to do with the presence of three major research universities and other colleges in the area. Together, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill confer over 750 Ph.D. and 2,500 master’s degrees per year. Those universities have been crucial to the area’s economic success. In recent years academicians-turned-entrepreneurs have

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launched highly successful local businesses; some hold patents related to the results of their research. Accordingly, the universities are paying more attention to the commercialization of new discoveries and have developed a variety of relationships with area businesses. This book presents the story of how the economy has evolved in recent years and the roles that several publicly-supported economic development organizations played in that evolution. Finally, compared to many U.S. metropolitan areas, the Research Triangle is relatively young and rapidly growing. Much of its development history is yet to be written. The Research Triangle area has no limiting geographic features such as mountains or large bodies of water. Moreover, the area’s knowledge-based economy and high quality of life positions it well for future growth. Projections show the region growing by almost one million people over the next twenty years.5 But this future is dependent on how the region handles that growth. Will it lead to severe traffic congestion and the degradation of the natural environment, or can it avoid typical problems of urban sprawl? The key to success is to further develop regional cooperation in the area. This book explores the extent to which the Research Triangle area is fully integrated as a region, what stage of regionalism it has reached, what needs to be done to further integrate the region, and the major obstacles to Research Triangle metropolitan cooperation.

DEFINING THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE METRO Building on the word metropolis, metropolitan area refers to a large important city (or cities), along with contiguous areas functionally linked to it (or them) by employment or commuting patterns. Reasonable people may differ, however, on the extent of linkage needed between a city and surrounding areas before { 6

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these become a metropolitan area. In the 1940s the federal government defined which areas are included for the purposes of reporting census data, hence the creation of the metropolitan statistical area or MSA. According to the federal government an MSA consists of counties containing a city of fifty thousand or more, plus contiguous counties where the total of commuting in and out is 25 percent or more. Of course, metropolitan area designations and boundaries change over time due to population increases or decreases. In 1950, when the Census Bureau first reported data by metropolitan area, the Raleigh-Durham area had two: the Raleigh MSA, which included the city and the remainder of Wake County, and the Durham MSA, which included that city and the remainder of Durham County. As the area grew, Orange County was added to create the Durham–Chapel Hill MSA and in 1981 the two MSAs were combined into the Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill MSA. Over the next two decades Chatham, Franklin, and Johnston Counties were added. In 2005 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) split the MSA into the Raleigh-Cary MSA and the Durham–Chapel Hill MSA and Person County was added to the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA, bringing the combined county total to seven. Thus, the definition of the Research Triangle metro used in this book covers the seven counties of Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Johnston, Orange, Person, and Wake. Although these counties are not in a single metropolitan area as defined by the census, I refer to this area as the Research Triangle metro or simply Research Triangle area since that is how it is often marketed by economic developers, and referred to both by the press and some area residents. This book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 presents a brief history of the Research Triangle area including the geological characteristics that have influenced its human settlement pattern. It also describes the major social conflicts that have { 7 }

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played out as well as the founding and development of the major towns, universities, and colleges in the area. Chapter 2 describes how the area’s historically distinct towns and cites were knit together into a metropolitan area. It tells the story of the Research Triangle Park, a story of foresight, risk taking, and political favors. It also describes RTP’s impact on the area, and the challenges it faces as industry and work patterns change. The development of the Raleigh-Durham Airport and Interstate 40 are also discussed since these projects were crucial to the creation of the Research Triangle. The area’s rapid population growth and the impact of that growth are discussed in Chapter 3. It describes the distribution of growth throughout the metropolitan area and the diversification of the area’s population, particularly with respect to ethnicity. The chapter also discusses the reasons people are attracted to the area and where they come from. Finally, this chapter describes the impact of rapid population growth and increased population diversity on demand for schools, traffic congestion, need for water supply, and social relations in the area. Chapter 4 describes the area’s evolving economy. It describes the transition from an economy based on agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing to one based on information technology, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. The chapter identifies the intentional infrastructure and strategic initiatives that facilitated that transition; the recruitment of existing companies to the area and the incubation of new ones; and the challenges to the area’s continued growth and prosperity including the decline of mature industries, increasing competition, and erosion in the area’s quality of life. This chapter offers strategies for addressing those challenges. Chapter 5 describes the Triangle’s distinctive development pattern characterized by a low-density core and urban sprawl. It describes efforts to contain sprawl including planning for mixeduse activity centers, downtown revitalization, the development of { 8 }

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a commuter rail system, and the preservation of open space. The chapter also discusses the challenges to containing sprawl, including fragmented jurisdictions, lack of land use and transportation coordination, and a lack of strong regional planning. The final chapter discusses the short- and long-range prospects for the Research Triangle metropolitan area. It argues that maintaining the area’s quality of life over the long term will require bold actions, including a substantial increase in cooperation among the Triangle’s counties, cities, towns, and rural areas. This concluding chapter suggests a model for such cooperation suited to the political and social characteristics of the area; it discusses as well the obstacles to achieving such cooperation, the need for the physical transformation of the area, and what other metro areas can take from the Triangle’s experiences.

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c h a p t e r

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Early History To truly understand the contemporary challenges facing the Research Triangle metropolitan area, one must understand its fascinating geological and human history. As noted by Sam Bass Warner, Jr.: ‘‘City building is always a process of bit by bit additions so that the lineage of the past continues to assert themselves directly or indirectly.’’1 That history helps to answer questions such as: Why are the towns and cities located where they are? Why was the area so slow to urbanize? Why has the area been developed at such a low density? What accounts for the economic, population, and personality differences among the towns and cities?

T H E L AY O F T H E L A N D The story of the Research Triangle begins about 450 million years ago when the east coast of what became the North American continent was located where the Blue Ridge Mountains are today. A wide ocean stretched to the east. Over the next 200 million years, land masses, including crustal fragments from the ancient Gondwana land mass—composed of the present-day African and South American continents—and Gondwana itself smashed into that coast to form Pangaea.2 The present-day Research Triangle is located on one of the Gondwanian crustal fragments, referred to by

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geologists as ‘‘exotic terrain.’’3 Then about 225 million years ago Pangaea began to stretch apart. What was to become Africa drifted slowly off to the south, opening up the Atlantic Ocean.4 The stretching of the earth’s crust during this movement created a series of rift basins, or inland lakes, along the east coast as the crust thinned, sank, and filled with water. One of those rift basins is the Durham Triassic Basin, which over time silted up and today is only evident as a dip in the topography running from northeast to southwest passing between Chapel Hill and Raleigh. The soils in this basin have particularly high clay content. This ancient split of continents happened along the fall line that now runs diagonally across North Carolina, passing east and south of Raleigh.5 The area west of the fall line, including the state’s Piedmont and Appalachian Mountain regions, contains remnants of an ancient mountain range, underlain by igneous and metamorphic rock. The Piedmont’s geological age combined with long hot summers and year-round weathering conditions to produce soils rich in clay and iron oxides, which generated the land’s distinctive red color.6 These soils’ high clay content has low percolation rates and high shrink-swell ratios. Water does not easily drain through the soil; it expands when wet and contracts when dry. A contemporary impact of these soils is that they are not well suited to on-site septic systems, leading local governments to require large building lots where sewer service is not available. East of the fall line, the Coastal Plain extends to the sounds and has been created over the last 200 million years from sediments eroding from the ancient mountain ranges and carried by streams and rivers to the ever-advancing shoreline. While that area of the state is composed of sedimentary and alluvial soils with high sand and clay content, it also contains many marshes and wetlands and its alluvial movement over millennia created a string of narrow barrier islands often far from the mainland and

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Figure 2. Key geological features of the Research Triangle region (map by Peter Zambito).

separated from it by very shallow sounds. Lacking natural deepwater harbors suitable for major ports, and with swampy conditions making road building difficult, the Coastal Plain remained largely rural. Compared to the rugged mountain region or the swampy Coastal Plain, the Piedmont’s gentle hills were more conducive to roads and therefore development. Major Native American trading paths and early European wagon roads cut through the Piedmont, including the Great Trading Path of Native American tribes in Virginia and the Carolinas. As early settlers arrived, they used this path to trade with tribes settled along it. In more modern times, the North Carolina railroad was constructed along portions of this corridor, as was Interstate 85, which links the Triangle area with Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, to the northeast and

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Charlotte, Columbia, South Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, to the southwest. The lack of deepwater ports and good roads in eastern North Carolina also meant that many early Piedmont farmers and manufacturers had to send goods through ports in Virginia and South Carolina—one of several factors that slowed economic growth in the state and region. The Piedmont’s steeper topography creates faster running streams and rivers than in the flat Coastal Plain. Thus, mills and manufacturing operations gravitated there to take advantage of this fast-flowing water to turn waterwheels for grinding grain and to power manufacturing processes. Looking closely, one can still see remnants of these mills and factories along many of the area’s rivers and creeks.

THE FIRST INHABITANTS Native Americans are thought to have inhabited the region as early as 12,000

B.C.E.

Upon arrival, ‘‘paleo’’ and ‘‘archaic’’

tribes found thick forests teaming with turkey, deer, bear, bison, elk, and other animals. These early inhabitants were huntergatherers, but around 1000

B.C.E.

they began to practice small-

scale agriculture. They planted crops including corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and sunflowers.7 This shift to agriculture led them to concentrate in small villages near the area’s streams and rivers, where the soils were rich and fertile. Major tribes in the area included the Eno, Occaneechi, and Haw.8 By the time the first European settlers arrived, Native Americans had transformed the landscape and had developed widespread trading relationships with other tribes. John Lederer, an early explorer, provides the following description of Eno Town, a major settlement located in what is now Durham County: ‘‘The Country here, by the industry of these Indians, is very open, and clear of wood. Their Town is built round a field, where in their Sports they exercise with so much labor and violence, and in so great numbers, that I have { 14 }

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Figure 3. Occaneechi Village re-creation along the Eno River in Hillsborough based on descriptions provided by early European explorers. The village fell into disrepair and was dismantled and reconstructed on another site in the early 2000s (courtesy of the Chapel Hill Visitors Bureau).

seen the ground wet with the sweat that dropped from their bodies: their chief Recreation is Slinging of Stones. . . . They plant abundance of Grain, reap three Crops in a summer and out of their Granary supply all the adjacent parts.’’9

THE EUROPEAN INVASION The English first explored the North Carolina ‘‘backcountry’’ during the late seventeenth century.10 Shortly after these initial explorations, Virginia fur traders began doing business with local tribes, as well as with tribes farther south. Pack trains brought manufactured goods to the Native Americans in exchange for deerskins and furs. Much of this trade relied on the Great Trading Path or the Occaneechi Path, named after the important tribe located along the way. Unfortunately, this trade also brought new diseases that would decimate these tribes. e a r l y

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Then came the settlers. Both the Great Trading Path and the Great Wagon Road, which came down from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley entering North Carolina to the west of the Piedmont, provided relatively easy access from the north, while access from the east was hampered by the lack of passable roads. Thus, the early European settlers of the area were more likely to hail from Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania than from eastern North Carolina. These second- and third-generation farmers and merchants came to the area ‘‘seeking land, tax relief, and, in some cases, greater religious freedom.’’11 They were largely of German, Scots-Irish, or Welsh descent, while those who settled eastern North Carolina were predominantly English. The ethnic and religious differences between the central and eastern regions of the state set the stage for future conflicts. Most settlers were of modest means, so they purchased relatively small homesteads from the Earl of Granville, the last of the lord proprietors who were granted the territory between Virginia and Florida by King Charles II in 1663. Granville’s agents were also responsible for collecting taxes, some of which were paid to the colonial government and some used to meet county needs, but ‘‘they often remained in the pockets of the tax collectors.’’12 Many of the settlers were subsistence farmers, but some established operations that produced enough for trade. As population of the area increased, small market towns began to develop. The colonial government in the eastern city of New Bern became interested in bringing law and order to the frontier and, of course, taxing the new arrivals.13

THE CREATION OF ORANGE COUNTY AND HILLSBOROUGH In response to the area’s growing population, the colony’s General Assembly, in 1752, created Orange County,14 originally 398 square miles, ten times its present size. It stretched from the Virginia border down through what is now Lee County, and from what is currently Wake County west to Guilford County. { 16 }

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Every new county needs a county seat and Lord Granville gave the job of locating one to William Churton, ‘‘an accomplished cartographer and skilled surveyor.’’15 Churton selected a four-hundredacre site near the center of the county, along the Great Trading Path just north of the Eno River. Although this new town went by several earlier names, its name was changed to Hillsborough in 1766, and it stuck.16 Churton, who was also asked to lay out the town, ‘‘envisioned a dignified and orderly town as a symbol of civilization in the midst of the great forests of Orange County.’’17 His plan showed a grid system of streets interrupted by public squares at major intersections. Unfortunately, the public squares were not set aside. Churton’s plan also called for a public market house in the middle of the main intersection (now the intersection of Churton and King Streets), which was built and which stood until 1820, a courthouse and jail at the southeast corner of that same intersection, and a church and Anglican cemetery several blocks north of the center of town. The remainder of the approximately 120 lots shown on the plan was designated for residential and commercial uses. As the county seat, Hillsborough grew fast. It attracted the ‘‘people who needed court services and the lawyers to serve them; the inns and taverns to supply food, drink and lodging; blacksmiths and saddlers (the service stations of the day); carpenters and brick masons; merchants and Mantua makers; doctors and ministers—all interdependent for goods and services.’’18 It was also to become the center of a conflict brewing between the colonial government, controlled by eastern interests, and a significant faction of Orange County residents.

THE REGUL ATOR REBELLION The colonial administration of Orange and other central North Carolina counties proved to be oppressive and corrupt. The justices of the peace, nominated by General Assembly representatives e a r l y

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but these were dropped from the final plan.

sions of the plan included four public squares,

survive. Written accounts indicate that early ver-

No copies of the original William Churton plan

C. J. Sauthier (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).

Figure 4. Map of Hillsborough drawn in 1768 by

and appointed for life by the governor, were all-powerful. Moreover, since the Assembly representatives were often justices themselves, they were a self-perpetuating group. These justices— often men of means who wanted to stay that way—appointed or nominated candidates for sheriff, constable, and other public positions, and also presided over the court system. The system of representation in the General Assembly was also grossly inequitable: ‘‘By 1770 the older, eastern counties had a ratio of one representative for every 1,700 people, while the western counties had a ratio of one for every 7,300.’’19 A group of Orange County residents calling themselves ‘‘Regulators’’ compiled a long list of demands. They wanted ‘‘the courthouse gang to be accountable to the people for the taxes they collected and the fees they charged; they wanted ‘regulation’— legally fixed, known charges, and reins on corruption. High taxes (instituted to pay for the French and Indian War but never removed); a new tax to pay for the sumptuous governor’s palace; the requirement that taxes and fees be paid in specie; exorbitant quitrents, contested land titles, and inaccurate surveys in the Granville District; extortion in fees by the local courthouse gang and inequitably applied laws imposing militia, jury, road building and road repair duties made up the litany of their complaints.’’20 When these demands and complaints fell on deaf ears the Regulators were moved to action. The first real trouble broke out in 1768 when a group of about seventy Regulators stormed Hillsborough to retrieve a horse and saddle that were taken and sold for unpaid taxes. Two years later a group of 150 Regulators, showing up at a court proceeding to defend one of their own, took over the courtroom and ‘‘set upon the officials and lawyers with sticks and switches. The judge fled in fear of his life to his home in Granville County.’’21 A hated corrupt official, Edward Fanning, was ‘‘grabbed by his heals and pulled down the stairs, banging his head on each step.’’22

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At that point, the colonial governor, William Tryon, had had enough. He mustered over one thousand militiamen and, in the spring of 1771, they followed him to Hillsborough. In response the Regulators assembled a force of about two thousand men at Alamance Creek just west of town. The battle lasted a mere two hours. Even with superior numbers the untrained and poorly armed Regulators were no match for Tryon’s disciplined troops and superior weaponry. Most of the Regulators were able to escape but Tryon took fifteen prisoners. One was hanged on the battlefield and after a trial six more were hanged on a hill overlooking the town. A small fenced-off area, close to the Hillsborough Courthouse, marks the site of the hangings. The significance of the Regulator Rebellion has been hotly debated among historians. Some have argued that it was ‘‘an opening salvo’’ in the American Revolution, with its emphasis on unfair taxation and lack of local representation and control. Others have downplayed it as a regional conflict unconnected to the opening battles of the Revolution that would take place in Lexington and Concord four years later. What is clear, however, is that this uprising brought attention to the issues of inequitable representation and taxation for the citizens of the Piedmont of North Carolina. It also led to the partition of Orange County into new counties as a means of ‘‘dividing the disaffected citizenry into separate areas under tighter governmental control.’’23 The creation of additional counties resulted in an increase in the area’s representation in the General Assembly, thus at least partially addressing one of the issues that contributed to the rebellion. This competition between the eastern and Piedmont regions of the state lives on today, as the two differ in both their economic bases and population characteristics while vying for influence and state largess. Today’s Research Triangle area straddles this divide, creating one of the social schisms discussed in Chapter 4.

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ORANGE COUNTY DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR Although no major battle was fought in Orange County, Hillsborough played an important role in the struggle for North Carolina’s independence. In the summer of 1774 and spring of 1775, ignoring the wishes of the colonial governor, two provincial congresses were held in the capital city of New Bern, to select delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, approve boycotts of British goods, and plan other actions designed to fill gaps left by a weakened colonial government. Many delegates to these congresses still hoped to avoid a war with the ‘‘mother country,’’ but those hopes were dashed when a Patriot militia marched on New Bern, causing the governor, under the cover of darkness, to flee the city and take refuge on a British warship. The militia proceeded to burn Fort Johnson, the ‘‘first act of war in the North Carolina Colony.’’24 Under the clouds of the impending war, the third Provincial Congress, with representatives from most of the towns and counties of the state, met in Hillsborough in August 1776, deciding to form a new government and to raise an army. More specifically, the representatives established a thirteen-person Provincial Council to make decisions when the Congress was not in session, they authorized bills of credit to fund defense and other governmental responsibilities, and they authorized the organization of two regiments of Continental troops. During the war, Hillsborough was both a political and military center. After North Carolina’s representatives signed the Declaration of Independence, the state’s General Assembly met in Hillsborough five times, including the two years in which Hillsborough was officially designated as the state’s first postcolonial capital. (A Loyalist raid on the town led the legislature to decide that it

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was not a safe location for the capital.) Manufacturing industries were also established in the town for the production of shoes, paper, and arms for the war effort.25 In 1781 the town was briefly occupied by British troops under the command of General Lord Cornwallis, who was attempting to reassert British control over the southern colonies. After landing his army at Savannah and subduing much of Georgia and coastal South Carolina, he marched with his troops into North Carolina, where he began to encounter stiffer resistance. ‘‘On February 20, 1781, the general and his army entered the little village of Hillsborough, raised the royal standard, and prepared to receive the crowds of Loyalists he believed awaited his arrival.’’26 Unfortunately for Cornwallis those Loyalists never materialized. After one week, the lack of provisions in the area caused him to leave town and march west, where he hoped to find more local support and provisions. Instead, he found a Patriot force headed by Nathanael Greene. In the fateful Battle of Guilford Court House, Greene’s troops killed or injured over five hundred of Cornwallis’s troops, causing him to withdraw to Wilmington, North Carolina, and eventually to Yorktown, Virginia, where he surrendered to General Washington, effectively ending the war. The Revolutionary War had a profound impact on the population of the area. Virtually all the inhabitants suffered ‘‘shortages of money, manpower, food and supplies of all kinds, and the immeasurable toll of worry and heartache.’’27 Beyond these typical deprivations of war, the divisions between local Loyalists and Patriots meant that this conflict had many of the characteristics and consequences of a civil war. With neighbor against neighbor, even brother against brother, the intricate social fabric was violently torn apart. The loyalists either were forced to leave their homes and property to begin lives all over again in a strange place or stayed and took the consequences, often personal attack and the destruction

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of property by their own militiamen. Hundreds of refugees were set adrift by the armies of the Americans or British as they alternated possession of the terrain. On all sides families lost fathers, sons, or brothers who had been their sole economic support. Hundreds of thousands of acres changed ownership, and new settlers came to replace those who left.28

A CAPITAL CITY IS FOUNDED After the war, Hillsborough was the site of the state’s first constitutional convention to consider ratification of the U.S. Constitution drawn up by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. North Carolina’s convention delegates were concerned about a lack of explicit protections of citizen rights in the Constitution, and voted against its ratification. The following year ratification was reconsidered at a second constitutional convention held in Fayetteville. This time the delegates ratified the Constitution, but only after receiving assurances that Congress would quickly enact a bill of rights. Some historians believe that much of the credit for the bill of rights goes to those delegates meeting in Hillsborough in 1788.29 Another item of business at the Hillsborough constitutional convention established a process for selecting a permanent state capital. Since the end of the war the General Assembly had met in several locations, but it grew tired of moving around, and transporting state documents from place to place. Delegates to the convention were instructed to select an ‘‘unalterable seat of government of this state.’’30 The convention established a committee to take on that task. That committee called for nominations, receiving seven for its consideration. Among them were Hillsborough, Fayetteville—an important commercial center on the Cape Fear River—and ‘‘Mr. Isaac Hunter’s in Wake County.’’31 After considerable deliberation and politicking, a majority of the committee and the full body of delegates voted for a new

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capital city. It was to be built within ten miles of Isaac Hunter’s plantation in Wake County, the delegates eschewing arguments that the site had no commercial future and would never ‘‘rise above the degree of a village.’’32 The exact location of the new town was left undefined, to discourage land speculation and to allow further consideration of land characteristics. The decision for the Wake County site was undoubtedly a grave disappointment to the residents of Hillsborough, who had played such a central role in the area’s history up to that time. The town ‘‘seemed headed toward obscurity.’’33 After much additional debate and political posturing in the General Assembly, it finally accepted the Wake County recommendation and appointed a nine-member commission to locate and purchase a tract of land suitable for a four-hundred-acre—or more—capital city. The commission visited more than a dozen farms before accepting an invitation to dine with Colonel Joel Lane, who owned one of the sites under consideration: ‘‘Legend has it that they were so wined and dined by Colonel Joel Lane, who conducted a tavern in a portion of his home, that after several days of consideration and conviviality—enlivened by a concoction called ‘cherry bounce’—they recommended the purchase of a thousand acres of his land.’’34 Lane’s land was purchased by the state in 1792, and Raleigh—named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the first, although unsuccessful, settlement in North Carolina—was born. This highly political and, if legend be true, well-lubricated process of selecting a site for the state capital had several longlasting ramifications for the development of the region, and for the city of Raleigh. First, the chosen site had none of the advantages associated with major cities in terms of its location. It was not, for example, on a navigable waterway. In fact, it was not even at a major crossroads, although a north-south road did transverse the site. The site was also peripheral to the cotton-producing and

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naval stores businesses to its east as well as the tobacco-producing areas to its north.35 From its beginning Raleigh was thus destined to struggle to become more than the home of state government. Second, the decision to eschew the existing towns, particularly Hillsborough and Fayetteville, meant that the region could not develop a city of combined political and commercial power that could dominate the surrounding communities. Since the turn of the 1800s Raleigh has always been one of the largest cities in this part of the Piedmont, but its lack of commercial appeal has kept it from growing large enough to dominate the area. It is simply a city in the Triangle—not the city. Third, having the state capital as one of the cities in the Triangle has benefited the area in many ways, which will soon become evident.

RALEIGH TAKES SHAPE Anxious to have a permanent capital, as soon as the site was acquired, the General Assembly hired William Christmas to plan a four-hundred-acre capital city. A state senator with experience planning several new towns in other states, Christmas organized his plan for the city around five squares: one six-acre square for the Capitol and four four-acre squares located one diagonal block from the main square. In addition to these squares, the plan showed a rectangular grid ten blocks by eleven blocks containing a total of 276 one-acre parcels, 20 of which were designated for state use. Note the relatively large size of the building lots. From the earliest days, large lots and low densities were the prevailing patterns of land development in Triangle communities. Upon the completion of this plan, the legislature authorized the auction of lots to raise funds to construct the Capitol, hiring Massachusetts architect Rhoddam Atkins to design and oversee its construction. The building, with offices for state officials and

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Figure 5. Plan of Raleigh developed by William Christmas. Two of the four public squares shown on this map have been usurped by the state government: one for the governor’s mansion, the other for state office buildings (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).

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meeting rooms for the General Assembly, was begun in late 1792 and completed in 1796. This much-reviled ‘‘misshapened pile’’36 was extensively renovated in 1819, before being destroyed by fire in 1831. With the statehouse opening, inns and other commercial enterprises gravitated to the area, particularly along Fayetteville Street, which headed south from the Capitol. In 1795, the General Assembly established a Raleigh city government to repair the streets, maintain order, and provide other essential services to the fledgling city.

A UNIVERSITY IS FOUNDED ON NEW HOPE CHAPEL HILL On a cold, drizzling day in January 1795, a delegation of dignitaries, headed by Governor Richard Dobbs, set out from Raleigh to hold opening ceremonies for the first state university in the nation. The delegation ‘‘braved the discomforts of twenty-eight miles of red mud and pipe clay and aged rocks stretching from Chapel Hill to Raleigh (the new state capital).’’37 What they saw when they arrived was ‘‘a two-storied brick building [Old East], the unpainted wooden house of the Presiding Professor, the avenue between them filled with stumps of recently felled trees, a pile of yellowish red clay, dug out for the foundation of the Chapel, or Person Hall, a pile of lumber collected for building Steward’s Hall, a Scotch-Irish preacher-professor in whose mind were fermenting ideas of infidelity, destined soon to cost him his place, and not one student.’’38 Despite this state of affairs, the delegation reported to the board of trustees that ‘‘youth disposed to enter the University may come forward with assurance of being received.’’39 The first student, Hinton James who walked from his home in faraway New Hanover County, did not arrive for another two weeks after the official opening.

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Initial support for creating a state university came from strange bedfellows: the Scots-Irish population in the state’s Piedmont area and the landed gentry of mostly English descent in the state’s Coastal Plain. The Scots-Irish were predominantly Presbyterians, who believed in the importance of education for their ministers and clergy, while the eastern gentry wanted options other than faraway places like London or Boston for their sons’ educations. Support for a state-chartered university coalesced within the eighteen-person committee charged with drafting North Carolina’s first constitution in 1776. Drawing heavily on a similar act included in the recently passed state constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 41 of the North Carolina constitution stated: ‘‘That a School or Schools shall be established by the Legislature, for the convenient Instruction of Youth, with such Salaries to the Masters, paid by the Public, as may enable them to instruct at low Prices: and all useful Learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more Universities.’’40 Article 41 authorized state-supported schools, but eight years were to pass before the General Assembly would take up a bill to actually create a state-sponsored university. Although many individuals worked to create the University of North Carolina, the title of ‘‘Father of the University’’ goes to William Richardson Davie, who played a leading role in introducing and lobbying for a General Assembly bill in 1789 to create it. Davie, who was ‘‘dynamic in appearance and personality and eloquent in speech,’’ had developed a solid reputation among the state’s leaders based on his Revolutionary War service. He’d been General Nathanael Greene’s chief of cavalry in his battle with Cornwallis, and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.41 Passing the bill to create a university was not easy. It became a lightning rod for the General Assembly’s antiFederalist factions, who feared the university would become ‘‘an

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engine of political propaganda and as a bulwark of aristocratic privilege.’’42 Yet on December 11, 1789 a bill creating a university was approved by the General Assembly. Important to the subsequent choice of the New Hope Chapel Hill site was a provision in the bill that stipulated that the university could not be within five miles of a seat of government or any place holding court. This stipulation, which was likely included to avoid disruptions due to rowdy students, ruled out many of the state’s major cities.43 A follow-up bill passed eleven days later provided funding for the university from the sale of escheats—unclaimed land grants that revert to the state—and from arrearages due the state. The problem was that this funding mechanism provided no immediate funds to create the university. So Davie and members of the fortymember Board of Trustees sought donations from private individuals, while working to secure a $10,000 loan from the state. After another hard-fought battle, this loan was approved in December 1791. Later, the state converted this loan into a grant. Other than the escheats and arrearages this was the only state appropriation provided for university support until after the Civil War.44 With the $10,000 loan and $6,723 in private donations in hand, the Board of Trustees turned its attention to selecting a site for the university. In August 1792 the board settled on a siteselection process involving the nomination of several towns, and the placement of the university within fifteen miles of the town receiving the most votes. Hillsborough and Raleigh were among the nominees but so was Cipritz Bridge, located on New Hope Creek in Chatham County. Voting occurred, and Cipritz Bridge was selected, due to its central location within the state and its proximity to a major crossroads.45 Again, Hillsborough missed out on securing a prize that would have radically changed its destiny and another one hundred years would pass before Raleigh would get its own state university.

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A committee of eight trustees was then given responsibility for recommending a specific site within fifteen miles of Cipritz Bridge. On November 5, 1792, that committee visited New Hope Chapel Hill, in southern Orange County. New Hope Chapel Hill was named after a small log chapel, built on this high ground in colonial times. Committee members were smitten by the beauty of the site, by ‘‘its impressive eminence above the surrounding countryside, the beauty of its woodlands and the abundance of creeks and springs’’ in the area.46 In its favor, this site also was close to a major crossroads and to the town of Hillsborough, and, possibly most important of all, a group of eight local land owners were willing to donate 1,290 acres of land plus approximately $1,600 in cash if the state constructed the university on New Hope Chapel Hill. James Hogg and Alexander Mebane, two members of the site-selection committee who lived in Orange County, organized these donations. The committee unanimously recommended this site to the full Board of Trustees, which approved it on December 5, 1792. A scant three days after the New Hope Chapel Hill site was selected, the board created another committee to oversee the university’s planning, the construction of one or more buildings to accommodate fifty students, and laying out a town to support the university. This committee was also charged with overseeing the sale of lots in the new town at public auction. In August 1793 the committee convened on New Hope Chapel Hill and planned both the campus and the surrounding town. This rather crude plan outlined a campus roughly square in shape, with two major boulevards, never constructed, approaching the campus from the north and the east. Close to the center of the campus, sites for the first several buildings were identified. The plan also showed a total of twenty-four two-acre and four-acre building lots arranged two or three deep around the northern and western edges of the campus. Again note the relatively large size of these building lots. The

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versity of North Chapel at Chapel Hill libraries).

(courtesy of the North Carolina Collection of the Uni-

ing thousand-acre campus has now been developed

incorporated into the campus. Most of the remain-

quently been bought by the university and

pus on the south side of Franklin Street have subse-

Hill circa 1817. Many of the lots adjacent to the cam-

Figure 6. University of North Carolina and Chapel

main street bordering the campus’s northern edge, now called Franklin Street, had south-side lots backing up onto the campus. Over time the university acquired many of those lots so that its northern quad, known as McCorkle Place, now borders the south side of Franklin Street. Almost immediately, the construction of the first university building got under way. The building, now called Old East, was originally designed as part of a larger three-building complex and was patterned after dormitories at Yale.47 It was a two-story 3,380square-foot brick building, designed to serve as both a dormitory and classroom building. On October 12, 1793, a group of dignitaries met on the campus to lay the cornerstone for this building. William Richardson Davie, who had played such a central role in marshalling support for the creation of the university, presided over the ceremonies. Upon completing the cornerstone-laying ceremonies, some of those present adjourned to witness or participate in an auction of the village lots. Many of the very people who had donated the land to create the university bought these lots at the auction.48 Over the ensuing decades, buildings constructed on those lots were almost entirely in support of the university’s faculty and students, including blacksmith shops, inns, and the homes of university professors. The town of Chapel Hill was the quintessential college town: it did not exist prior to the university, and it was created for the sole purpose of supporting the university. Over the decades, the town’s fortunes have thus risen or fallen with the university’s.

T H E T R I A N G L E A R E A I N T H E E A R LY 1800S The early 1800s were tough economic times for the state and the region. As farmland became less fertile, many North Carolina residents moved farther west. Between 1815 and 1850 a full one-third

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of North Carolina’s residents, including many from the Piedmont, moved out of the state.49 State officials were also reluctant to invest in public infrastructure. David R. Goldfield notes that ‘‘while other states expanded boundaries, built roads and canals and made other internal improvements, as well as boosted their educational systems, North Carolina stood still.’’50 The state developed a reputation as the ‘‘Rip Van Winkle state,’’ which began to change only in the 1840s and 1850s, when state government began investing in railroads, to connect farmers and small manufacturers to larger markets beyond state borders. During this period Raleigh, as the state’s capital city, grew more rapidly than Hillsborough and Chapel Hill. In 1810 the General Assembly passed legislation creating the State Bank of North Carolina, stipulating that it be located in Raleigh. The business of the legislature and executive agencies also created demand for services such as those of lawyers and hostelries. A major threat to Raleigh’s very existence came in 1831 when the State House burned to the ground. Community leaders in Fayetteville, still aggrieved at being passed over the first time, saw an opportunity to have the capital moved there. Raleigh’s community leaders, however, were able to fend them off. The 1856 opening of the North Carolina Railroad provided another boost to Raleigh’s economy, but it still lagged well behind other North Carolina cities. The towns of Hillsborough and Chapel Hill grew very slowly during this period. Hillsborough’s fortunes were further undermined by the continual shrinkage of Orange County. By 1800 Orange County was less than half its original geographic size, as several new counties were created to provide more convenient access to services. Several small cotton mills were built on the rivers and streams in the town’s vicinity, but its claim to fame then was the establishment of several preparatory schools, including the Nash Kollock School for women and the Hillsborough Military Academy for boys. Hillsborough developed a reputation

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as a cultured place, such that ‘‘early recruits for the faculty of the University of North Carolina who complained about Chapel Hill’s lack of social amenities were advised to travel to Hillsborough.’’51 Chapel Hill’s fortunes were directly tied to those of the University of North Carolina, which struggled mightily during this period. The university suffered from political backlash and a chronic lack of funding. In 1800, a scant five years after the auspicious opening ceremony, the Federalists who championed the university’s creation lost power to the Democratic Republicans, who promptly cut all state support. Even as that funding was partially restored over the next decade, President Joseph Caldwell struggled to keep the university open. By 1835, when Caldwell died in office, there were still a modest eighty-nine students, five faculty members, and four completed buildings. The town also grew very slowly during this time. In 1818, Chapel Hill had thirteen homes, two hotels, four stores, and a blacksmith shop.52 The university and town fortunes improved greatly in the 1840s and 1850s as Whig Party reforms were favorable to both. By 1851 Chapel Hill had grown large enough to be considered a ‘‘town’’ under state statutes, and by 1860 the university’s enrollment had increased to 425 students.

ENTREPRENEURIAL DURHAM While the towns of Hillsborough, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill were largely founded by governmental actions, Durham was the result of raw entrepreneurship. Its early reputation was one of a bawdy, rough-and-tumble place, where all varieties of ‘‘diversions’’ could be found. In spite of numerous efforts to change it, that reputation has, to some extent, persisted to the present day. The city of Durham developed on a ridge between the Eno River and New Hope Creek northeast of Chapel Hill and west of Raleigh. The area’s original settlements were close to the intersection of

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two roads, ‘‘mere cart tracks winding through boundless forests that alternated with scattered homesteads and fields.’’53 The eastwest road connected Hillsborough to Raleigh, while the northsouth road connected Roxboro to Fayetteville. In the early 1800s, Dilliardsville, a small collection of buildings and a general store on the east side of what is now downtown Durham, was awarded the first post office in the area. By 1827, however, this community was in decline, and the post office was moved first to nearby Herndon’s store and, in 1836, to Prattsburg which already had a general store, a cotton gin, and a blacksmith shop.54 Prattsburg also had a reputation for tolerating those who disturbed the ‘‘peace and dignity of the state [by] drinking, tippling, playing at cards and other unlawful games, cursing, screaming, quarreling and otherwise misbehaving themselves.’’55 Another settlement on the west side of what is now downtown Durham did its part to contribute to Durham’s reputation as ‘‘a roaring old place.’’ Pin Hook, developed along the Raleigh-Hillsborough Road, was a place frequented by teamsters who would ‘‘refresh themselves from the well and a strategically located grog shop.’’56 It, too, became known as a place of drinking, gambling, brawling, and prostitution. Among others, students from the University of North Carolina ‘‘would repair to Pin Hook, seeking release from the pressure of their studies where they were safely out of sight of the University of North Carolina’s faculty.’’57 The coming of the North Carolina Railroad would substantially change the fortunes of Prattsburg and Pin Hook. The idea of a railroad through the central part of the state had been discussed since 1828 as less expensive transport for farmers sending surplus crops to national and international markets. But not until 1849 did the state legislature pass a bill establishing the North Carolina Railroad to run from Goldsboro, where it would connect to the north-south Wilmington and Weldon line, to Raleigh and then through Hillsborough and end in Charlotte.58 Surveyors

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located the railroad line near the Raleigh-to-Hillsborough road, and sought to acquire property for a station between Morrisville and Hillsborough in the vicinity of Prattsburg. Several years prior to passage of the railroad bill, Dr. Bartlett Durham, who was born in 1824 on a farm west of Chapel Hill, bought a hundred acres of land between Prattsburg and Pin Hook.59 In seeking land for a station between Hillsborough and Morrisville, railroad agents first approached William Pratt, owner of Prattsburg. But his asking price being too high, the agents pursued negotiations with Dr. Durham, who saw the potential of a station on his property. Durham donated four acres for the purpose and the station became known as Durham’s Station. In keeping with the area’s tradition, Dr. Durham did not fit the stereotype of a quiet country doctor. He was said to be ‘‘a jovial fellow’’ who ‘‘on moon-shiny nights would get a group of boys together and serenade the town.’’ He was also an entrepreneur. By the time the railroad was completed in 1856, he had built a general store close to the station at the present corner of Main and Mangum Streets. In 1853 the local post office was moved to Durham’s store.60 Dr. Durham also became the railroad’s station agent, all the while continuing to practice medicine out of a back room. Dr. Durham was elected to represent Orange County in the General Assembly. While selling spirits in his store, and having a reputation as a drinker, he nonetheless introduced a bill to incorporate a ‘‘Sons of Temperance’’ chapter in Durham.61

BULL DURHAM: THE RISE OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY The improbable story of Durham becoming the center of the tobacco industry in the late 1800s begins on a rainy summer night in 1839. An eighteen-year-old slave, known only as Stephen, fell

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Figure 7. Map of Durham in 1888 developed by the Sanborn Map Company. The chaotic street pattern was a result of the lack of a plan to guide development. The shaded and numbered areas reference more detailed maps showing the individual land parcels and building footprints (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).

asleep while tending a tobacco-curing fire on a plantation in Caswell County.62 Awaking in the middle of the night to find the fire almost out he stoked it with charcoal rather than wood. The charcoal fire burned hotter and began turning the tobacco leaves a bright yellow rather than the typical brown.63 The novelty and superior taste of bright leaf tobacco was to play an important role

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in Durham becoming the country’s tobacco capital. But it would take another serendipitous event in 1865 to introduce bright leaf to the world. Several energetic and creative entrepreneurs provided the other major ingredient for Durham’s early tobacco success. While tobacco had long been grown on many farms in central North Carolina, growers began to realize that the real money was in producing shredded leaf ready to chew or smoke. So small factories began sprouting up on tobacco farms and in small towns close to rail stations, such as Durham’s Station. Robert and Thomas Morris and Wesley Wright opened their factory there in 1858, selling it in 1861 to John Ruffin Green, the son of a local tobacco farmer.64 Green greatly expanded the business by targeting ‘‘the sophisticated smokers at the university in Chapel Hill for whom Durham’s Station was the closest connection to the outside world. His product positioning worked, and thus the good word on Durham tobacco began going places.’’65 It was Green who conceived and trademarked the portrait of a bull, which would travel around the world in one of the most celebrated mass marketing campaigns in business history. The Civil War temporarily slowed development of Durham’s tobacco industry. Although few major battles were fought on North Carolina soil, the state provided more than its share of men and supplies to the war effort, and shared mightily in the resulting deprivations and hardships.66 Durham’s Station did, however, play an important role in the closing days of the war. After his famous ‘‘march to the sea,’’ the Union general William T. Sherman worked his way back north. On March 19, 1865, the Confederate general Joseph Johnston and his army of thirty-two thousand men confronted Sherman’s troops in Bentonville, about forty miles east of Raleigh. Although Johnston achieved initial success, three days of fighting Sherman’s superior numbers forced him to retreat west where he set up a temporary headquarters in a farmhouse

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outside Hillsborough. In hot pursuit, Sherman and his troops occupied Raleigh on April 13.67 Four days earlier, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. Realizing that the outcome of the war was now inevitable, and not wanting to prolong the misery, General Johnston sent a letter to Sherman asking for a conference to discuss terms of surrender. On April 17 Sherman and his delegation took a train from Raleigh to Durham’s Station, where they set off on horseback to meet Johnston and his delegation on their way from Hillsborough. The two delegations met three and one-half miles west of Durham’s Station and commandeered the Bennett family’s farmhouse to conduct their negotiations. After nine days, with time out for checking with superiors, General Johnston surrendered the last major army of the Confederacy.68 These events set the stage for the second serendipitous event that helped catapult Durham to the forefront of the tobacco industry. While peace was being negotiated in the Bennetts’ farmhouse, soldiers on both sides began helping themselves to the bright leaf tobacco stored in Durham’s factories and warehouses, including those of John Ruffin Green. J. Bradley Anderson relates that ‘‘Green counted himself a ruined man [but] the theft proved an advertising scheme on a scale beyond his wildest dreams.’’ The soldiers took to the taste of bright leaf tobacco and when they returned to their home communities they sent to Durham for more bright leaf tobacco, ‘‘spreading its reputation far and wide.’’69 Green’s business grew in leaps and bounds. To help finance and manage that growth, in 1867 Green took on a new partner— William T. Blackwell—who had grown up on a tobacco farm in Person County and had become successful selling Green’s product in eastern North Carolina. Two years after Blackwell joined the company Green died, and Blackwell bought his share of the

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business, along with the Bull Durham trademark. Wanting to expand the company further, Blackwell brought in new partners: James R. Day, then in 1870, Julian Shakespeare Carr—the twentysix-year-old son of a successful Chapel Hill merchant. The young Carr, as it turned out, had a knack for advertising. Under the direction of Blackwell, Day, and Carr, the Blackwell Company experienced phenomenal growth. In 1869 the Blackwell Company employed a work force of twelve men who produced sixty thousand pounds of tobacco products. In 1871 the company branched out into auction buying and warehousing, and in 1874 the company built a new factory that when expanded in 1880 became the largest tobacco factory in the world. By 1883 the company had a workforce of nine hundred and produced over five million pounds of smoking tobacco. Key to this rapid growth was the multifaceted advertising campaign developed by Julian Carr. In a letter to Blackwell, Carr wrote: ‘‘It ain’t no use to tell me that advertising don’t pay. I have studied advertising hard, and am satisfied about it.’’70 Carr began by collecting celebrity endorsements, from Alfred Lord Tennyson among many others. He placed newspaper advertisements across the country and offered premiums such as razors or soap with purchases, and cash for the return of empty Bull Durham bags. Finally, he hired several sign-painting crews to travel the country to pay farmers to let them paint billboards on their roadside barns. The bull, and the tobacco it advertised, became a national icon in the late 1800s.71

THE DUKES OF DURHAM The W. T. Blackwell Company, however, had plenty of competition—the most formidable being W. Duke, Sons and Company. Before the Civil War, two-time widower Washington Duke lived on a farm three miles from Durham’s Station with his four children,

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Figure 8. Julian S. Carr’s national advertising campaign for Bull Durham Tobacco in the 1870s and 1880s. Teams of sign painters covered the country and paid locals for the rights to put up billboards and to paint the sides of barns (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).

Brody, Mary, Ben, and James. After fighting in the war and spending time in a prisoner-of-war camp, Washington returned home and opened a small tobacco factory on his farm. Soon after, Brody, his oldest son, tried to convince his father to move the operation into Durham. Having no success, Brody moved on his own, opening a small tobacco factory in an old house in the center of town where, in keeping with the town’s history, he proceeded to develop a reputation both as a good businessman and a wild character. In 1874 his father finally saw the light, sold his farm, and moved his family and business into town. Brody maintained his separate business until 1879 when he joined W. Duke, Sons and Company.72 But it was James, Washington’s youngest son, who is credited with the ambition and vision that created one of the largest monopolies in American history. In the 1870s the prerolled cigarette,

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first introduced in Europe, began to catch on in America. Before this innovation, tobacco was sold in plugs for chewing or in pouches for pipe smoking. To meet this new demand, tobacco companies including the Blackwell Company and W. Duke, Sons and Company began hiring hand rollers. The best of these could role approximately 2,000 cigarettes in a ten-hour day. It was James who convinced his partners to take a chance on a new rolling machine being perfected by James A. Bonsack of Virginia. Each Bonsack machine could produce 120,000 cigarettes in a day, the equivalent of forty skilled hand rollers. But W. Duke, Sons and Company not only bought Bonsack machines, they bought the rights to the machine, giving them a significant advantage over the competition. Profits came rolling in. Then in 1884 James Duke moved to New York City to oversee the development of a new cigarette production plant, and once there, began organizing the American Tobacco Company. Incorporated in 1890 with James Duke as its president, American Tobacco was a holding company that owned many of the major cigarette manufacturers in the country. Over the next decade American Tobacco continued to acquire other manufacturers including R. J. Reynolds of Winston-Salem and the W. T. Blackwell Company. Then in 1904 James Duke reorganized the company into one large firm. By 1906, not counting cigars, the American Tobacco Company controlled 80 percent of the tobacco industry in the country. Its monopoly lasted until 1911, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the company had to be broken up to restore competition to the industry. This led James Duke to retire from the company and to pursue other endeavors, such as starting an electricity generation business and helping create Duke University. The rapid growth in Durham’s tobacco industry precipitated a similar rise in population and a number of new businesses. At the end of the Civil War, Durham’s Station had approximately 150

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Figure 9. Tobacco factories in downtown Durham. Most of these factories have been converted to residential, retail, or office use (courtesy of Duke University Libraries).

residents. By 1870 the population had grown to 256, by 1880 it reached 2,041, and by 1890 it topped 5,000. The new businesses that opened included ‘‘brokers, sign painters, itinerant entertainers, saloons, retailers, an insurance agency and notably the town’s first bank.’’73 In addition, the tobacco industry’s need for cloth for tobacco pouches spurred the development of the cotton industry in the city. In 1884 Julian Carr formed the Durham Manufacturing Company to supply cloth to both his and others’ firms in the city. Carr proceeded to build ‘‘one of the most extensive and finest plants in the country’’ in east Durham.74 Once in operation the plant branched out into producing several other types of cloth. Members of the Duke family also jumped into the textile business. Brody Duke first purchased one struggling mill and built another in north Durham. Benjamin Duke followed suit and built a mill in

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west Durham. To provide housing for their employees, they constructed mill villages surrounding each plant. Over the next several decades, textile mills were to play an increasingly important role in Durham’s economy. During the boom years of the late 1800s, the city of Durham struggled to keep up with the infrastructure needed to support its burgeoning population. Descriptions of the city during this time are unflattering to say the least: ‘‘In rainy weather, mud rose over pedestrians’ ankles, seasoned with the leavings of horses and mules. Flies frolicked and bred in and about the deposits of outdoor privies and the pigpens decorating residential yards. The town’s first attempt at a sanitation commission failed for lack of interest. Neighboring towns referred to typhoid as ‘Durham Fever.’ ’’75 Durham’s social geography also was established during this period. The wealthy settled on the high ground along major roads, while the poor, including a significant number of blacks, were relegated to the lower ground, often along streams and in gullies. This resulted in a relatively fine-grained pattern of neighborhoods with different socioeconomic and racial characteristics. These abrupt transitions among the city’s neighborhoods exist to the present day.

BLACK ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN DURHAM The entrepreneurial spirit that pervaded Durham during the late 1800s influenced the city’s black population. After the Civil War many freed blacks moved off plantations and farms looking for opportunities in towns such as Durham. By 1870 blacks made up a substantial proportion of the city’s population. One was John Merrick, who began his career in Durham as a barber, then branched out into construction, real estate, and insurance. In

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Figure 10. Staff and building of the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (later the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company) circa 1905. The association would grow into the largest African American life insurance company in the country (courtesy of the N.C. State Archives).

1899 he and several partners founded the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association—now the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company—the first black-owned insurance company in the state. More than a simple business, the association became ‘‘a catalyst for minority social and economic development through jobs, investments, loans, contributions and support of social programs.’’76 Due to its rapid success, by the early 1900s the company moved to its own building on Parrish Street in the heart of the Durham business district. Another important black entrepreneur was Richard Fitzgerald, who with his brother started a brickmaking business. Richard diversified his investments and played a key role in founding the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, which specialized in loans to black small farmers and businessmen. Yet another important black entrepreneur was James Shepard—son of a local pastor and graduate of Shaw University—who

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cofounded the Bull City Drug Company and invested in several other successful businesses. Shepard, however, ‘‘was called’’ to do missionary work and this led him to start a school in Durham to educate other black missionaries. In 1908 Shepard spearheaded a successful fund-raising effort, which raised $25,000 in donations and a gift of twenty acres of land from Brody Duke, and he opened the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua in 1910 on Fayetteville Street. Thirteen years later the General Assembly appropriated funds to support the school, and renamed it the North Carolina College for Negros, making it the first statesupported liberal arts college for blacks in the country. The General Assembly authorized several graduate programs at the college in 1939, including a law school and a school of library science. Then in 1969 the General Assembly changed the college’s name to North Carolina Central University and it joined the expanded University of North Carolina system in 1972. Today North Carolina Central University has an enrollment of over six thousand students on its hundred-acre campus in southeast Durham.

TRINITY COLLEGE AND DUKE UNIVERSITY In spite of its commercial success, the surrounding towns still considered Durham a dirty, uncivilized, and sordid place. Kenneth Boyd observed: ‘‘Historic, aristocratic Hillsborough regarded it as distinctly second class. Classic Chapel Hill viewed it with disdain. Cultured but politic Raleigh lifted an eyebrow when it was mentioned.’’77 Several of Durham’s business tycoons set out to change that image by seeking to lure a college to the city. In 1889 Baptist leaders in the state decided to create a Baptist Female Seminary, calling for proposals from cities interested in

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hosting such a school. Although Durham offered twice the financial support of other offers, it was turned down, the Baptist leaders ‘‘regarding the rough and rum-soaked mill town as no place they would send their daughters.’’78 The more refined and respectable Raleigh was selected for the Baptist Female Seminary, which in 1909 became Meredith College. Currently Meredith College occupies a 225-acre campus in west Raleigh and has approximately twenty-one hundred students. Two years later the leaders of Trinity College, a small, Methodistaffiliated, liberal arts school in rural Randolph County, announced their intention to move to a more urban setting. Durham’s civic leaders were determined not to lose out again—they quickly made it known that they would trump any offer made by Raleigh. Washington Duke offered an $85,000 endowment and Julian Carr offered a sixty-two-acre site on the west side of downtown Durham.79 Thus, Trinity College moved to Durham. In spite of the generous support from Duke and Carr, the early years of Durham’s Trinity College were rough going. First, the main building being constructed on the new campus collapsed a day before its completion, delaying the move to Durham for another year. The need to build an entirely new campus also led to financial shortfalls that required additional gifts from Washington and Benjamin Duke, Julian Carr, and others. Washington Duke, in fact, offered the college an additional $100,000 if it would admit women. The trustees agreed and Trinity College became a leader in woman’s education in the South. During this time the college established its progressive nature by supporting faculty members who took controversial positions on the issue of race. Professor John Spencer Bassett, for example, wrote in an article published in the South Atlantic Quarterly, which he founded: ‘‘Booker T. Washington was the second greatest man born in the South in the last 100 years.’’80 (He granted that Robert E. Lee was the greatest.) Local newspapers called for his ouster but the board of

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trustees supported Bassett’s right to free speech. In addition, when Booker T. Washington came to Durham to speak at the Colored County Fair in 1896, the college invited him to speak on campus. The college weathered these early storms and by the early 1900s it was a respected college on firm financial footing. Yet the ambitions of the college leadership were much bigger. William P. Few, who assumed the college presidency in 1910, realized that there were no research-oriented universities in the South and set out to create one. He also realized that James B. Duke, who had added to his fortune in the electrical power business, was aging and potentially interested in establishing a legacy: ‘‘Few was able to develop a concept that inspired Duke to act—majestic, comprehensive and irresistible. The concept was of a university, named for the Duke family, at the heart of which would be a strong college of liberal arts surrounded by a constellation of professional schools, including a medical school and teaching hospital.’’81 Duke acted in 1924, establishing the Duke Endowment and capitalizing it with $40 million. Thirty-two percent of the endowment’s yearly income was to go to support Duke University while the remaining income would go to a variety of educational, medical, and religious organizations in North and South Carolina. The following year Trinity College was renamed Duke University. The initial plan for the expansion of Duke University included the construction of eleven new buildings on the original campus, which was to become the women’s college, and sixteen new buildings on what was initially conceived as an expansion of the original campus. Speculators, anticipating such an expansion, bought up land around the campus hoping to make a killing. Duke foiled their plans, however, by commissioning a local real estate agent to quietly buy a thousand-acre farm 1.2 miles from the original campus and, while he was at it, Duke had that agent purchase another seven thousand acres of land in Durham and Orange

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Counties. Bought for investment purposes, this additional land is now part of Duke Forest, and although it is used primarily by Duke University’s School of Forestry, it doubles as passive recreation space for area residents. James B. Duke took a personal interest in the design and construction of the new campus. His desire was to create a university to rival the best in the country and he wanted it to look that way. To achieve that end, he selected the Philadelphia-based Horace Trumbauer’s architecture firm to design the buildings, and the Olmsted brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts, to develop the landscape plans for both the new campus and the original one. Until he died in October 1925, Duke ‘‘spent not only much money but much personal time on the original plans, worrying about everything from architectural detail and landscaping, to whether there should be ‘less of the yellow and gold colors in the stone mix.’ ’’82 Horace Trumbauer’s principal designer for the campus was the gifted Julian F. Abele, the first African American graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Architecture and a former student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Abele worked closely with James B. Duke while he was alive. The great irony here is that as an African American, had he applied, he would not have been admitted to the university due to his race.83 Different architectural styles were chosen for the two campuses. For the original east campus that became the women’s college, the Georgian style was selected. The new buildings included everything needed for self-sufficiency: classrooms, dormitories, a library, auditorium, and other facilities, all organized around a long rectangular north-south mall. For Duke’s new west campus, the Gothic style of Princeton and the University of Chicago was selected. The new west campus was laid out in the shape of a cross with the chapel as the head of the cross, the residential buildings as one crossbeam, and classroom buildings

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James B. Duke in designing the Gothic-styled campus (courtesy of Duke University Libraries).

Figure 11. Rendering of Duke University’s West Campus by the architectural firm of Horace Trumbauer. The African American architect Julian Abele worked closely with

as the other. These ornamented, stone buildings have common walls creating a continuous facade and well-defined malls. The bottom section of the cross is a landscaped entrance road leading up the hill to a 275-foot-long chapel at the top of the ridge. The chapel’s 210-foot tower dominates the entrance view and dwarfs the surrounding buildings in accordance with the wishes of James B. Duke. The new campus opened in 1930, although many of the buildings were still under construction. The Duke Medical School also opened that year with Wilber Davison, formerly an assistant dean at Johns Hopkins Medical School, as its first dean. At the time it was the only four-year medical program in North Carolina.84 Davison is credited with charting a course that led to Duke’s medical school becoming one of the very best in the nation. During the Great Depression the city of Durham fared better than most, as the city’s tobacco industry continued to expand. In the 1930s both the American Tobacco Company and Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company expanded their production facilities, building no less than eighteen new tobacco warehouses. Tobacco auction facilities were also expanded, and with each of these expansions came new jobs. The demand for cigarettes during World War II helped to maintain the expansion. During the war years Durham’s two major companies supplied the nation with more than a quarter of its cigarette supply.85 The war also bought many new residents to the Durham area. In 1941 the U.S. Army chose a site fifteen miles northeast of Durham for a thirty-thousandacre training facility named Camp Butner. Over sixteen thousand employees were hired to construct the camp’s facilities. By mid1942 the first of thirty-five thousand soldiers and civilian army personnel began to fill the camp. Durham became the locus of most off-base activities: ‘‘Stores in town stayed open late Friday evenings hoping to catch in their tills as much of the $500,000 weekly payroll as possible.’’86 After the war, Durham benefited

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from another important federal investment. With the support of Duke University, the city was able to attract a veterans’ hospital, built across the street from its own hospital on Erwin Road.

THE REST OF THE TRIANGLE AREA I N T H E L AT E 1 8 0 0 S A N D E A R LY 1900S Durham’s rapid growth and development during the late 1800s and early 1900s was not typical of other cities in the state or in the Triangle area. North Carolina lost over forty thousand men in the Civil War and its economy was left in shambles. Economic suffering was widespread, particularly among the one-third of the North Carolina population made up of freed slaves, many of whom migrated to nearby towns and cities in search of work that was not agricultural. During the initial period of Reconstruction, progressive reforms were introduced by the Republican Party, which was largely made up of freed blacks, northern transplants, and antisecession whites. A new constitution ‘‘provided for universal manhood suffrage and basic legal rights for whites and blacks alike.’’87 During this time, blacks were elected to local public offices and an effort was made to provide equal, albeit, separate facilities, including public schools, for blacks and whites. These progressive reforms were cut short, however, as the Conservative Democrats regained control of the General Assembly in 1870, and the governor’s office in 1876. These changes soon brought about the disenfranchisement of the state’s black population. Particularly hard hit was funding for public education: ‘‘Illiteracy was greater in 1880 than it had been in 1860, and the state had the dubious distinction of having the highest illiteracy rate in the nation.’’88 A new system of appointing county officials was instituted, rather than having

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them elected at the local level, so that Republicans and blacks could not regain political power. As reflected in the history of Durham, between 1880 and 1900 the textile industry expanded rapidly in the Piedmont. Although some of those mills were built in cities such as Durham, mill locations largely followed the ‘‘Rhode Island Model’’ whereby individual mills were built along rivers and streams to utilize water power, and close to rail lines to receive raw materials and to ship finished products. Small mill villages were constructed around these mills to house at least a portion of their workers, while others commuted from surrounding farms. From the mill owners’ perspective, an advantage of this pattern was that, because of these mills’ dispersed locations, there was little competition for employees, which made it difficult for workers to organize. This decentralized industrial pattern also helped to reinforce North Carolina’s already dispersed settlement pattern and keep its cities, including those in the Triangle area, relatively small. The pro-business Democrats remained in control of state politics until 1894 when the Populist and the Republican Parties joined together to put forth a ‘‘Fusion Platform,’’ calling for ‘‘fair elections, improved education for all children, lower interest rates and regulation of the railroads.’’89 Once in control of the General Assembly, the Fusion coalition raised taxes on the railroads and businesses, funded public schools for both blacks and whites, and reinstituted the election of county officials. Once again, however, Democrats—with the assistance of the Ku Klux Klan—were soon using the specter of black domination to undermine support for these reforms. Thus, they regained power in 1900, and held on to it for the next seventy-two years. In the early 1900s the business-friendly, antiunion policies of the state’s leaders led to rapid industrial growth. By 1920 North Carolina was the premier industrial state in the Southeast, but it ranked forty-fifth in the nation in average factory wages. The

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Depression hit North Carolina as hard as other states, but the Triangle area fared somewhat better given its heavy concentration of government and university employees. World War II led to the expansion of many industries in the state, including textiles in the Piedmont and shipbuilding on the coast. It also led to the creation and expansion of military bases: Fort Bragg, sixty miles south of Raleigh, and Camp Butner. During this time, community leaders in Raleigh continued efforts to diversify the economy of the city and to improve its infrastructure. One approach was to establish a land grant university in the city. In 1875 the General Assembly used the interest from its Morrill Act fund to create an experimental agricultural station at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Soon after, Leonidas L. Polk, the state commissioner of agriculture, began a campaign to move that station to Raleigh.90 He also suggested that the agricultural station include an industrial college. Raleigh boosters picked up on this idea and formed the Watauga Club, whose purpose was to create in Raleigh a school similar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Walter H. Page, a local newspaper editor and member of the club, argued that ‘‘our people need it and have sought it because they wish to see Raleigh a place of manufacture and this she must be if anything more than a seat of government.’’91 The efforts of the Watauga Club paid off. In 1885 the General Assembly authorized an agricultural and industrial college to be constructed in a city that would donate land for the school and contribute to its construction. Raleigh’s government and business leaders raised $8,000, agreed to donate thirty acres of land west of downtown, and aggressively lobbied the General Assembly to select Raleigh as the site of this new school. In 1887, the General Assembly did choose Raleigh as the site of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, and the area had what would become its third major research university.

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Figure 12. The N.C. State campus in 1909 (courtesy of the North Carolina Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

The college accepted its first students in 1889 and by 1900 it had a student body of 250.92 Although engineering was its most popular subject, a department of agricultural extension was added in 1909, and expanded in 1914, as federal funding became available to support this activity. Over the next fifteen years the college added programs in business, textiles, forestry, and education. After World War II the student body grew rapidly as the returning soldiers took advantage of the educational support provided by the GI Bill. In 1947 the college had over 5,000 students, more than twice its pre-war enrollment. In 1965 the school’s name was changed to North Carolina State University to reflect its size, national stature, and comprehensive curriculum. Today North Carolina State University has a full range of well-respected liberal arts and science, engineering, agriculture, architecture, and other programs. Its student enrollment has grown to over 30,000. During this time two black educational institutions were founded in Raleigh, establishing it as a center for the education

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of blacks in the South. St. Augustine’s Normal and Collegiate Institute was founded in 1867 by the Protestant Episcopal Church, with support from the Freedman’s Bureau, on a site ten blocks east of the state Capitol.93 Its original curriculum focused on technical and trade-related knowledge and skills but this was quickly expanded to include liberal arts. In 1919 it began to offer postsecondary education and its name was changed to St. Augustine’s Junior College and in 1927 it expanded again to offer four-year college degrees. Officially incorporated in 1875, Shaw University was the first historically black college or university in the South. It grew out of theology classes taught by a former Union Army chaplain, H. M. Tupper, with support from the American Baptist Home Mission Society. By 1881 Shaw had added a women’s college and a medical school. Over their long histories both St. Augustine’s College and Shaw University have produced many notable alumni and their students played important roles in the civil rights movement.94 The late 1800s were also a time of expansion in Raleigh’s urban infrastructure. The influx of blacks and others after the war had made Raleigh the second largest city in the state by 1880, behind the port city of Wilmington. In 1881, the General Assembly expanded Raleigh’s boundaries a half mile in all directions. To support this growing population, a centralized water supply system, electric streetlights, and a mule-drawn streetcar system were introduced during the ensuing decade. In addition, R. Stanhope Pullen donated sixty acres of land adjacent to what was to become North Carolina State University for a city park. In the 1890s, while several cotton mills opened in Raleigh, its industrial development lagged behind many other cities in the state. In 1911, Raleigh’s Municipal Auditorium opened, providing a venue for large musical and theatrical performances. Besides a five-thousand-seat theater, it included municipal offices, a courtroom, police headquarters, and even a jail. The original building burned in 1930 but was quickly rebuilt. Today, the neoclassical { 56 }

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Memorial Auditorium serves as one anchor for the recently reopened Fayetteville Street, the state Capitol serving as the second anchor. Like the state as a whole, Raleigh experienced the 1920s as boom years followed by the stock market crash of 1929. All eight of Raleigh’s local banks succumbed to the country’s economic turmoil. Because the city was the state capital, however, the local economy recovered more quickly than that of many other cities, and by the end of World War II ‘‘Raleigh’s market in business real estate, stimulated by a wartime flow of money seeking an investment medium, has boomed as never before in the city’s 150 years of existence.’’95 One of these real estate projects built on the western edge of town was Cameron Village, a 158-acre site offering 561 apartments, 100 single-family homes, and a shopping center. This award-winning development by J. W. York of Raleigh and R. A. Bryan of Goldsboro was Raleigh’s first suburban shopping center. Many more were to follow. While the city of Raleigh grew and developed, the towns of Chapel Hill and Hillsborough largely languished during these years. After the Civil War, Hillsborough benefited from small-scale tobacco manufacturing but its role in that industry was quickly eclipsed by Durham. Toward the end of the century a furniture factory and two large cotton mills were built in the vicinity of Hillsborough, but the once important town was largely frozen in time. It remained as the Orange County seat, but during the first half of the twentieth century Hillsborough’s population increased by less than four hundred residents. Chapel Hill also grew slowly after the Civil War as Union troops occupied the University of North Carolina campus, inflicting indignities on the university such as using the university library to stable their horses. Of greater concern to many, however, was the relationship between President David Swain’s ‘‘beautiful and headstrong daughter’’ and the general in charge of the Union occupation.96 After a whirlwind courtship they were married in August 1865. This union outraged many North Carolinians, and in e a r l y

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1868 Swain and the entire faculty were forced by the new Reconstruction government to resign. With no support coming from the General Assembly, the trustees were forced to close the university in 1871, and it remained closed until 1875, when the university’s supporters persuaded the General Assembly to restore its funding. This closure had a profound influence on the town of Chapel Hill, which largely existed to serve the university’s faculty and students. It had also been isolated. Since its creation, the only way to get to or from Chapel Hill was by traveling at least eight miles on dirt roads. That finally changed in 1882 when a ten-mile rail spur was constructed from the North Carolina Railroad, which ran just south of Hillsborough. The impetus for building the line was the discovery of a vein of iron ore northwest of Chapel Hill. The mine owner lobbied for a rail line, and the university threw its support behind the project. To serve the mine and to protect the students from ‘‘the temptations of the outside world’’ the line was routed so that it terminated a mile west of the university.97 Not only did this line create easier access to the university, it also served to attract several textile mills, which became the nucleus for Carrboro, a working-class town that developed on Chapel Hill’s western border.98 Despite the rail link, the university and town continued to grow slowly. When Francis P. Venable assumed the presidency in 1900 the university had a state appropriation of $25,000 and a faculty of forty. Venable, however, set high goals for the university. He wanted it to ‘‘serve the needs of the people of North Carolina, to be the most outstanding university in the South, and to enhance the institution’s standing among the nation’s universities.’’99 Although Venable made progress toward those goals before 1914 when he stepped down as president and resumed teaching, it was not until the 1920s that the university began to be recognized as one of the leading universities in the nation. Under the leadership of Harry W. Chase, who assumed the presidency in 1919 from { 58

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Figure 13. The University of North Carolina in 1919 (courtesy of the North Carolina Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

Edward K. Graham who served as president between 1914 and 1918, enrollment began to swell, and both the curriculum and the campus were greatly expanded. University officials laid out a second quadrangle, anchored on one end by a new university library and on the other by South Building, and chose the colonial revival architectural style for the new buildings surrounding the quad. During Venable’s tenure as president and professor, which ended in 1931, twenty new buildings were constructed on campus. During this time Chapel Hill’s fortunes were still closely tied to those of the university. Thus, it was not until 1919 that Chapel Hill’s main street, Franklin Street, was paved and even then it was only a strip eighteen feet wide down the center of the street, which was forty-five feet wide.100 During the boom years of the 1920s, however, the town grew along with the university. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, the town’s business district expanded outward, and many of its older wooden buildings were e a r l y

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replaced by brick ones. The town’s planning board promoted the Georgian style for downtown buildings and many developers complied. New residential development also began to spill over the town’s limits, which were unchanged since being established in 1851. The influx of servicemen for various training programs during World War II and the wave of new students after the war resulted in continued growth of the university and the town during the 1940s.

CONCLUSION By 1950 geological and historical forces had shaped the basic elements of the Triangle area. Those elements included three distinct towns, separated by eight to twenty-six miles of fields and woodlands, with unique histories, economic bases, population characteristics, and local cultures. The towns did, however, have two elements in common. The first was that each contained a major research university. The second was that they were largely developed at relatively low densities. At this time the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area did not function like a metropolitan area but as a collection of distinct towns that happened to be near each other. The U.S. Census Bureau defined Wake and Durham Counties as two distinct metropolitan statistical areas. The physical distance and the lack of road capacity limited intercity commuting. The main road connecting Chapel Hill and Raleigh, for example, was NC 54, a narrow, twolane road twenty-six miles long. Initial discussions were already under way however, that would knit these three distinct places together into one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country.

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The Birth of the Research Triangle Metropolitan Area A metropolitan area is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as ‘‘a core area with a large nucleus, together with adjacent communities that have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core.’’1 In 1950, when the first metropolitan areas were designated, Raleigh and surrounding Wake County were included in one area, while Durham and Durham County in another. In 1971 Chapel Hill and Orange County were added to the Durham metro area and in 1981 the two areas were combined into one, until further growth led to their being separated again in 2005. This chapter describes the three major development projects that were critical to the economic and social integration of what has become known as the Research Triangle. The development of the Research Triangle Park, the expansion of the Raleigh-Durham Airport, and the construction of Interstate 40 were all critical to its transition from a collection of separate communities to a metropolitan area.

THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK It is impossible to know exactly how the Research Triangle metropolitan area would have developed without the creation of the

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Research Triangle Park, but it’s safe to say that it would be different in both size and form. RTP filled the hole between the three towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It created a center where none had existed before. The gravitational pull of the RTP has drawn development toward it and distorted what probably would have been a more conventional concentric zone or sector pattern of development around the individual towns. As a metropolitan center, however, the form of RTP is radically different than those of other urban areas. Rather than a forest of tightly clustered high-rise buildings, the RTP consists of a collection of low-rise buildings cloaked by stands of pine trees. Rather than a mix of office, retail, and residential land uses, RTP is almost exclusively inhabited by research and development operations and some related production facilities. It’s the urban equivalent of a monoculture. The RTP has also provided the area an identity, both nationally and internationally, as an area on the forefront of the new knowledge-based economy: an area rich in human capital and containing a critical mass of new economy businesses such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and hightechnology companies. The creation of the RTP was critical in knitting together the distinct towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill and in creating the social ties that define a metropolitan area. But what lead to the creation of the park? What was the thinking behind the lowdensity development model? What were the obstacles that had to be overcome? What impact has the park had on the region and what challenges is it facing?

THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT To understand the impetus for the creation of the RTP one needs to appreciate the economic position of the South in general and North Carolina in particular in the early 1950s. Compared to the

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rest of the country, the South was ‘‘relatively disadvantaged and economically depressed.’’2 In spite of World War II defense spending in southern industries, the South’s economy was still heavily based on agricultural production such as cotton, tobacco, and peanuts. Employment in manufacturing lagged other regions. In 1950, for example, the South accounted for only 16 percent of all manufacturing employment in the nation. Moreover, much of this was concentrated in textile and other low-wage manufacturing. Another telling figure is that in the mid-1950s only eighteen of the Fortune 500 companies were headquartered in the South.3 Economic conditions in North Carolina were similar to those in the larger region. A large proportion of the state’s jobs were in low-skill, low-pay occupations. In 1952 the state’s per capita income was about two-thirds of the national figure, the second lowest in the continental United States.4 The lack of well-paying jobs contributed to a ‘‘brain drain’’ as many educated young people left the state to find suitable employment. In a speech delivered at a meeting to announce the Research Triangle Park, Governor Luther Hodges observed that ‘‘two thirds of these young people trained in science at these three institutions [Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina] are forced to leave North Carolina, and indeed the entire South, to find suitable employment.’’5 A promotional movie produced by the N.C. Department of Commerce in 1954 showed a set of sad parents seeing their child off at a train station while the announcer says: ‘‘Every year many of our best educated young people leave to find a living elsewhere. Of all our state’s resources these young people are the most valuable and we’re still losing them by the thousands.’’6 During the early 1950s the Raleigh-Durham area, although better off than many other areas of the state, still lagged the country in high-technology employment.7 Moreover, the area’s population was small. The total population of the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan areas in 1950 was 238,000. Among the major towns

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Durham was the largest at 71,000, followed by Raleigh at 66,000, and Chapel Hill at 9,000. This meant that the area had ‘‘few of the agglomeration and urbanization economies that characterized larger metropolitan regions.’’8 Airline connections to major business centers, for example, were limited to several East Coast cities. What the Raleigh-Durham area did have, however, was three major universities and other smaller colleges, and a highly educated workforce. It was these assets that the founders of the RTP seized upon as the basis for the economic transformation of the metropolitan area and the state. The original goals of the RTP were to: (1) ‘‘attract industrial research laboratories and facilities’’ to North Carolina; (2) ‘‘increase opportunities of citizens of North Carolina for employment,’’ and (3) ‘‘increase the per capita income of the citizens of the State.’’9 By 1954 the idea of capitalizing on the proximity of three major research universities to each other had been discussed but not acted upon.10 It took a businessman from Greensboro, Romeo Guest, to get the ball rolling. Guest owned a business that catered to the development of new facilities for textile firms moving to the state from New England. As that trend began to wane he sought other development opportunities. He seized on the idea of using the Triangle universities to attract industrial research operations to North Carolina. Guest began by developing a marketing brochure to lure research facilities to the area and began a series of meetings to promote the idea with representatives of the three universities and state political leaders. Guest is generally credited with coining the phrase ‘‘research triangle’’ to refer to this area. Among the many meetings Guest held were sessions with Malcolm Campbell, dean of the School of Textiles, and William Newell, director of the Textile Research Center, at North Carolina State University, who supported the idea of an industrial park for research and formed a

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delegation to present the idea to Governor Hodges. The governor requested reports containing an objective assessment of the potential impacts of the idea, which were prepared by Newell and Campbell and provided to the governor in early 1955. After several follow-up meetings, the governor, although not willing to support the idea financially, was willing to use his position to advocate for its creation. He saw the RTP as ‘‘the marriage of North Carolina’s ideals for higher education and its hopes for material progress.’’11 His hope was that if research and development facilities could be attracted to the Raleigh-Durham area, production facilities would locate in other parts of the state. This is indeed what happened. In May 1955 the governor created the Research Triangle Development Council to take the idea to the next level. Robert Hanes, president of Wachovia Bank, was appointed chairman of that committee, which included other prominent business and government leaders. One of the first tasks of this committee was to convince the universities to cooperate in the development effort since it would be their knowledge and staff resources that would be marketed to potential occupants of the RTP. The universities were seen as ‘‘providing a wellspring of knowledge and talents for the stimulation and guidance of research by industrial firms.’’12 Some university officials, however, were uncomfortable with the idea of the universities becoming too closely involved in industrial research: ‘‘Guest was explaining the Research Triangle idea and how he would sell to companies the talents of the faculty. William Carmichael of the Consolidated University said, ‘Let me see Romeo, if I really understand what it is we’re talking about here, you want the professors here and all of us to be the prostitutes and you’re going to be the pimp.’ ’’13 One idea to bridge the gap between basic university research and industrial research was suggested by Paul Gross, then vice president of Duke University. Early on he argued that it would be

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important to have a nonprofit research institute associated with the park. This led to the creation of the Research Triangle Institute, which has played an important role in the park’s development. The Research Triangle Development Council also conducted an inventory of university resources and expertise that would be used to market the area to corporations. It identified approximately nine hundred individuals at the three universities who could potentially contribute to the mission of the RTP.14 In September 1956, the council was incorporated as the Research Triangle Committee Incorporated, a ‘‘non-profit, benevolent, charitable and educational corporation,’’ with Governor Hodges, Brandon Hodges, the State Treasurer, and Robert Hanes as the directors.15 One of the first activities of the Research Triangle Committee was to hire an executive director. The committee chose George Simpson, a prote´ge´ of the eminent sociologist Howard Odum, and a well-respected UNC–Chapel Hill professor of sociology. The choice of Simpson was a wise one in that it countered the skepticism toward the project held by many university officials. Walter Harper recalled that it ‘‘gave assurance to the universities that one of their men was in a position to give guidance to the Philistines.’’16 In January 1957 Simpson presented a plan for moving the RTP project forward. First, he proposed beginning to market the idea to the heads of companies involved in industrial research. Second, he proposed beginning to acquire land and building laboratory buildings for lease. Third, he proposed moving forward on the establishment of a research institute to anchor the park. The marketing effort began with the development of brochures targeted to several types of industries including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, electronics, ceramics, food, forest products, and textiles.17 Simpson also put together a team of faculty members from UNC, Duke, and N.C. State to visit chief executive officers and

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sell them on the RTP idea. ‘‘Simpson assembled one of the most unusual teams of traveling salesman ever seen in business offices,’’ Harper noted.18 By the end of 1957, this team had visited over two hundred businesses. One of the difficulties in marketing the RTP idea was that no specific site had been selected. Simpson and others believed that they needed something tangible to sell. Simpson commented: ‘‘There is great value in having something concrete, something that can be mapped and walked over. . . . Something tangible stimulates the imagination.’’19 Upon studying maps of the area, they focused on an area equidistant from Durham and Raleigh with access to the Southern Railway line and to two highways, N.C. 54 and U.S. 70-A. The area was largely composed of wornout farmland with ‘‘nothing but scrub pine and opossums.’’20 Simpson also believed that this land purchase would be best handled by a private company: ‘‘Someone might care to buy a substantial acreage of land, build a laboratory building or buildings, on the assumption that a profit would be made.’’21 Thus a search for investors began. On the advice of the director of the N.C. Department of Commerce and Development, Governor Hodges contacted Karl Robbins, a retired North Carolina textile mill owner who had moved to New York. He agreed to invest $1 million in the project and formed Pinelands Incorporated to sell stock. Romeo Guest, who had done business with Robbins in the past, was elected president and treasurer of this new company and Robbins was the chairman of the board and the sole stockholder. Upon Robbins’s commitment, William Maughan, a consulting forester, was hired to quietly begin purchasing options on tracts of land for the park. The goal was a whopping five thousand acres. By the time of the official announcement of the park he had successfully optioned or purchased four thousand acres at an average price of $175 per acre.22

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In what was to be the first of several significant obstacles to development of the RTP, private investors showed very little interest in buying shares of the company and Robbins began to be concerned that his investment was going down the drain. Albert Link notes, ‘‘Robbins wanted North Carolinians to own 49 percent of Pinelands, and as of then, there were no investors.’’23 Many of the options on land were coming due and Robbins was not willing to invest additional funds in the company. In addition, ‘‘questions of propriety were being raised about the promotion of a privately owned research park by public universities and other state government agencies.’’24 The solution to both these problems was to make a fundamental shift in the conception of the park and the approach to fund-raising. In response to the lack of investors, Governor Hodges and Robert Hanes met with Archie Davis, the new head of Wachovia Bank, to ask him to take a lead role in selling Pinelands stock. In that discussion Davis suggested that the fund-raising concept was flawed: ‘‘To me, I just felt without knowing anything about it, it just didn’t make sense. If this indeed was designed for public service, then it would be much easier to raise money from corporations and institutions and the like, who were interested in serving the State of North Carolina, by making a contribution.’’25 Davis accepted the task of raising funds from private and corporate donations rather than investments. In accordance with this change, the Research Triangle Committee became the Research Triangle Foundation (RTF) and the Pinelands Company would operate as a subsidiary of the foundation. On September 10, 1957, Governor Luther Hodges held a news conference to officially announce the creation of the RTP. Former UNC system president Bill Friday recalled: ‘‘The new model worked amazingly well. It changed the whole venue. We were in the public arena from that day on. Nobody was making a personal profit. It was the pivotal day, because everyone was either on the team or you had to explain why you weren’t.’’26 Davis began fund-raising in September 1958 and { 68 }

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Figure 14. Picture of Governor Luther Hodges presiding over a ground breaking in the Research Triangle Park circa 1959 (courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

by January of the following year he had raised $1.425 million for the project.27 It is interesting to note that many of those donations came from outside the Raleigh-Durham area as the ‘‘citizenry of North Carolina came forth to invest in the future of the state.’’28 The funds raised were used to buy out Pinelands stock and transfer land to the RTF and to create the Research Triangle Institute, which was to become one of the first anchor tenants of the park.

THE ORIGINAL ANCHORS: RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE AND CHEMSTRAND As noted earlier, the idea for creating a nonprofit research institute to anchor the park and to provide an intermediary organization between university and corporate researchers is credited to b i r t h

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Paul Gross, the Duke vice president. On January 18, 1957, a committee was formed to assess the feasibility of the idea, and how it would fit into the Research Triangle Park. Robert Hanes appointed Brandon Hodges, business executive and former state treasurer, as the chair of this committee. The committee’s report presented that May concluded that a research institute was feasible, that it should engage in both basic and applied research as a way to encourage faculty participation, and that it would not require financial support from the universities. Based on the committee’s positive assessment, funding to create an institute was added to the Research Triangle Park’s fund-raising goals. In late 1957, Brandon Hodges died and George Watts Hill, board chairman of a local bank, was appointed as the chairman of the Research Triangle Institute Committee and by the end of that year Archie Davis, as part of his overall fund-raising efforts, had collected $500,000 for the creation of an institute. The Research Triangle Foundation donated land for the creation of RTI and a portion of funds raised was used to construct what was to be named the Robert M. Hanes Memorial Building, after he died in 1959. The Hanes Building was the first of numerous buildings to house RTI’s expanding research activities. With funding in hand, the Research Triangle Committee lost no time in hiring George Herbert, who had served as executive associate director of the Stanford Research Institute, as the first president of RTI, a position he held from December 1957 until he retired in 1989.29 Soon after, Gertrude Cox, a world-renowned statistician, agreed to move her Survey Operations Unit from the University of North Carolina to RTI. Her unit became the first part of ‘‘a scientific institution that had no name, no staff, no money, an optimistic but vague mission, and a small, enthusiastic cheering section.’’30 Yet Cox’s move provided credibility to this fledgling effort. Eighteen of the institute’s first twenty projects were in statistics.

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A $2.5 million gift from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation was also instrumental in RTI’s success. In late 1958, ‘‘after she had inspected RTI’s expanse of nothing,’’ Camille Dreyfus, in honor of her late husband, provided the support for basic research in polymer physics and chemistry. A portion of those funds was used to construct a second building on the RTI campus. By the end of 1959 RTI had contract revenues amounting to $142,000 and a staff of thirty-five. Within three years of its opening, RTI’s financial statement showed it had reached the break-even point, and its revenues have grown steadily since. There is little doubt that RTI played an important role in the success of the RTP. It provided tangible evidence to the world and to potential occupants that the Research Triangle Park was for real and that something was indeed happening out there in those all but empty acres that once were, in Pearson Stewart’s phrase, ‘‘useful mostly for holding two counties together.’’31 It also has been successful in involving university faculty in research projects on topics as diverse as mass spectrometry, semiconductors, implants for people with severe hearing impairments, atmospheric science, and many others. Chemstrand (later purchased by Monsanto) was the other company that acted as an early anchor for the RTP. Headquartered in Decatur, Alabama, this maker of synthetic fibers was interested in building a new research facility. A consultant hired by the company to assist with the site-selection process recommended twenty-one sites for consideration but the RTP was not on that list. In fact, at the time a Chemstrand employee talked to William Little, UNC-CH professor of chemistry and a member of the original team of professors spearheading the recruiting effort, the company had decided to locate its new facility in Princeton, New Jersey.32 Undeterred, Little talked up the benefits of the RTP, and a multiuniversity faculty delegation was formed to visit Chemstrand

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officials in Decatur. The company was impressed by this initiative and the helpfulness and cooperation of local officials. It was also drawn to the RTP by the presence of the three universities, the high quality of life, and the relatively inexpensive cost of living.33 In October 1959, Chemstrand purchased a hundred acres of land in the RTP and quickly began construction of its new facility. Over the succeeding years Chemstrand’s scientists taught courses at both N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill, while university faculty members participated in the company’s research projects.

THE DOLDRUMS The early momentum generated by RTI and Chemstrand ground to a halt in the early 1960s. The foundation had gone through its initial funds and risked losing some of the parcels that it had under option. George Watts Hill, now chairman of the RTI Board of Governors, came to the rescue by buying a critical parcel and holding it for almost two years until the RTF had the funds to purchase it from him. RTI also paid local property taxes for some of the property that the RTF was holding for future sale.34 Still, additional funds were needed to purchase land, develop the infrastructure, and pay the staff. According to the vice president for development at that time, ‘‘In the early ’60s it was touch and go. Archie [Davis] had to go back to his backers and get some more money to keep us going. The second time these were not gifts, these were loans from the insurance companies and banks.’’35 The only encouraging announcement was in November 1960 when the U.S. Forest Service said it would build a small biological laboratory in the park. Concerned about the lack of interest in the park among corporate officials, at the beginning of 1962 the RTF decided to open an office in New York City. Although this office may have ‘‘planted some seeds among corporate officers’’ it did not produce tangible

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results in the form of cooperate commitments to move to the park and it was closed at the end of 1963.36

THE TURNING POINT The pivotal year for the RTP was 1965. It began in January with an announcement by Governor Terry Sanford that the Environmental Health Sciences Center (later the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences) would be moving to the park. This was a highly sought after plum, with forty-six states in the competition. The fact that Governor Sanford was one of the first southern politicians to support the candidacy of John Kennedy for president and that former Governor Luther Hodges was the sitting Secretary of Commerce certainly had something to do with this decision. The RTF also donated a 509-acre site, the cost of which was subsequently reimbursed by the state, and constructed eight buildings that were leased to the federal government for this facility. Following on the heels of the Health Sciences Center announcement, in April 1965 IBM announced that it would open a research facility occupying 600,000 square feet on 400 acres in the park. That announcement was the culmination of seven years of courting by the RTF staff. IBM’s announcement was seen as a critical vote of confidence, validating the park’s mission and paving the way for the explosive growth that would follow. The sale of land to IBM also allowed the RTF to pay off its debts, and operate in the black for the first time. The executive secretary of the RTP quipped that they had to ‘‘send out for some black ink because we’d been operating in the red for so long.’’37 By the end of the 1960s twenty-one companies had committed to opening research facilities in the park. Of particular note was the arrival of Burroughs Wellcome in 1972, the first pharmaceutical company to join the mix. At this time the RTP area was viewed by many as part of the ‘‘old South,’’ so many Burroughs Wellcome

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Figure 15. IBM building in the late 1960s (courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

employees were not happy about the move. In reflecting on the move, Burroughs Wellcome researcher Gertrude Elion, who in 1988 would be honored with a Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, said, ‘‘We heard rumors that the company might be moving but we never anticipated that it would be any further than Connecticut. . . . The company did send us down to see what it was like. We didn’t see any sign of civilization. We wondered, ‘what in the world are we getting into?’ ’’38 The RTP area still had a way to go to impress those who were accustomed to big-city amenities and lifestyles. The early inhabitants of the RTP created a gravitational pull that attracted other companies. During the 1970s, seventeen companies moved to the park. Most notably, in 1971 the Environmental Protection Agency established its largest research facility in the park. To strengthen its relationship with the Triangle’s universities, in 1975 the RTF donated 120 acres of land for the { 74 }

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creation of the Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies Inc. (TUCASI), which provided a site for collaborative university activities within the park. In 1978 the National Humanities Center was attracted to the TUCASI campus, and in subsequent years it became the home to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the North Carolina Supercomputing Center, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and a variety of other research-oriented organizations. Growth in the number of companies locating research and development facilities in the park continued during the 1980s. Thirty-two companies or research organizations set up operations there during that period. Many of the companies specialized in microelectronics including Northern Telecom, General Electric, DuPont Electronics, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the chip industry’s first research consortium. Glaxo, the pharmaceuticals company that evolved into what is now pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, also established a major research facility in the park. In the 1990s forty-two new companies moved to or established research or manufacturing facilities in the park, including Ericsson, Cisco Systems, Biogen Idec, and Corning BioPro. In a move to accommodate smaller, start-up companies, the RTF also created the First Flight Venture Center, which provides space and technical assistance to start-up businesses, many of which are spin-offs from university research efforts. Over the years the park has continued to add to the approximately 4,000 acres originally purchased. As of 2007, the park consisted of 6,971 acres, roughly configured in the shape of a rectangle eight miles north to south and two miles east and west. On that land stands twenty million square feet of buildings, housing 157 firms and other organizations, employing 39,000 people. The largest employers include IBM (10,800 employees), GlaxoSmithKline (5,000 employees), Cisco (3,400 employees), Nortel (2,800 employees), the Environmental Protection Agency (1,500 b i r t h

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employees), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (1,000 employees). By 2007, the park approached its maximum facility capacity with only 460 undeveloped acres remaining.

THE PHYSICAL LOCATION AND FORM OF THE RTP The RTP is located in the center of a scalene triangle formed by connecting the three major research universities of the three core municipalities in the area. It is approximately seven miles from central Durham, eleven miles from downtown Chapel Hill, and eighteen miles from the center of Raleigh. The physical form of the RTP is distinct from other research parks in both its overall size and its density of development. The average-sized research park is only six hundred acres, half of which is developed with buildings and other infrastructure.39 RTP started with a four-thousand-acre site and as time went by it was expanded to nearly seven thousand acres. Why was so much land required? One explanation is that the park’s designers wanted to ‘‘preserve the balance and beauty of the land.’’40 Hired in 1958 to oversee the planning of the park, Pearson Stewart, an MIT-trained professional planner, surveyed the property and identified three prominent north-south ridges: ‘‘We built our plan based on that knowledge. . . . The tops of the ridges are good building sites, the bottoms are poor building sites. The sewer mains went down the valleys.’’41 Stewart and his colleagues took the ‘‘park’’ idea seriously. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Americans were moving to the suburbs and ‘‘company executives loved the idea of providing their employees with a similar work environment.’’42 Those same executives were also interested in keeping their employees from fraternizing with the competition, and large corporate campuses

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Figure 16. The low-density, seven-thousand-acre Research Triangle Park in 2009 (courtesy of the Research Triangle Foundation).

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with on-site eating facilities served that purpose well. When asked about this, Stewart replied, ‘‘No question. That was not hidden at all. They didn’t want their people talking to other workers.’’43 For these reasons the original zoning provisions approved in January 1960 established an eight-acre minimum lot size and required that buildings be set back at least 150 feet from the road and 100 feet from the side and back property lines. They also limited building coverage to a mere 5 percent of each tract, although after RTP lost a prospective company, this was changed to 15 percent, where it remains today. In addition, all site improvements, including buildings, access roads, and storage areas, are limited to 30 percent of the site, which means that 70 percent of each site is left in its natural state. Thus, the park’s buildings and parking are hidden from the view of passers-by and most park employees look out on large stands of loblolly pines. Companies also commonly offer an opportunity for on-site recreation in the form of exercise courses, running paths, and pedestrian greenways. The homogeneity of land use in the park is another one of its distinct features. An early plan developed by consultant Robert Anderson included a residential area within the park but this was quickly dropped. As Pearson Stewart explains, ‘‘[Residential development] didn’t get any further than Bob Anderson’s initial plan. That was a conscious decision. We thought we could make a research triangle park, with research facilities, but that’s all we have the money to do. So [we thought we would] let the residential areas go to the three cities. They know how to do that and we don’t. So we won’t try. At the time there was no thinking at mixing [types of land use] at all, just the reverse.’’44 Thus, the park’s covenants do not permit residential development and the legislation creating the park’s special tax district also limits residential development.

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The park’s planners did, however, see some need for commercial services, since the surrounding area had little to offer. The nearest hotels were located in the three towns and park employees had to drive miles just to get to fast food outlets. Yet only two acres of land were set aside for a commercial services center, which once developed included a hotel, post office, several branch banks, and rental office space.

IMPACT OF THE PARK The RTP has had profound impact on the growth and development of the metropolitan area. First and foremost, the RTP provided the area with a name and an identity. As discussed in Chapter 1, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill had little in common and poor transportation links greatly limited the extent of commuting among them. The success of the RTP helped change all that. The RTP created an overarching image of the Triangle as one of the nation’s high-technology hot spots. It created a ‘‘global brand that has built the reputation of the region and state as one of the leading areas for high-technology innovation.’’45 It has put the area ‘‘on the map’’ as a place with a substantial concentration of research and development activity.46 Liz Rooks indicated the extent of this reputation: ‘‘We had one company that located here and their CEO was making a speech in Japan and said that he was moving his company to North Carolina and [someone in the audience] said, ‘Oh yes, we know that. It’s in Research Triangle Park.’ ’’47 Clearly, the RTP was instrumental in creating an image of the three towns and the surrounding area as one that is on the forefront of science and technology, ripe with opportunity for both established businesses and entrepreneurs. It began to forge a common identity among area residents. Studies of the impact of the RTP show that it has been successful in attracting high-technology firms, not only to the RTP but

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to the larger metropolitan area: ‘‘Before the Park was established, fewer than 15 percent of the businesses in the three counties surrounding the Park—Orange, Wake, and Durham—were in what was defined as ‘New-line’ industries. This included businesses involved in chemical, electronics, communication, business services, educational services, and engineering and management services. As more companies came to the Park and created other benefits, the share of new-line industries increased. By 1966, nearly 30 percent of businesses in the three counties were in newline industries, by 1995, nearly 47 percent were new-line and by 2005, the percentage had reached 51 percent.’’48 Other evidence of the impact of the park on the regional economy comes from a 1988 survey of firms in the RTP, in which 47 percent said they would not have located in the Raleigh-Durham area if it were not for the existence of the RTP.49 Together those firms employed almost nineteen thousand workers. An additional 16 percent of high-technology businesses outside the park in the region would not have located in the region if the park had not existed. Counting all jobs resulting from the RTP, including those generated by the expenditures of park businesses and employees in the region, the RTP was responsible for fifty-two thousand jobs, which represents 24 percent of the total increase in nongovernmental employment in the region between 1959 and 1988. If this study were to be repeated today the figures would undoubtedly be considerably higher. The RTP has also helped to increase the per capita income in the Research Triangle area. In 1960 the area’s per capita income was 93 percent of the national figure. By 1987 it had climbed to 107 percent and by 2008 it was within one percentage point of the national figure.50 Although there may be other reasons as well for this increase, it is safe to say that the high-paying jobs attracted to the area by the presence of the RTP played an important part. As of 2005 the average salary of all park employees was

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$56,000 per year, although the average salaries being paid by some of the newer additions to the park top $80,000.51 This increased income and spending power, in turn, has helped expand the range of goods and services available in the Triangle region. The existence and support of the Triangle’s three major research universities have been instrumental to the success of the RTP. The RTP has returned the favor in a variety of ways. RTP companies have, for example, hired many university students, with both undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 1998, approximately one-quarter of all new professional employees hired by park firms came from Duke, N.C. State, or UNC–Chapel Hill.52 In addition, many RTP scientists have contributed to the universities’ teaching missions by serving as adjunct faculty, teaching classes, and serving on doctoral committees. The universities have also benefited from collaborations with RTP firms in developing state-of-the-art laboratories, as when Glaxo paid in the late 1980s for the renovation of chemistry labs at UNC–Chapel Hill. University faculty members and RTP scientists have teamed up to conduct numerous research projects, which have led to important scientific advancements. Moreover, TUCASI has been used, Rooks noted, ‘‘as a way of funneling funds to projects that all three universities have agreed on. [For example,] we computerized the library systems and interconnected them so researchers out here in the park or the universities have access to the combined collection. And since they have been coordinating their collections since the 1930s, there’s very little duplication among them so it makes the library system, when you add it together, I think second only to Harvard. That was a big deal.’’53 RTP firms and their employees have also contributed to local communities in a variety of ways including making major contributions to arts organizations, local schools, health and social service organizations, and civic projects. In summarizing interviews conducted with a variety of civic leaders, Hammer, Siler, George

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Associates suggest that ‘‘many of those interviewed commended the role of RTP entities and their employees in strengthening the community fabric and quality of life. Several companies have adopted public schools, donated computer and other equipment, contributed generously to major civic projects, supported educational initiatives and encouraged their employees to become involved in their communities and the central city problems.’’54 IBM alone reports that in 2004 its employees spent over fifty thousand hours volunteering and the company donated $7 million to schools and other civic institutions. The RTP has also had an important impact on the urban spatial structure of the Triangle. The RTP has transformed the land it occupies from ‘‘the outskirts of town to the center of everything.’’55 Many of the highways built in the area over the last forty years have been designed to provide better access to the park, which has drawn development toward the center of the region rather than to the periphery. Although it took time for the road, water, and sewer infrastructure to be extended from the surrounding communities into the rural area surrounding the park, once it was the area developed rapidly. As of mid-2007, thirteen million square feet of office, commercial, and industrial development and more than 40,550 housing units were within four miles of the park.56

THE FUTURE OF THE RTP By 2007 when the RTP celebrated its fiftieth birthday, it had grown from an audacious idea to an internationally recognized cluster of knowledge-intensive businesses. But how might the RTP fare in the future given the dramatic changes taking place in the worlds of business and work? Will the RTP’s suburban business park model continue to attract leading-edge businesses and professionals?

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The RTP was designed in the 1950s to accommodate large companies interested in protecting corporate secrets by sequestering employees on large self-contained campuses and in providing their employees with a bucolic setting in which to work. More recent trends, at least in selected knowledge-based businesses, have shifted toward encouraging more interaction and collaboration among employees of different companies, and providing them with dense, diverse, and vibrant environments in which to both work and live: ‘‘The employees and human resources that are the foundation of the knowledge-based companies and activities that are the core of the RTP are changing. Today’s researchers and scientists seek work environments that provide more opportunities for interaction in a variety of activities and settings.’’57 Clearly the RTP campus does not offer such variety. At the same time competition for leading-edge businesses has been heating up. According to Rick Weddle, president and CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, regions such as those surrounding Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Chicago ‘‘have made focused investments in the biotechnology/life sciences clusters to try to better their competitive positions in those areas. Similarly, governments in Asia and Europe are expending substantial resources to build science cities to jump start innovative and entrepreneurial activity. These initiatives are investments that have helped these regions close the gap on the park’s lead.’’58 Many more regions around the world are competing for the knowledgeintensive businesses that have been the mainstay of the RTP. These trends have not been lost on RTP’s leadership. To better understand those trends and how to respond to them the RTF asked both IBM and the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to conduct studies and offer recommendations on reinventing the park. The IBM study concluded that the park needed to strengthen its ties between its companies and both government and academia. It

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also suggested positioning the park to take advantage of emerging industries (such as nanomaterials, nanorobotics, computational medicine, biodefense, and green technology) so that it would have a first-mover advantage in recruiting related companies to the park.59 For its part, the ULI advisory panel report presented a variety of ideas for the physical transformation of the park. It called for the creation of a sense of place by introducing ‘‘residential, highdensity office, civic, special purpose and recreational uses.’’60 It also recommended the development of a series of urban villages and of an ‘‘iconic structure such as a monorail to the airport, a tower sculpture or a global market place to help brand and advertise the RTP.’’61 It is uncertain, however, whether these recommendations will be acted upon, as to do so would require major changes to the park’s covenants, its zoning laws, and the state legislation that created it.62 In addition, some of the park’s companies work with hazardous chemicals, nuclear materials, and biological agents that are best distanced from residential and commercial development. As Rooks observed, ‘‘You have to be very careful that you don’t create an atmosphere that makes it impossible for these companies to do what they came here to do.’’63 In the short term the RTF has been redeveloping its small ‘‘service center’’ and supporting the development of higher-density, mixed-use developments immediately adjacent to the park.64

RALEIGH-DURHAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT Critical to the economic development of any metropolitan area is a modern airport offering nonstop service to a variety of locations. The airports serving most metropolitan areas are located on the

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periphery, often twenty to thirty miles from their downtowns. Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), however, is conveniently located in the heart of the metro, immediately adjacent to the Research Triangle Park and within eleven miles of both downtown Raleigh and downtown Durham and seventeen miles from downtown Chapel Hill. How did this unusual placement come to be? The first regularly scheduled commercial airline service to the area began in 1931, when Eastern Air Transport (later Eastern Airlines) began regularly scheduled flights to Curtiss Field, located on the south side of Raleigh.65 By the late 1930s Eastern Airlines’ president, Eddie Rickenbacker, was promoting civil airports around the country. He was particularly interested in the development of a new modern airport in the Raleigh-Durham area to serve as a stopover for Eastern flights from New York to Miami.66 Through newspaper ads and other means he urged the counties of Wake and Durham and the cities of Raleigh and Durham to partner in the development of such an airport: ‘‘Do not allow civic jealousies or selfish motives to creep into a project that means so much to all of you.’’67 Following this advice the N.C. General Assembly chartered the Raleigh-Durham Aeronautical Authority, later renamed the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, to build and operate a new airport convenient to both Raleigh and Durham. The authority was composed of representatives from Raleigh, Durham, and Wake and Durham counties. This was the first major example of regional cooperation in the Triangle. In 1940, on the advice of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, the authority bought 890 acres of land in western Wake County equidistant between Raleigh and Durham.68 As the airfield was being constructed, however, the military took it over to train pilots for World War II. Thus, in 1942 the authority leased the airport site to the U.S. government and the Army Corps of Engineers assumed the responsibility for developing it for military use. The

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U.S. government also purchased an additional thousand acres adjacent to the Raleigh-Durham Army Air Field to be used as a camp.69 Once the airfield was opened the Airport Authority persuaded the military to allow commercial airline service and Eastern Airlines moved its existing service there. After the war the U.S. government turned the airport, including the camp and all the site improvements, over to the Airport Authority. Soon thereafter other airlines, including Capital Airlines (later renamed United Airlines) and Piedmont Airlines, began to provide airline service at the renamed Raleigh-Durham Airport. During the early years of operation, the army mess and barracks building was used as the terminal. The first permanent terminal building opened in 1955, about the time the plans for creating the Research Triangle Park were being made. As the area grew so did the need for continual expansion and improvement of the airport. The original modest, single-story terminal was expanded in the 1970s and a new terminal, originally called Terminal B, was added in 1981.70 Several years later American Airlines selected RDU as a new East Coast hub and it contracted with the authority to build a new terminal and a new runway for this purpose. What became known as Terminal C was opened in June 1987. Soon after, American introduced the first nonstop international flights to Paris, Bermuda, and Cancun and the RDU Airport became the RDU International Airport. At its peak American’s hub served millions of passengers a year. The success of this hub and the jobs it brought to the Triangle, however, were short-lived. The acquisition of other routes, competition from airline hubs in Charlotte and Atlanta, and changes in the airline industry led American to begin downsizing its RDU hub and to close it in 1996. The vacuum created by American’s departure was filled over the next several years by a variety of other carriers including Southwest, America West, Metro Jet, Northwest, and Continental. Thus, the passenger numbers

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Figure 17. The Raleigh-Durham Airport terminal circa 1956. Two terminals have been added and one of those has been replaced (courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

rebounded over the next several years. In the late 1990s the demand was such that eighteen new gates were added to Terminal 1. In calendar year 2000 RDU exceeded ten million passenger trips, its highest number to date.71 In 2003 the RDU Airport Authority announced plans to renovate Terminal C, which was designed as a hub and lacked sufficient check-in, baggage check, and passenger screening areas. Three years later, however, the authority decided instead to replace the existing terminal of three hundred thousand square feet with a new terminal of nine hundred thousand square feet with thirty-six gates. Key design elements include a rolling roof inspired by the landscape of central North Carolina, exposed wooden roof trusses representing the area’s heritage, and carpet

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patterns of DNA sequences alluding to RTP research.72 The first half of the new Terminal 2 was opened in October 2008, and the building opened in January 2011 in time for the National Hockey League All-Star Game. Now the authority is turning its attention to the redevelopment of Terminal 1. As the terminal capacity has expanded so has the total land area of the airport and the number of parking spaces. As of 2010, RUD Airport covered fifty-one hundred acres. It has 11,700 public parking spaces in the terminal area, most of which are located in a seven-story parking deck between the two terminals. An additional ninety-seven hundred park-and-ride spaces are also available. An economic impact study commissioned by the Airport Authority in 2006 found that the airport has a $1.2 billion annual impact on the area’s economy.73 As of 2010, the airport has approximately 350 daily departures and arrivals with nonstop service to thirty-four destinations. Its passenger count for 2008 was over nine million, 95 percent of which were nonconnecting.74 RDU does not compare well, however, to airports in major competitor cities on the number of nonstop flights to the West Coast and the number of international flights. Before Delta introduced a nonstop flight to Los Angeles in June 2010 there were no direct flights to West Coast cities. The two international nonstop flights are American’s service to London’s Heathrow and an Air Canada flight to Toronto. The Triangle metro is still not large enough to support expanding those flights. This undoubtedly discourages companies and residents who regularly fly to West Coast and international destinations from moving to the area.

I N T E R S TAT E 4 0 As mentioned earlier, when the RTP was created its road access was limited to one two-lane, north-south road and one two-lane,

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east-west road. If the area was to grow and prosper, its highway infrastructure had to be improved. The development of Interstate 40 through the Triangle was the key project that linked Triangle towns and cities with the RTP. Interstate 40 is often referred to as the Triangle’s Main Street since it connects most of the principal cities and towns in the area. This major artery snakes through the middle of the Triangle connecting Mebane in western Orange Country to Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and on to Benson in eastern Johnston County where it crosses I-95 on its way to Wilmington. Its importance is evident in the amount of traffic it accommodates and the number of times it has been expanded since it was originally constructed. It has also spurred urban sprawl as it has enabled people to live in locations far from where they work. I-40 is one of the country’s original interstate highways authorized in the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act. The original plan for I-40 called for its eastern terminus to be at Greensboro, where it would merge with I-85.75 This left Raleigh, to the chagrin of its business community, as one of only six state capitals not to be served by the interstate system. During the early discussions of interstate routes the state ‘‘sat on the sidelines’’ focusing on improving its secondary road system. Its head highway engineer, Vance Baise, said that he ‘‘did not feel justified in improving any part of the system [with state funds] except as traffic needs require.’’76 It was not until much later that North Carolina applied for approval to extend I-40 from Greensboro to I-95 at Benson, skirting the south side of Raleigh. When the first phase of the extension— from RTP to the Raleigh Beltline—opened in 1973, RTP was at last accessible via a four-lane highway and Raleigh could be dropped from the list of state capitals without interstate access. It would take another twelve years, however, before I-40 was completed around the southern side of Raleigh and east to I-95.

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Figure 18. Traffic congestion on I-40 in 2010 (photo by author).

The extension of I-40 westward from the RTP also took many years. It was not until 1987 that it reached Chapel Hill.77 During those years it was not uncommon to see bumper stickers around Chapel Hill that read ‘‘Pray for me. I drive 54’’ (referring to the narrow, curvy two-lane road connecting Chapel Hill with the RTP). The westward expansion was completed in 1988 when I-40 was connected to I-85 southwest of Hillsborough where it joins with I85 until the roads separate again near Greensboro. In 1990, I-40 was completed to its eastern terminus in Wilmington, where a sign on the westbound side of the highway reads ‘‘Barstow, California 2,554 miles.’’ Even before I-40 was completed through the Triangle, lanes were being added to various sections. Currently, sections of I-40 in the heart of the Triangle have eight lanes while most have at least six, with more lanes being added. As is often the case, these

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newer lanes have offered only temporary fixes. They have encouraged additional auto-dependent development, which filled up the new lanes. Thus, I-40 is often congested, leading to frustrated and disgruntled commuters. The state Department of Transportation (DOT) has studied the use of carpool and bus lanes but the road is not conducive to them due to its frequent interchanges. Many believe that the only real solution to accommodating more growth in the Triangle is to develop a light rail system, which is discussed in Chapter 5.

CONCLUSION By 1980 the success of the RTP had created thousands of new jobs in the center of the Triangle and the expansion of the RDU Airport along with the construction of I-40 provided access to those jobs. By this time the population in the Raleigh–Durham– Chapel Hill MSA had grown to 531,000 residents.78 Collectively the changes in the area were sufficient for the U.S. Census Bureau to combine the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan areas into a single Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area. Thus, one might say that 1980 is the official beginning of the Research Triangle metro. The physical form of the Research Triangle metro, with its lowdensity core, is certainly one of its distinctive features. Also distinct, however, is the intentionality behind its creation. The RTP, the key ingredient in creating the metro, was the result of a public-private effort to address a perceived problem (limited opportunities for high-wage employment), by identifying the area’s main assets (the universities and the relatively high quality of life), and marketing those assets to key businesses. This is not to say that the developers of the RTP did not benefit from good timing and good location. They certainly did. But this should not take away from an appreciation of their creativity and

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their tenacity. Archie Davis’s counterintuitive idea that what couldn’t be raised through investments could be raised through donations was nothing short of brilliant, as was the idea to create a nonprofit research company, RTI, to act as anchor of the park. The tenacity of the founders was evident in their sticking with the effort before IBM committed to opening operations in the park. It is hard to think of another metro area in the country that was the result of a more intentional and successful public-private development strategy. RTP’s success in attracting large numbers of firms and employees to the area, however, has had a downside. As with other rapidly growing areas, Triangle communities have had great difficulty keeping up with road and school construction, and other infrastructure needed to accommodate growth. More will be said about these challenges in Chapter 3.

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3

Population Growth and Its Impact The creation of the Research Triangle Park and the transportation infrastructure to serve it set the stage for a half century of rapid growth in the Triangle area. The success of the RTP put the Triangle on the map for businesses looking to expand or relocate, and for people looking for jobs. But the area’s quality of life, including such elements as the temperate climate, open space, and cultural activities, has also attracted businesses and people to the area. This chapter addresses population changes in the Triangle over the past fifty years and the challenges those changes have posed to the area’s continued prosperity and quality of life. Population growth had many benefits but has also led to significant challenges including keeping up with school construction, managing traffic congestion, and providing water to the ever-growing population.

P O P U L AT I O N G R O W T H While not exactly a backwater, in the 1950s the Triangle area was not a popular destination for either businesses or households. Population growth during that decade lagged behind both the state and the nation. Defined as the seven counties currently in the two MSAs, the Triangle area grew during the 1950s by fewer

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than fifty thousand people. Its 11.8 percent growth rate lagged behind both the state’s 12.2 percent and the nation’s 18.5 percent growth rates. During the 1960s, however, the Triangle’s growth rate surged to 20 percent, compared to the nation’s 13.3 percent and 11.5 percent for the state. The succeeding decades saw increasingly higher rates of growth. In the 1970s and 1980s the region’s population grew by 23.4 percent and 27.5 percent, respectively. During those decades growth was concentrated in the three core counties of Durham, Orange, and Wake. By the 1990s the growth rates of Chatham, Franklin, and Johnson Counties caught up, or even surpassed, the growth rates in the core counties. The 1990s saw the Triangle area’s population grow from 885,725 to 1,223,564, a 38.1 percent increase. By 2000 its population ranked forty-first among all MSAs in the country, and that rate of growth continued into the 2000s. Between 2006 and 2007 the Raleigh MSA had the country’s third fastest growth rate at 4.7 percent, and in 2008 Wake County had the highest growth rate of all U.S. counties. The Durham–Chapel Hill MSA grew at a more modest, yet still respectable, rate of 2.2 percent between 2006 and 2007. The Triangle metropolitan area population in 2010 is estimated to be 1,662,823.1 Recent growth is centered in Wake and Johnston Counties with Chatham and Franklin Counties coming on strong. It is Wake County, however, that has consistently outpaced its neighbors both in total population and population growth rates. In 2006 Wake County was growing by ninety-eight residents per day.2 Wake has encouraged that growth through low taxes and relatively weak growth controls.3 Wake County’s population growth for the 2000s is projected to be 47.8 percent, although the economic slowdown will undoubtedly trim that figure. With an estimated population of 927,909 in 2010, Wake will contain more than half of the Triangle’s population.

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Figure 19. Population growth by county, 2000–2010. Wake County’s growth rate is well above other counties in the metropolitan area (map by Peter Zambito).

As might be anticipated, most of the Triangle’s thirty-five municipalities have also grown rapidly. Hamlets have been turned into moderate-sized cities in the span of a decade or two. This is particularly true in Wake County, which contains nine of the ten fastest growing municipalities in the metro area. The town of Cary, which sits between Raleigh and the Research Triangle Park, grew from a population of 1,446 in 1950 to 121,796 in 2007, a growth rate of 8,323 percent. From 2006 to 2007 it was the country’s fifth fastest growing municipality and is now the seventh largest municipality in the state. In 1980 the population of the crossroads community of Morrisville, which lies just east of the RTP, was 251. By 2007, Morrisville’s population jumped to 13,316. The town of Holly Springs had a population of 1,024 in 1990. Its population exploded to 19,684 by 2007.

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The three cities that defined the Triangle have also grown rapidly. Raleigh has steadily grown at between 22 percent and 41 percent per decade. In 2009 its estimated population was 405,791 persons. Durham’s growth has been more uneven but grew by 35 percent and 37 percent during the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. In 2009, its estimated population was 229,174. Chapel Hill’s growth has been the slowest with a 2009 estimated population of 53,546.

WHY DO THEY COME? People have flocked to the Research Triangle area for many reasons. The rapid expansion of the Triangle’s job base is a major one. Between 1970 and 2006 the number of jobs in the Research Triangle metropolitan area increased from 286,074 to 985,272, an increase of 244 percent or 699,198 jobs. Over this time, employment increased in all industry categories. The fastest-growing industries were services (506 percent); retail trade (323 percent); finance, insurance, and real estate (283 percent); public administration (167 percent); and manufacturing (52 percent). The job growth rates between 2000 and 2006 suggest slowing, but still robust, job growth. Rapid job growth means that Triangle unemployment rates have consistently been below national figures. From 1981 through 1986, for example, Research Triangle unemployment rates were consistently more than three percentage points below the national rates. From 1997 through 2000, local unemployment rates ranged from 1.6 percent to 2 percent lower than national rates. More recently, the area’s unemployment rate hovered between one and two percentage points below the national averages. Relatively low unemployment has been a powerful draw for migrants from areas with above average or even average unemployment rates.

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Moderate cost of living, including relatively low housing prices, is another local attraction. The American Chamber of Commerce Research Association’s (ACCRA) cost-of-living index for the second quarter of 2008 indicates that Durham and Chapel Hill have composite index scores of 93.9 and 99.8, respectively, below the national average of 100. Raleigh’s index score is 104.8, only slightly higher than the national average.4 This index’s housing component shows that Durham’s housing costs are at 77.7, while those in Raleigh and Chapel Hill are slightly above the national average at 102.3 and 103.3, respectively. These cost-of-living figures compare very favorably to other areas with concentrations of high-tech firms. The composite cost of living score for San Jose, California, for example, is 156.8 and its housing score is 246.7. The composite score for Boston is 134.8 and its housing score is 158.7. In commenting on the Triangle’s attraction a Raleigh city councilman suggests, ‘‘They moved here from the Northeast, paid for their homes with cash, bought new cars, you name it.’’5 The website of the Intersil company, which designs and manufactures semiconductors in the Triangle and other locations, says that ‘‘the RTP area is a booming region that has attracted young, ambitious, high tech-oriented residents, who prefer the clean air and rolling green hills of this Silicon Valley of the East to the expensive over-populated high-tech region of Northern California.’’6 People and firms have also flocked to the Triangle for its quality of life, as recognized by varied city and metropolitan area rankings. A small sample of those rankings for 2008 include: 1 best place to live in the United States (Raleigh), msnbc.com; 1 best small city for mid-career professions 30–44 (Durham), Who’s Your City? Richard Florida; 1 best place for business and careers (Raleigh), Forbes; 2 best performing metro (Raleigh-Cary), Milken Institute;

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2 best city to live, work, and play (Raleigh), Kiplinger’s Personal Finance; 3 educated workforce (Raleigh), Business Facilities; 5 best mid-size city for young singles 20–29 (Raleigh), Who’s Your City? Richard Florida; 8 best city for recent college grads (Raleigh-Durham), Forbes; 12 best place to live and launch a business (Durham), Small Business; Top 15 places for cultured retirement (Raleigh), Smithsonian .com. These quality-of-life rankings are based on various economic, social, and cultural indicators. To be ranked highly on so many indicators means that the Triangle’s major cities have a broad range of perceived advantages. One quality-of-life aspect attracting people to the Triangle is the abundant green space. As one regional planner described it, ‘‘the natural setting is an icon for the area. When people land at RDU Airport they are struck by all the greenery.’’7 There are, in fact, two major state parks within the metropolitan area. The William B. Umstead Park, located in the heart of the metropolitan area, is a 5,500-acre ‘‘oasis of natural Piedmont habitat’’ complete with several lakes, an extensive network of hiking trails, and picnic areas.8 The Eno River State Park consists of 2,738 acres of land strung along twelve miles of the Eno River, through eastern Orange County and western Durham County north of downtown Durham.9 Two large man-made lakes, and the publicly owned land surrounding them, also contribute to the metropolitan area’s green space. Falls Lake, located twenty miles north of downtown Raleigh, is twenty-two miles long and covers 11,300 acres. The surrounding state recreation area covers an additional 26,000 acres of woodlands and contains boat ramps, swimming areas, and

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Figure 20. One of several beaches at Jordan Lake. The man-made lake provides drinking water to several Triangle communities as well as recreational opportunities, wildlife habitat, and down-river flood control (courtesy of the N.C. Department of Parks).

campgrounds.10 Jordan Lake is located eleven miles south of Chapel Hill, twenty-two miles southwest of downtown Durham, and twenty-three miles west of Raleigh. The lake covers approximately 14,000 acres, with the surrounding publicly owned land adding another 33,000 acres. The Jordan Lake State Recreation Area contains three public beaches, multiple boat ramps, and five camping areas, three of which have their own beaches. It is also a popular area for bird watching, particularly the bald eagles that inhabit the area in the summer.11 Together the seven-county Triangle area contains over 120,000 acres of state and local recreation areas. Duke Forest also makes a significant contribution to the Triangle area’s abundant green space. The five divisions, or sections, of the forest cover over 7,000 acres in Alamance, Durham, and Orange Counties. Although the forest is owned by Duke University and used for a variety of forestry studies, the public is ‘‘welcome

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to hike the trails, to ride horses and bicycles on gravel roads, to fish and to picnic.’’12 The forest contains eighty-seven miles of gravel roads and foot trails, and ‘‘some of the best examples of mature, second-growth forest communities remaining in the North Carolina Piedmont region.’’13 Adding to the area’s green space is the 173-acre North Carolina Botanical Garden located in Chapel Hill. Its mission is to promote the ‘‘conservation of plants in gardens and natural areas and to advance a sustainable relationship between people and nature.’’14 The gardens contain ‘‘conservation gardens’’ as well as nature trails.15 The garden also manages the 367-acre Mason Farm Biological Reserve and the 93acre Battle Park adjacent to the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. More formal in nature, the Sarah P. Duke Gardens covers fifty-five acres of rolling land adjacent to Duke University’s West Campus. Beyond these major tracts of preserved green space are numerous county and city parks and greenways and large privately owned tracts of forest and farmland with conservation easements. Raleigh, for example, has an urban greenway system that includes over fifty-four miles and 3,000 acres of trails and parks. And the Triangle Land Conservancy has helped protect more than 9,500 acres of open space in the area, such as stream corridors, forests, wildlife habitat, farmland, and natural areas.16 Finally, the Triangle’s traditional low-density development pattern means that, even in developed areas, trees are the dominant visual feature. The best example of this is certainly the Research Triangle Park, the heart of the region, where as noted earlier a minimum of 70 percent of each site is preserved as green space. Another key Triangle attraction is the diversity of communities among which new arrivals may choose. As discussed earlier, each of the major Triangle towns has a distinct history and reputation, and tends to attract residents looking for particular physical and cultural characteristics. The area also has a diversity of residential settings. There are, for example, ten-acre lots in Orange

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County for those looking for solitude. There are small towns, such as Hillsborough, Pittsboro, and Zebulon, within fairly easy commuting distances to major employment centers. There are suburban planned-unit developments in Cary, Holly Springs, and North Raleigh, with community pools and other amenities. There are golf course communities in each of the major cities and towns. There are older more modest homes in central Durham and southeast Raleigh. And there are condominiums in newly constructed medium-rise buildings in downtown Raleigh and in converted tobacco warehouses in downtown Durham. Due to both the area’s concentration of universities and the presence of the state capital, the Triangle has abundant cultural amenities. It is a relatively small metropolitan area with big city amenities. There are, for example, three art museums with notable collections that organize and sponsor traveling exhibitions: the North Carolina Museum of Art located on the outskirts of Raleigh, the Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham. The area also has several science and history museums, the most notable being the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the North Carolina Museum of History, both located in downtown Raleigh. The Museum of Life and Science in Durham and the Morehead Planetarium on the campus of UNC–Chapel Hill offer additional exhibits and shows. In regard to music, theater, and film, the American Dance Festival brings the world’s most renowned dance troupes to Durham during a six-week period each summer, while Memorial Auditorium in downtown Raleigh and the relatively new Durham Performing Arts Center in downtown Durham bring national and international shows all year long. The North Carolina Symphony is based in Raleigh and frequently performs at venues across the Triangle. The Walnut Creek Pavilion, which can accommodate twenty thousand in its partially covered outdoor amphitheatre, is

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a venue for large rock concerts. Yearly festivals, such as the threeday Festival for the Eno (River) and the Durham Blues Festival, contribute to the local music scene. In addition, each of the Triangle’s colleges and universities has performing and fine-arts programs that bring world-class music and theater to the area as well as concerts and shows by both faculty and students. The Triangle is also home to several dance and theater companies including the North Carolina Ballet, the North Carolina Theatre, and the Playmakers Repertory Company. Durham hosts the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, a four-day event designed to showcase newly created documentary films. The rich mix of cultural activity attracts people to the Triangle area. Professional and college sports play an important role in shaping the area’s reputation. At the professional level, the first major league team, the Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League, arrived in 1997 when the owner of the Hartford Whalers decided to relocate his team to Raleigh. Triangle residents were slow to support the team, partially because it had to play in Greensboro for two years while the eighteen thousand-seat entertainment and sports arena—now the RBC Center—was being constructed. The team’s success on the ice, however, has attracted many fans. In 2002 the Hurricanes made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, and in 2006 they won the Cup, greatly expanding their fan base and putting the Triangle on the ‘‘hockey map.’’ Built on a solid base of college and recreational players, a men’s professional soccer team, the Carolina Railhawks, plays in Cary. As one local newspaper noted, ‘‘With registered players numbering around 20,000 and recreational players pushing 50,000 it is a rare Triangle resident who does not know someone who plays, watches or drives someone to play soccer.’’17 Given this base of interest, it is not surprising that Railhawk attendance averages over five thousand per game.

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The Triangle also has two minor league baseball teams, the most recognized being the Triple A Durham Bulls made famous by the 1988 hit movie Bull Durham. The Bulls were first incorporated in 1912 and have gone through many reincarnations over the years, affiliating with a variety of National League and American League teams and playing in a variety of leagues. Currently affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays, they won the International League title in 2002, 2003, and 2009. From 1926 to 1994 the Bulls played in the Durham Athletic Park just north of downtown.18 In 1995 they moved to a publicly owned new stadium, on the south side of downtown and adjacent to the former American Tobacco factory, subsequently renovated into offices, retail stores, and apartments. In recent years, attendance at Bulls’ games has averaged over half a million persons per season. The Carolina Mudcats, a Florida Marlins’ Double A affiliate, is the area’s other minor league team. It plays in the sixty-five-hundred-seat Five County Stadium located in Zebulon, drawing its fan base from the Triangle’s eastern side. It is college sports, however, that stir local residents’ passions, and make the three main Triangle universities nationally known for more than their academic rankings. Among the many college sports played, basketball clearly has the largest following locally and beyond. Moreover, basketball has generated the most intense rivalries among the Triangle’s teams and fans.19 In 1957, the UNC Tar Heels coached by Frank McGuire won their first national championship, beating Kansas in triple overtime. Then in 1974 the N.C. State Wolfpack, coached by Norm Sloan, upset UCLA in the national semifinal game, ending UCLA’s unprecedented string of seven straight national titles, and went on to win the championship. As writer Will Blythe observed, ‘‘The success of local teams created legions of new fans and swelled them with pride.’’20 During the 1970s and 1980s, the most intense rivalry among the area’s colleges was between N.C. State and UNC, the area’s two most successful basketball teams. Under legendary coach

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Dean Smith, UNC won another national championship in 1982 and N.C. State, coached by Jim Valvano, won it the following year. After Valvano was let go in 1990, N.C. State’s fortunes waned, while Duke’s were ascendant. In 1980 Duke hired basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, who began to build the Duke program. By the late 1980s the Blue Devils began to challenge the Tar Heels for supremacy in North Carolina and the Atlantic Coast Conference. The main rivalry soon shifted from UNC versus N.C. State to UNC versus Duke. An intense rivalry it is. Writer Will Blythe, with just a bit of hyperbole, argues that ‘‘the basketball rivalry between Duke and North Carolina has become the greatest rivalry in college athletics, and one of the greatest in all of sports. It is Ali versus Frazier, the Giants versus the Dodgers, the Red Sox versus the Yankees. Hell, it’s bigger than that. This is the Democrats versus the Republicans, the Yankees versus the Confederates, Capitalism versus Communism.’’21 He goes on to suggest that this rivalry is ‘‘an act of war disguised as sport. The living and dying through one’s allegiance to either Duke or Carolina is no less real for being enacted through play and fandom. One’s psychic well-being hangs in the balance.’’22 Duke brought championship plaques back to the Triangle in 1991, 1992, 2001, and 2010, while UNC brought additional ones home in 1993, 2005, and 2009. Several women’s college sports have also had great success on the field and have strong followings in the Triangle and beyond. The UNC women’s soccer team, for example, has won an astounding twenty NCAA national titles in the twenty-nine years that those championships have been held, and its field hockey team has won five championships. Moreover, the women’s basketball teams at Duke and UNC are often ranked among the top ten in the country; UNC’s team won the national title in 1994. Other quality-of-life characteristics attracting newcomers to the Triangle area are its moderate climate, its newness, its health

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care, and its easy access to both the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. The temperate, subtropical climate of the area means that the winters are relatively mild (January’s average high temperature is 49 degrees) and the spring and fall seasons are relatively long. The summers, however, are relatively hot and humid, with the average July high temperature of 88 degrees. The area’s very recent growth means that much of its public infrastructure and private buildings were recently constructed, giving the area a ‘‘new and fresh’’ feel.23 Of particular interest to older persons, the area has three major health care systems (UNC Health Care, Duke Health Care, and Wake Medicine), two medical schools, and sixteen hospitals plus multiple medical centers. The Triangle’s location is also an attraction. It is only a two- to threehour drive to the recreational activities in the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the Atlantic coast.

W H E R E H AV E T H E Y C O M E F R O M ? Since 1970 the Triangle area has experienced a continual influx of non–North Carolinians. In 1970 83 percent of local residents had been born in the state.24 By 2000 that percentage dropped to 61 percent. Nonnative migrants were most likely to originate in the southern region of the United States (12.9 percent), followed by the northeast region (9.9 percent). The next largest group of inmovers was born outside the United States (7.8 percent); 5.6 percent were born in the central region and 2.3 percent in the western region.25 The census asks respondents to report where they lived five years earlier. Those data show that most of the Triangle area’s newcomers moved from three counties in North Carolina: Mecklenburg (the Charlotte area), Guilford (the Greensboro area), and Cumberland (the Fayetteville area).26 But significant numbers

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of migrants were from out of state: Los Angeles County, California; Fairfax County, Virginia (suburban Washington, D.C.); Palm Beach County, Florida; Montgomery County, Maryland (suburban Washington, D.C.); Cook County, Illinois (Chicago); Miami and Dade County, Florida; and Kings County, New York (Brooklyn). The Triangle has been attracting people from all over the country, making it feel much more cosmopolitan.

HOW HAS THE TRIANGLE’S POPUL ATION DIVERSIFIED? Racial and Ethnic Diversity

In 1970 the racial and ethnic composition of the Triangle could be described as either black or white. At that time 71 percent of the Triangle’s population was white, 28 percent was black, and all other racial and ethnic groups made up slightly more than 1 percent of the area’s population. This bimodal distribution changed dramatically in the 1990s as the Triangle, with its robust job market, became a major destination for both Hispanics and Asians. Between 1990 and 2000 the area’s Hispanic population grew by over 62,000, a 561 percent increase. By 2000 Hispanics made up 5.8 percent of the area’s population and this figure is projected to increase to 10.5 percent by 2010. Given that a large share of the Hispanic migrants are taking lower-paying jobs, the Hispanic population grew fastest in areas with less expensive housing including Chatham, Durham, and Johnston Counties. Still, as of 2006, Wake County had the largest Hispanic population at 62,674, followed by Durham County with 28,639. The number of Asians moving to the Triangle, while more modest, is still significant. From 1990 to 2000 the Asian population increased 159 percent, or by more than 22,000. By 2000, Asians made up about 2 percent of the area’s population. A large share of this group works in higher-paying technical jobs located in the { 106

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core counties of Durham, Orange, and Wake, thus they tend to cluster there. Among the seven counties, Wake has the largest number of Asians. In 2006 over 35,000 Asians lived in Wake County, with particular concentrations in Cary and Morrisville, each with a Hindu temple. With the Hispanic and Asian population increases, the white population between 1990 and 2000 dropped from 71 to 69 percent of the region’s population while the percentage of blacks dropped from 28 percent to 23 percent. Moreover, available evidence suggests that the Hispanic population has continued to increase over the past decade. The recent economic downturn, however, may have slowed or even reversed this increase.27 Of course, the various racial and ethnic groups do not distribute uniformly across the Triangle’s counties and towns. Rather, they concentrate in particular areas. The black population is found largely around downtown Durham and in southeast Raleigh. The Hispanic population is largely concentrated in Siler City, Carrboro, Durham, and southeast and northeast Raleigh. The Asian population is quite spread out but has a concentration, as noted, in Cary and Morrisville. One often-used measure of the degree of racial and ethnic segregation is the dissimilarity index, varying from a high of 1, indicating total segregation, to a low of 0, which indicates no segregation, at least at the census tract level. As of 2000, the Triangle had moderate dissimilarity index values: .44 for Asians, .48 for blacks, and .49 for Hispanics. Chatham and Durham Counties, however, show considerably higher dissimilarity indices for Hispanics (.60 and .63, respectively), indicating higher levels of segregation in those counties. Income Diversity

Since the 1970s there have also been important changes in the Triangle’s income characteristics. In 1979 and 1989 the core Triangle counties (plus Chatham) had household median income above p o p u l a t i o n

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Figure 21a. Percentage of black population by census tract in the Triangle (map by Peter Zambito).

statewide figures, while the outlying Franklin, Johnston, and Person Counties had median income below the statewide figures. By 2000, however, Johnston County’s household median income had caught up with and surpassed the statewide figures. At over $60,000 in 2006, Wake County’s median household income is substantially higher than those in the other six counties. Census data from 2000 and 2006 indicate substantial and growing gaps among median household income of the Triangle area’s major racial and ethnic groups. In six of the seven counties, median household income for blacks in 2000 was lower than for whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Franklin County was the exception: here black households had median income about $4,000 above those of Asians and Hispanics. Black households in the seven Triangle counties had median household income ranging

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Figure 21b. Percentage of Hispanic population by census tract in the Triangle (map by Peter Zambito).

from a low of 57 percent of white households in Orange County to 66 percent of white household income in Franklin County. Moreover, based on available 2006 American Community Survey data, which is only available for four of the counties, the disparity between black and white household income grew larger between 2000 and 2006. In 2006 the median income of black households in Orange and Wake Counties was only 50 percent of comparable white households, while the median black household income in Johnston and Durham Counties was only 54 percent and 56 percent, respectively, of white households. The median household income for black households in Wake County actually declined between 2000 and 2006. The median income for Hispanic households, although generally higher than for blacks, was still comparatively low in both

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2000 and 2006. In 2000 it ranged from a low of 57 percent of Franklin County’s white median household income to a high of 76 percent in Chatham County. Between 2000 and 2006 gaps between white and Hispanic household median income narrowed in Orange County but widened in Durham, Johnston, and Wake Counties. Hispanic median household income increased in three of those four counties but white household income increased even more rapidly. Only in Johnston County did Hispanic households experience a decrease in median household income. This could result from new lower-income Hispanics moving to the area rather than a decline in the income of existing Hispanic households. Asian households in the Triangle area are doing comparatively well. In 2000 they had the highest median household income of all racial and ethnic groups in four of the seven Triangle counties, and had the second highest in two more. Only in Franklin County did the median income of Asians rank below the figure for blacks. An analysis of changes in income distributions for Triangle residents from 1970 to 2000 shows that, adjusted for inflation, percentages of households in lower-income categories have decreased sharply while the percentages of households in higherincome categories have increased.28 Income distribution in 2000 was much flatter than 1970 income distribution, reflecting the influx of higher-paying jobs to the area. Poverty in the Triangle

As the Triangle’s job base expanded between 1970 and 2000, the area’s poverty rate dropped continuously: in 1970 it was 18.3 percent; by 2000 it had dropped to 9.9 percent. The 2006 rates for Durham, Johnston, Orange, and Wake Counties, however, suggest that local poverty is on the rise. The poverty rate in Durham County, for example, jumped from 13.4 percent in 2000 to 15.6

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percent in 2006, and over the same time the poverty rate in Wake County went from 7.8 percent to 9.1 percent. Large racial and ethnic differences exist in Triangle poverty rates, although these have narrowed somewhat over time. In 1970 the percentage of white poverty was only 7.6 percent, while the percentage of black poverty was a startling 43.6 percent. More than half of the black population in Franklin, Johnston, and Person Counties lived in poverty. By 2000 the Triangle’s black poverty rate had fallen to 17.8 percent. While that is lower than the 22.9 percent rate of black poverty for the state as a whole, it is still more than two and one-half times the percentage of Triangle whites living in poverty. Franklin, Johnston, and Person Counties still had the highest black poverty rates among the seven Triangle counties. Poverty rates among Hispanics in the Triangle are substantially higher than for other racial and ethnic groups.29 In 2000, 26.4 percent of all Triangle area Hispanics lived below the poverty line, which is slightly more than the state rate of 25.2 percent. Hispanic poverty rates in Franklin and Johnston Counties are particularly high, at 39.6 percent and 38.0 percent respectively. Between 2000 and 2006, however, the Hispanic poverty rates declined modestly in all three Triangle counties for which data were available. Poverty rates among Asians in 2000 were generally much closer to those of whites. The main exceptions are Asian poverty rates in Orange and Durham Counties: at 21.1 percent and 13.3 percent respectively, these were 7 percent to 9 percent higher than comparable rates for whites. Changes in Educational Attainment

Consistent with national and state trends, educational attainments among Triangle residents increased between 1970 and

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2000. Still, the counties exhibited great diversity in both rates of improvement and the proportion of residents with four or more years of college. The percentage increases in educational attainment have been substantially larger in the core counties of Durham, Orange, and Wake than in the peripheral counties of Chatham, Franklin, Johnston, and Person. Between 1970 and 2000 Durham and Wake had the largest increases. In 2000 the Triangle had substantially more residents with four or more years of college than the state overall. Combined, the core counties’ ratio was 44 percent compared to the state’s 22 percent. But this same measure was substantially lower in three of the four peripheral counties: Person County had only 10 percent, followed by Franklin and Johnston Counties with 13 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Changes in Political Party Affiliation

The Triangle area’s population has also diversified in political affiliation. Reflecting the traditional strength of the Democratic Party in North Carolina and throughout the South, the Triangle was essentially a one-party area through the 1960s.30 As late as 1970, 77.6 percent of voters in the Triangle were registered Democrats, while only 17 percent were registered Republicans. Independents and members of other parties made up a scant 4.9 percent of registered voters. Democratic Party dominance began to wane in the mid-1960s as many social conservatives reacted against ‘‘the apparent willingness of white southern Democrats leaders to acquiesce to the demands of black southerners for racial equality’’ and switched their party affiliation to Republican or independent.31 Starting about the same time, and accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, came an influx of both employees and northern retirees more likely to register as Republican or independent. In addition, many

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new voters who came of age during the Reagan era were drawn to the Republican Party.32 By 2008, only 47.5 percent of Triangle residents registered as Democrats while the Republican and independent percentages had risen to 27.5 percent and 24.9 percent, respectively. Clear differences in party affiliation exist between the Triangle’s eastern and western sides. In the east, Johnston and Wake Counties have the highest percentages of Republicans, while in the west, Durham, Person, and Orange have the highest percentages of Democrats. The Republican concentration in the eastern Triangle has clearly influenced the prevalence of low taxes and limited development regulations, and ultimately the rapid growth rates of those counties.

IMPA CTS O F P OPUL ATION GROWTH Rapid increases in the Triangle population’s growth and diversity from 1970 through the late 2000s created a vibrant, everchanging environment, but also led to serious strains on the area’s infrastructure and social cohesiveness. The three most pressing infrastructure challenges facing local governments are the demand for schools, roads, and water.33

Impact of Population Growth on Schools

Rapid growth of the Triangle area’s school-age population has put great pressure on local school boards and county commissions to build new schools, and to hire new teachers and support staff. In North Carolina, local school boards are responsible for developing plans to accommodate new students, including selecting sites and commissioning school designs. The county commissioners, for their part, must supplement educational funding from the

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state and federal governments. On average, North Carolina county governments provide one-quarter of the total education funding. That fraction varies from place to place based on the willingness of county commissioners and voters to support local bond referendums and property tax increases for school expansion.34 Given the Triangle counties’ rapid growth, area school boards have had to find an extraordinary number of new school sites, and to build new schools at an accelerating pace. Moreover, the county commissions have had to do this by authorizing new school bond referendums or raising school taxes, which has been unpopular with a substantial proportion of the voters. Rapid population growth in the Triangle counties has also led to frequent redistricting, which is unpopular with parents and children alike. As new schools open, students must be shuffled around to fill those schools. Moreover, several Triangle school systems have diversity policies based on family income and nonEnglish proficiency. This increases the number of students needing to be redistricted, sometimes sending them to schools a considerable distance from home. The number of students attending public schools in the Triangle between 1990 and 2007 increased from 117,087 to 223,540, a 91 percent increase. The growth of public school enrollment in the Wake County School System was particularly robust in this period. In 1990, a total of 63,816 students were enrolled in the Wake County system; by 2007 that number more than doubled to 133,215 students, making it the state’s largest school system and the eighteenth largest system in the country. In the 2006–2007 school year alone, 7,568 new students showed up for school. To provide perspective on the challenges that meeting this growth entails, the county opened thirty-one new schools between 2000 and 2006, yet it still had to rely on 1,100 mobile classrooms to accommodate the new students. Johnston and Durham Counties’ public school enrollments also grew rapidly between 1990 and

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2007: Johnston County added 15,634 new students, bringing its total to 30,100 students, and Durham County added 13,397 new students, bringing its total to 31,732 students. The influx of Hispanic immigrants from outside the United States to the Triangle area has posed additional challenges to area schools due to limited English proficiency. In the 1991–1992 school year, Hispanic public school students constituted 2 percent or less of the school population in all seven Triangle counties. By the 2008–2009 school year, Hispanic public school enrollment shot up to 23 percent in Chatham County and 17 percent in Durham County. Wake County had the largest increase in the raw number of Hispanic public school students over this time period. It went from 603 in 1991, to 4,551 in 2000 and to 14,846 in 2008. School Wars

Wake County was not the only Triangle county to experience conflict over providing public education. But its explosive growth, coupled with elected officials and voters who mainly wanted to keep taxes low, led to continuous battles over accommodating the thousands of new students enrolling each year. A couple of local reporters observed, ‘‘The property taxes are low, and they [the residents] love that when they move here, then they wonder why we can’t build enough schools.’’35 The first salvo in this conflict came in 1999, when the county’s voters rejected a $650 million bond referendum for new schools. Although smaller bond referendums passed in 2000 and 2003, and thirty-one new schools were opened between 2000 and 2006, these actions were woefully inadequate to accommodate the six thousand to seven thousand new students showing up each fall. In 2006 the county school board, in cooperation with the county commissioners, introduced a long-run plan to accommodate an estimated ninety-four thousand new students by 2020,

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with a total price tag of close to $5 billion.36 The plan’s first phase was a $970 million bond referendum to help fund seventeen new schools—including fifteen year-round elementary and middle schools—and to purchase land for an additional thirteen schools. This phase of the plan also called for converting twenty-two existing schools with traditional calendars to year-round calendars, which the school board believed could accommodate from 25 percent to 33 percent more students than traditional-calendar schools. The impediment to this plan was that many parents did not want their children going to year-round schools. Although parents could ask for their children to be reassigned to nearby traditional-calendar schools, space in those schools had to be available, and parents would be responsible for transporting their children to and from those schools. Soon after the plan’s release, citizen groups organized to support or oppose both the plan and the upcoming school bond referendum to fund it. Some opponents of the school bond were concerned about the tax increases required to pay off the bonds, while others worried about the conversion to a year-round schedule. One opponent, for example, commented, ‘‘We need simple, safe schools with a basic design. If we invest in simple, basic school construction, families won’t be forced into disruptive calendar and lifestyle changes, and they won’t be asked to give up even more of their hard earned money to fund fancy schools.’’37 The two major citizen organizations opposing year-round schools were WakeCARES and Stop Mandatory Year-Round, which organized aggressive campaigns in the media and over the Internet. At one school board meeting two hundred protesters turned out wearing red tee shirts and carrying signs with slogans such as ‘‘It’s Not Selfish to Want Family Time.’’38 Worried by the opposition’s strength and the prospect of the school bond referendum being rejected, bond supporters also organized. Friends of Wake County raised over $500,000 to fund a

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major advertising campaign supporting the bond referendum. The Wake Education Partnership, a group of business and community leaders, also supported the referendum. Both organizations were concerned that defeat would undermine the county school system’s quality and reputation and thus the area’s attractiveness to existing and prospective businesses and residents. The November 7 bond referendum vote was close, but it passed with 53 percent of the votes in favor. One might have expected the conflict over schools to have simmered down after the bond referendum passed, but that was not to be: ‘‘With the unrelenting pressure of growth, the unpopularity of year-round school calendars and the massive reassignment of students driven by both overcrowding and diversity, permanent opposition from parents is now the norm.’’39 The Wake school board’s task of reassigning students to fill the new schools was complicated by its commitment to achieving diversity within its schools. In 2000 the Wake County School System began to use family income instead of race to ensure some measure of diversity within schools; it received considerable national attention for its success in doing this.40 The policy limited the percentage of each school’s children who qualify for free or reduced price lunches to 40 percent. Given the rapid influx of new lower-income students, however, the board was not able to hold to that policy. In 2007, more than 40 percent of the students in 51 of the county’s 149 schools received reducedprice lunches.41 The board also tried to balance the number of students with limited English proficiency among its schools.42 Efforts to maintain economic diversity added to the need for yearly redistricting, and resulted in some students being bussed to distant schools. This drew the ire of a sizable portion of Wake County’s parents, and at least one member of the school board at the time of the referendum, who favored doing away with the diversity policy.43

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Having failed at the ballot box, opponents of year-round schools then lobbied the county commissioners to withhold the bond funds dedicated to converting schools to year-round use. They argued that the school system was not providing reasonable alternatives for families assigned to year-round schools. The county commissioners agreed to withhold the funds, but the school board forged ahead with the conversions using other funds under its control. That action prompted WakeCARES to file a lawsuit against the school system, contending that requiring only some students to attend year-round schools violated the state constitution’s call for equal educational opportunities. In May 2007 Superior Court Judge Howard Manning ruled in favor of WakeCARES, finding that the school system lacked the authority to force students to attend year-round schools. He ordered the school system to seek parental permission before assigning children to these schools. This meant that the district had to send permission forms to the parents of more than thirty thousand students, which it did. Of the approximately thirty thousand children assigned to year-round schools, about sixty-four hundred parents either did not return the form or did not consent to their children being sent to a year-round school.44 Those children were offered enrollment at traditional-calendar schools, a shuffling that caused crowding in some schools and empty seats in others. Yet the fight continued. The school board appealed Judge Manning’s ruling and in early May 2008 a three-judge appellate court panel overturned his decision. According to this ruling, the school board did have the authority to assign students to year-round schools without parental consent. The school board decided to allow the parents of current students to opt out of year-round calendar schools for the 2008–2009 academic year, but the following year those children would be assigned back to year-round schools. Parents of newcomers to the school system would be offered no such opt-out. WakeCARES countered this move by

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asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to stay the appellate court’s ruling and to take the case on appeal. In late May 2008 the Supreme Court granted a stay and in August of that year it agreed to hear the case. During the fall of 2008 the Wake County School Board worked on developing a new student assignment plan, which was released in early 2009. That plan called for the reassignment of 25,486 students over a three-year period. The notion was that parents would appreciate knowing more than one year at a time where their children would be going to school. ‘‘Instead,’’ the Raleigh News and Observer reported, ‘‘the usual parent anger seemed to triple.’’45 As a result some parents began to mobilize for the fall school board elections when four of the nine board seats would be on the ballot. Critics of the reassignment plan focused attention on the role of the diversity policy in increasing the number of reassignments and started advocating for dropping the diversity policy in favor of ‘‘neighborhood schools.’’46 In May the Supreme Court ruled, in a four-to-three decision, that the school board did not need parental permission to assign students to year-round schools. Sensing parent anger, the school board decided to continue to allow parents to opt out of year-round schools. Throughout the summer of 2009 battle lines were drawn between the supporters and opponents of the diversity policy. The officially nonpartisan elections quickly became partisan when several Republican public officials and businessman came out in support of neighborhood schools and prominent Democrats came out in support of the diversity policy.47 When the votes were counted from the October 6 school board election all four open seats were won by candidates who promised to do away with the diversity policy if elected. Together with the one continuing board member who was against the diversity policy the board moved to do away with it. After a series of

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Figure 22. Protesters take over a Wake County School Board meeting in response to the board’s decision to drop income diversity from the list of criteria used in determining school assignment (AP photo by Jim R. Bounds, July 20, 2010).

acrimonious meetings, the final decision was made at a March 23 meeting where ‘‘students sitting outside . . . chanted so loudly that they disrupted the hearing. Three people were arrested and other forcibly removed by police.’’48 In the end the school board voted five to four to do away with diversity as a criterion for student assignment. Anticipating this final outcome, Del Burns, the superintendent of schools, announced that he could no longer ‘‘in good conscience’’ stay in his position and tendered his resignation as of the end of the school year.49 In response the school board placed him on administrative leave for the remainder of the year.50 As of June 2010 a committee of the board began working on a reassignment plan that would create neighborhood school zones, even if they resulted in racially and economically imbalanced schools. It’s clear that this fight will continue as long as the county’s population continues to grow at a rapid pace, and the county

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commissioners, school board, and citizens fail to agree on ways to accommodate the thousands of new students who show up for school each year. ‘‘After years of enjoying bountiful growth and low taxes,’’ the News and Observer predicted, ‘‘Wake County might be coming to a point where paying the price of adding 36,000 residents a year can no longer be postponed.’’51 The economic slowdown in 2008 and 2009 certainly slowed population growth in Wake County. But the economic slowdown will also make it even more difficult to raise the funds needed for adequate school facilities through tax increases, bond referendums, impact fees, or other means. Thus, the Wake County school wars are likely to continue for some time to come. Impact of Population Growth on Transportation

The Research Triangle area’s rapid growth has caused a marked increase in traffic congestion; it’s been impossible to build and expand roads and transit services fast enough to keep up with the growth. Between 1982 and 2005 traffic in the Raleigh-Durham area grew 30 percent to 40 percent faster than road and transportation capacity.52 Moreover, the Triangle area’s relatively low-density development pattern means that the private auto is the predominant transportation mode. According to the final report of the Special Transit Advisory Commission, formed in 2006 to examine transit needs in the region (see discussion in Chapter 5), ‘‘Our rapidly growing economy and our low-density development patterns have made our region one of the most sprawling, autocentric regions in the nation. Our transportation system is straining under current demand and is far from adequate to meet future needs. Residents across the region express frustration with long commutes, congestion and the lack of transportation choices.’’53 Data on the way Triangle residents travel to work confirm the area’s autocentric character. Between 1980 and 2000 the percentage of workers who typically drove alone to work increased from

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65.6 percent to 77.2 percent. The percentage of workers who carpooled dropped from 24.2 percent to 12.8 percent, and the number who walked to work dropped from 4.2 percent to 2.2 percent. Over the same period, transit ridership showed a small increase from 2.6 percent to 3.2 percent. As might be expected, given the increased reliance on driving alone, Triangle traffic congestion has been increasing. The area’s average annual delay per traveler, a common measure of traffic congestion, went from eight hours in 1982 to thirty-five hours in 2005, indicating a fourfold increase in traffic congestion.54 In 2005, the Raleigh-Durham area ranked thirty-eighth of eighty-four areas on that measure of congestion, and eighth among the thirty medium-sized urban areas studied. The same study estimates that 2005 traffic congestion in the Raleigh-Durham area caused over eighteen million hours of travel delay, and eleven million gallons of excess fuel consumption. The combined cost in terms of both travel time delay and fuel was estimated to be $346 million. The increased use of fuel also adds considerably to the area’s air pollution and its carbon footprint.55 These congestion increases occurred despite significant new investments in both new and expanded highways and in public transit systems. During the 1980s, $1.4 billion was spent on new road construction in the Triangle. That figure jumped to $2 billion in the 1990s, and to $3 billion between 2000 and 2008. A total of $6.4 billion was spent on new road construction in the seven Triangle counties between 1980 and 2008.56 Major new road projects include the Northern Wake Expressway, the expansion of Interstate 85 through Durham, the U.S. 64 Knightdale Bypass, and the U.S. 70 Clayton Bypass. While a relatively small share of all transportation investments, public transit funding has also been significant. Triangle area public officials have been building new roads to address congestion problems, but like officials in many other

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Figure 23. Planned highways and proposed transit corridors (map by Peter Zambito).

communities, have failed to adequately control land use. Thus, as they have solved one congestion problem, they have created others. New roads attract new development, leading to the need for yet more roads. The I-540 Outer Loop around Raleigh is a good example of this. The Outer Loop

Responding to the RTP’s growth in the late 1960s, developers constructed new subdivisions such as Brentwood, North Ridge, and Quail Hollow along the Inner Beltline in north Raleigh. The lack of water and sewer lines close to the RTP required that new developments be at the edge of the existing towns rather than adjacent to the RTP. Getting from those neighborhoods to the RTP, however, was not an easy task. At first, RTP employees who lived in

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the new North Raleigh suburbs had to take the Inner Beltline south to N.C. 54, a two-lane road, and then drive an additional fifteen miles to the RTP. When the section of I-40 opened between the Inner Beltline and N.C. 55 this commute became somewhat easier. But as the park grew, and additional subdivisions appeared in North Raleigh, Cary, and other areas, traffic congestion increased both on the Inner Beltline and on I-40. What was needed, transportation planners believed, was a more direct route from North Raleigh’s burgeoning residential communities to the rapidly developing RTP. Because the William B. Umstead State Park and the RDU Airport prevented a direct route, N.C. Department of Transportation planners decided that the best alternative was a northern loop through largely undeveloped land and along the south edge of the Falls Lake watershed. The Northern Wake Expressway was added to the Greater Raleigh Area Thoroughfare Plan in 1976. This, of course, spurred yet more residential and commercial development in north Raleigh. By the early 1980s, continuing Triangle area growth led the state DOT to expand the Northern Wake Expressway plan to a seventy-one-mile ring road around Raleigh, which became known as the I-540 Outer Loop. The general alignment for that road was added to the Greater Raleigh Thoroughfare Plan Update in 1984, again spurring growth along the extended road corridor.57 State and federal funding for the Northern Wake Expressway, the first twenty-nine miles of the Outer Loop, was provided in 1989 and construction of the first section between I-40 and Glenwood Avenue (N.C. Route 70) began in 1992. When this first section was finished in 1997, the road ‘‘immediately changed commuting patterns all over north Raleigh. Instead of being forced onto the Beltline and I-40 to get to RTP, commuters now headed west to Glenwood Avenue, then onto I-540 which emptied onto I-40 at the eastern edge of RTP.’’58 This new traffic pattern caused long delays on Glenwood Avenue and on the I-540

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junction with I-40 by the airport. In addition, as I-540 construction moved steadily eastward, congestion on the terminal crossroads moved with it until the Northern Expressway was completed to N.C. 64/264 in 2007. The expressway has certainly cut commuting times from North Raleigh to the RTP, allowing eastern Raleigh residents easier access to job centers in the heart of the metropolitan area. And, it has, at least temporarily, relieved congestion on the I-440 Inner Beltline’s northern section and the intersecting east-west roads. But I-540 has also opened up large new areas within reasonable commuting distance of employment centers, and encouraged suburban sprawl. The News and Observer summed up the changes: ‘‘Raleigh has been reshaped over the past decade as I-540 has fueled a surge in residential, commercial and office development from Brier Creek near Raleigh-Durham International Airport to Wakefield on Raleigh’s northern end. Now the growth is marching east with I-540 and the Knightdale Bypass toward Rolesville, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon.’’59 After I-540 reached Knightdale, commercial building permits nearly quadrupled and residential permits nearly doubled.60 All this additional development has worsened congestion on the north-south roads that intersect I-540. Residents living along those roads complain of having to wait five to ten minutes to make a left turn from their local streets onto arterials that intersect I-540. Congestion at the interchanges has also become a problem.61 ‘‘Transportation planners say that the loop will eventually be overwhelmed by the growth it is fueling, and traffic will be as congested as it was before the first section—from I-40 to U.S. 70—opened in January 1997,’’ reported the News and Observer. ‘‘But by then, hundreds of thousands more families will have established careers, homes and roots here, thanks in part to the Outer Loop.’’62 As the Northern Expressway neared completion, the prospects of completing the loop’s remaining portions any time soon were

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dim. DOT funding projections indicate that the western, southern, and eastern sections of the loop may not be completed until 2030. The perceived need for the Outer Loop, along with other high-priority large road projects in the state, led the N.C. General Assembly in 2002 to create the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, imbuing it with the powers needed to build roads and charge tolls to pay for them. The authority was created ‘‘in response to concerns about rapid growth, heavy congestion and dwindling resources. The Turnpike Authority is authorized to study, plan, develop, construct, operate, and maintain up to nine projects.’’63 One of the authority’s first undertakings was a feasibility study for both the Triangle Expressway, which would complete the western portion of the Outer Loop, and the Triangle Parkway, which would extend N.C. 147 (the Durham Expressway) through the RTP, connecting it with the Outer Loop as it crosses N.C. 54. That study was released in 2007 and concluded that charging a $2 toll would make the $967 million Triangle Expressway almost financially feasible—there would be a $25 million gap. In 2008, that gap was filled when the General Assembly transferred $25 million from the general fund to the state DOT for the project. In that same year a $413 million low-interest federal loan was approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation. In a sale delayed by the credit crisis, $625 million in bonds for these roads were sold in July 2009 and construction was begun almost immediately.64 The four-lane, 6.2-mile Triangle Parkway is expected to open in early 2012, while the six-lane, 18.8-mile Triangle Expressway is expected to open early the following year. Plans for completing the loop with the thirty-mile Southern Wake Expressway and a 12.6-mile Western Expressway are also being developed.65 Given past experience, it is very likely that these road plans are already spurring additional growth in anticipation of their completion.

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Impact of Population Growth on Water Demand

Based on the Triangle area’s average annual rainfall, one would not expect problems providing water to the growing number of residences, businesses, industries, and institutions. The Triangle area’s average annual rainfall, after all, is a relatively high fortyseven inches per year. The problem, however, is that most of this precipitation either runs off or percolates down into the fractured rock that underlies most of the area. Once there it is difficult to retrieve. The area has no productive regional aquifers, thus the water that can be drawn from wells is limited and highly unpredictable.66The area’s public water providers largely draw from surface water sources such as rivers and man-made reservoirs. During times of drought, these surface water sources are greatly diminished, which causes shortages. Forty-one public water suppliers serve the Triangle’s urbanized areas. But in 2007 the six largest suppliers accounted for over 79 percent of the Triangle’s publicly provided water.67 Those six are the Apex Department of Public Works, the Cary Department of Public Works and Utilities, the Durham Department of Water Management, Johnston County Public Utilities, the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWSA), and the Raleigh Department of Public Utilities. As might be expected, given the sizable population increase, water consumption has also increased rapidly over the last fifteen years. In 1992 the area’s six largest water systems withdrew 76.27 million gallons per day (MGD) providing water to their customers. By 2007 that figure jumped to 116.9 MGD, a 51.8 percent increase. Smaller systems in the fastest growing areas had the largest increases in average daily withdrawals between 1992 and 2007. The Johnston County system, for example, had a 541.1 percent increase, the Apex systems had a 265.4 percent increase, and the

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Cary system had a 175.8 percent increase. Population growth also affects water quality. New residents generate new development, which increases the Triangle area’s impervious surfaces. This has two negative impacts on the Triangle’s water supply. First, it reduces the percolation that replenishes groundwater supplies which, in turn, feed the streams, rivers, and reservoirs. Second, it generates additional runoff, decreasing water quality in local streams and reservoirs. To keep up with the increasing demand, Triangle water providers have had to develop new supplies. Opened in 1982, Jordan Lake offers the largest supply of water at one hundred MGD. This is allocated to local water systems by the N.C. Division of Water Resources based on two main criteria: future need and alternative sources available. The water systems that serve Cary and Apex have been allocated 32 million gallons a day, Durham 10 MGD, Chatham County 6 MGD, OWASA 5 MGD, and several other small systems another 8 MGD. That leaves 39 MGD of water supply unallocated.68 Cary, Apex, and Chatham County are the only water suppliers currently drawing water from Jordan Lake but OWASA, Chatham County, and Durham are discussing constructing an additional water intake that would serve all three areas. Falls Lake opened in 1983 and can supply 68 MGD to Raleigh and other Wake County towns. Durham’s Little River reservoir, completed in 1987, can supply 30 MGD to its residents. In Orange County, OWASA opened the Cane Creek Reservoir in 1989, which can supply 10 MGD to its service area. Together, between 1982 and 1989 these major projects increased the areas’ water supply by 208 MGD. These newly developed reservoirs led some to believe that the Triangle water supply was more than adequate. A 1995 report, for example, cautioned of ‘‘significant aggregate overbuilding of water supply capacity in the region over the next 25 years.’’69 But area-wide droughts in 2001–2002 and 2007–2008 clearly

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showed that the regional water-supply and distribution system could not adequately meet the rapidly growing population’s needs in times of drought. The Drought of 2007–2008

While the Triangle area experiences periodic droughts, 2007– 2008 was particularly severe. This drought officially began on May 15, 2007, when the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council declared the Triangle counties to be in a ‘‘moderate drought.’’ But this declaration generated no particular concern among either the area’s water suppliers or residents. Throughout the early summer, however, rainfall continued to be well below normal and on July 10, the Triangle counties were declared to be in a ‘‘severe drought,’’ leading water suppliers to increase normal efforts to encourage voluntary water conservation. August was a particularly hot month locally, leading to a spike in water consumption: Raleigh’s water system set three records for water usage, with August 9 topping the charts at seventyseven million gallons used.70 Increasing demand and shrinking supply led Raleigh to adopt mandatory water restrictions at the end of August. These included limitations on days and times for outdoor watering and car washing, among others. Durham, however, was slower to react. It adopted mandatory conservation restrictions on September 21, a full two weeks after the Triangle was declared to be in an ‘‘extreme drought.’’ The rains continued to hold back throughout the fall and the Raleigh and Durham water providers expanded their mandatory water-use restrictions. On November 20 an ‘‘exceptional drought’’ status was declared and daily news reports began to track the ever-declining days of drinking water left in the Raleigh and Durham systems. By late December Raleigh’s water supply was down to ninety-one days and Durham’s was down to thirty-six days.71

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Figure 24. Falls Lake, the main water supply for Raleigh and several other Wake County towns, during the drought of 2007–2008. The city’s water supply went as low as a ninetyone-day supply, which led to mandatory conservation and discussion of a variety of emergency measures (courtesy of the Raleigh News and Observer).

Durham’s water-supply lakes had fallen to only 11 percent of their capacity.72 The drought continued through January, as emergency water plans were developed to provide water to the Triangle. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, started laying pipe so that Durham could tap an abandoned quarry, and it gave Raleigh permission, if necessary, to tap into the sediment layer of Falls Lake.73 The corps also announced that it was working on a plan to bring drinking water to the area by tanker truck or temporary above-ground pipeline.74 During the drought new building permits were being awarded as usual. Between the declaration of drought in May 2007 and February 2008, Raleigh issued almost five thousand new building permits.75 This led Raleigh council member Rodger Koopman to call for a temporary moratorium on all new development. The News and Observer reported that Koopman’s ‘‘lonely call for putting the brakes on development strikes a chord with Raleigh

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residents and business owners who are being asked to make do with less and less water. They wonder why the city keeps letting new homes, stores, industries and other users tap into the system.’’76 As might be expected, developers and other business interests strongly opposed even a temporary moratorium, arguing it would stifle economic development and the impact would outlast the drought’s likely end. Then in late February and early March 2008 close to four inches of rain fell, causing the drought to be downgraded from ‘‘exceptional’’ to ‘‘extreme.’’ In early April, six days of rain helped to fill the reservoirs in both Raleigh and Durham. The worst of the drought was over, but below-average rainfall and low groundwater levels continued to be a concern throughout the summer of 2008. The Triangle’s 2007–2008 drought was not officially declared over until September 30, 2008. This recent Triangle drought had an impact on the local provision of public water in a number of ways. First and foremost, it made it clear that neither the Raleigh or Durham water systems were adequate to serve the rapidly growing populations in their service areas.77 The predictable response of both systems was to develop or access additional water supplies.78 Raleigh, for example, is building new water treatment plants on two small lakes, Lake Benson and Lake Wheeler, which served as water supplies prior to Falls Lake’s creation. It is also developing a new reservoir on the Little River. Durham, for its part, is working to increase the capacity of its interconnection with Cary, thereby accessing water from Jordan Lake that’s pre-allocated to Durham, and it is also developing a new reservoir.79 The development of new water supplies, however, has generated conflict. A dispute, for example, broke out when Rolesville, which is served by Raleigh’s water system, wanted to extend water service to a large new subdivision. Raleigh refused to allow this extension, however, citing the impact of that connection on

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the Little River watershed, where Raleigh plans to build a new reservoir. Rolesville’s mayor saw this as impinging on his town’s plans to grow. ‘‘We want to grow, and Raleigh is actually restricting our growth,’’ said the mayor,80 and he threatened to seek water from the Franklin County water system. Another conflict developed when Franklin County proposed a pump station and pipeline to draw water from the Neuse River downstream of Falls Lake. Raleigh objected to this project, arguing that it would require more water to be released from Falls Lake and thus decrease Raleigh’s water supply. To add insult to injury, ‘‘the state has also required Raleigh to limit development of about 5,000 acres in North Raleigh to decrease the potential runoff that could adversely affect water quality near the Franklin County intake.’’81 The city has balked at these restrictions. One positive impact of the drought has been the increased cooperation and interconnectivity of area water providers. One example is the discussions among Orange, Chatham, and Durham Counties to share the costs of developing a new water-intake facility on Jordan Lake: ‘‘Chatham currently has an agreement to draw 6 million gallons per day from Jordan Lake through an intake operated by the town of Cary. But one growth projection shows the population in northeastern Chatham alone increasing by 83,000 people by 2035. A water allocation large enough to accommodate that population surge, they say, will only be granted to a regional partnership.’’82 So the three water systems are discussing a regional partnership to cooperate in constructing a new water intake facility. Another example of regional cooperation is the development of a standard set of water conservation stages, with comparable conservation measures associated with each.83 One regional agency pointed out that ‘‘the lack of consistency in the terminology, number stages in drought response ordinance, water use restriction, etc. among the various systems caused a significant amount of public confusion during the droughts of 2001–2002 { 132 }

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and 2007–8.’’84 A committee of representatives from the largest water providers has reached consensus on the need for yearround water conservation measures. According to a planner at the Triangle J Council of Governments, ‘‘We play very well together in the Triangle right now, in terms of both interconnections and cooperative planning.’’85 A final drought impact has been the increased attention paid to water conservation and management strategies.86 Both OWASA and Durham, for example, have instituted tiered pricing structures which increase the per gallon water cost beyond certain consumption thresholds. The water systems are also moving forward with reuse programs. OWASA, for example, is providing treated wastewater to UNC-CH to use in its chiller plants, and Raleigh and Durham are providing treated water for irrigation. The water providers plan on expanding water-reuse programs in the future. Public information campaigns on the need and strategies for water conservation have also been expanded and they seem to be having the intended impact. Given growth projections, providing drinking water will continue to be a challenge for Triangle communities. This challenge must be met through a combination of expanded water-supply sources and demand management. As suggested by a recent water-supply optimization study conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ‘‘there may be significant benefits in developing a regional approach to managing water resources.’’87 However those resources are managed, the public must be willing to commit the funding to better manage water systems during times of drought.

IMPA CT OF POPUL ATION DIVERSITY O N S O C I A L R E L AT I O N S As mentioned above, population growth has also meant increased ethnic diversity, particularly the increase in the number p o p u l a t i o n

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of Hispanics in the area, who are mostly Latinos from Mexico and Central America, drawn to the area’s robust job market. The Latino share of the total population has increased from less than 1 percent in 1990 to about 10 percent in 2010. If statewide figures apply, an estimated 45 percent of those immigrants are undocumented.88 This influx of Latinos to the Triangle has had a variety of positive effects. It has, for example, provided needed labor for growing businesses and it has spurred business growth. In describing the impact of Latinos in Chatham County’s Siler City, for example, Paul Quadros comments that ‘‘the migration of Latino workers and their families has been like a shot in the arm to Siler City. It has restored and spurred growth and development in a town that was dying.’’89 Latino culture and food have also enlivened the Triangle. For example, El Fiesta del Pueblo and several other Latino festivals, popular with Latinos and non-Latinos alike, are held in the Triangle each year. But the influx of Latinos has also led to culture clashes with white and black residents of the Triangle. A 2006 Pew Research Center study of attitudes toward immigration in the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area found that 26 percent of residents think immigration is a ‘‘very big’’ problem (second only to transportation congestion) while 36 percent believe that recent immigrants have a negative impact on government services. Both these figures are higher than the comparable national figures. Over two-thirds of residents also felt that illegal immigrants should not be eligible for social services and that local police should be required to check immigration status during traffic stops.90 The Pew Center study also explored black and white differences in attitudes toward immigration. While black residents were likely to think highly of the work ethics of immigrants, they held more negative views of their impact.91 A majority of blacks favored both cutting back on legal immigration and requiring

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illegal immigrants to return home, and 84 percent thought that police should be required to check immigration status during traffic stops and other routine actions. The major reason for these negative attitudes appears to be competition blacks feel with Latinos for jobs and housing. Almost one-third of blacks said that they or a family member has lost a job to an immigrant worker. Moreover, Latino immigrants have often competed for affordable housing in predominantly black areas of the Triangle. In 2000, the average black resident lived in a neighborhood that was 8 percent Hispanic.92 Whites, on the other hand, were more likely than blacks to believe that immigrants significantly increased crime and they were less likely to support allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend public schools.93 Latinos also have negative views of blacks. A 2006 study of Latino immigrants in Durham found that 59 percent felt that ‘‘few or no blacks are hard working’’ and 33 percent felt that ‘‘few or almost no blacks are easy to get along with.’’94 Latinos who lived in the same neighborhoods with blacks held stronger negative stereotypes than those who did not. One manifestation of concern over illegal immigration is the adoption of the 287(g) program by two Triangle law-enforcement agencies: the Wake County Sheriff’s Department and the Durham Police Department. The 287(g) program, part of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter into agreements with local law-enforcement agencies to perform some functions of immigration law enforcement. ICE provides funding and training to local law-enforcement personnel to allow them to determine the immigration status of those arrested and, if they are determined to be illegal immigrants, to begin deportation procedures. The Wake County Sheriff’s Department applied for and was accepted into the 287(g) program in July 2008. Between January

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and September 2009 the department processed over two thousand inmates for deportation.95 The sheriff argues that the 287(g) program has reduced crime in the county, while immigrant advocates argue that the program promotes racial profiling and is used more broadly than intended.96 Data on the types of crimes committed by those processed under the program indicate that 16 percent were felonies and 84 percent were misdemeanors.97 Even the Sherriff’s Association acknowledges that ‘‘although the interest of the program is to rid the community of dangerous criminals, sometimes people convicted of less serious crimes are deported.’’98 This has led many people in the Triangle to worry that the program is having a negative impact on trust between lawenforcement personnel and the larger immigrant community in the Triangle. They are concerned that fewer crimes are being reported and that immigrants will be less likely to assist law-enforcement personnel. The aggressive use of the 287(g) program, the need to show proof of citizenship in obtaining and renewing drivers licenses, and other actions have led Latinos to ‘‘feel a tug on the welcome mat.’’99

CONCLUSION The expansion of its local job market and its high quality of life have made the Research Triangle metro one of the fastest growing in the country. It gained almost seven hundred thousand jobs between 1970 and 2006 and it has made a variety of ‘‘best places to live’’ rankings. With this growth has come increased population diversity. Between 1990 and 2000 the area’s Hispanic population grew by 561 percent and its Asian population by 159 percent. These increases in population size and diversity have benefited the area in many ways, but they have also made it difficult to keep up with the demand for schools, roads, and water and they have led to social conflicts among ethnic groups in the area.

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Population projections for the next two decades indicate that the Triangle metro will continue to grow rapidly. By 2020 the population is forecast to be slightly more than 2 million and by 2030 it is forecast to be slightly more than 2.5 million.100 But should such growth be taken as a given or should area local governments act to control the rate of growth so as to minimize the growthrelated problems discussed in this chapter? This question will be addressed in Chapter 6.

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4

The Evolving Research Triangle Economy Changes in the national economy since the 1960s are well known. Among them are increased international competition due to liberalized trade rules, manufacturing migrating to lower-wage areas of the world, and the growing importance of service industries. North Carolina, like other states, has been profoundly affected by these changes, losing jobs in traditional industries like agriculture and manufacturing while gaining jobs in the emerging areas of professional, scientific, and technical services. As an important part of the region, the Research Triangle metropolitan area has been affected by these larger state trends. In the 1960s, three industries dominated the North Carolina economy: textiles, furniture, and tobacco. Together these comprised two-thirds of the state’s manufacturing employment and one-quarter of all jobs.1 The state’s competitive advantage at that time was largely based on the availability of low-cost labor. But falling trade barriers, improvements in information and transportation technology, and the expansion of multinational companies eroded that advantage. The state’s traditional industries began to decline. For example, North Carolina’s textile employment fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2007, as many manufacturing operations moved to China and other low-wage countries.2 The furniture industry experienced similar declines, and the

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tobacco industry shrank due to increased international competition, the elimination of tobacco support programs, corporate decisions to move headquarters to other states, and reduced demand for tobacco products in the United States. Yet during this time, North Carolina’s economy continued to expand. New-economy industries such as information technology, pharmaceuticals, financial services, food processing, and vehicle parts brought many new jobs to the state. From 1977 to 2005, the North Carolina economy outperformed the nation’s on most major indicators, including employment growth, real per capita income, and real gross domestic product per capita.3 As one might expect, some areas of the state were more successful than others in making this economic transition. Between 1970 and 2004, among twenty-one North Carolina regions, the Triangle led on key economic indicators of employment growth and increase in the average salary per job. Between 1970 and 2006, the Research Triangle area’s employment increased by almost 700,000. In 1970 the area had 286,000 employees; by 2006 that number had reached 985,000, a 244 percent increase. Employment increases were highest in the core counties of Wake (321 percent), Orange (276 percent), and Durham (209 percent), but Chatham and Johnston Counties also experienced employment growth rates above 150 percent. Since the Triangle is home to the state’s capital, three major universities, and several large hospitals and health systems, it is no surprise that government and nonprofit organizations dominate the list of major employers. In 2007, eight of the largest ten employers were government or nonprofit organizations. State government heads the list with almost 65,000 employees while Duke University and UNC–Chapel Hill place number two and three.4 IBM and GlaxoSmithKline are the only two private employers among the top ten. The large number of public and nonprofit

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sector jobs makes the Triangle less susceptible to economic ups and downs. In private-sector employment between 1970 and 2006, business sectors with the largest increases in both number and percentage of jobs were professional and related services; business and repair services; personal, entertainment, and recreation services; finance, insurance, and real estate; and construction.5 The business sectors that experienced relative declines in employment included agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining, and manufacturing. A more fine-grained analysis of employment changes between 1990 and 2008 shows the following fastest growing subsectors: computer systems design and related services; educational services; telecommunications; medical, dental, and hospital equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers; and scientific research and development services.6 The Research Triangle’s economic transformation resulted from its competitive advantages, and the aggressive economic development efforts undertaken by state and local leaders. In the 1950s and 1960s, local conditions were ripe for economic expansion fueled by growing knowledge-intensive industries such as information technology and pharmaceuticals. First and foremost, the three area research universities had grown from humble beginnings into nationally prominent centers of higher education. All competed successfully for prominent faculty and turned out highly qualified scientists exactly when information technology and pharmaceutical industries were rapidly expanding. Beyond the area’s talent pool, the Research Triangle had a relatively low cost of living, was well located between the I-95 and I-85 corridors, was not too far from Washington, D.C., offered relatively cheap, nonunionized labor, and had a high quality of life. As one economic development professional put it, the area ‘‘had all the

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things that made IBM and a bunch of other people believe you could do something here.’’7 The only missing ingredient was a catalyst to jump-start the economic development process, and that catalyst was the Research Triangle Park. As described earlier, the RTP evolved from the visions and actions of state and local leaders in both the private and public sectors. They came together to create a place for research and development companies to call home, and they sold the area’s advantages to prospective clients. As the local economy expanded, the development baton passed on to new leaders who have aggressively promoted economic development, although their approach has not always been the same.

R E C R U I T M E N T V E R S U S I N C U B AT I O N Debate continues in the literature on local economic development on the respective costs and benefits of recruiting businesses to an area versus incubating or growing local businesses. The traditional approach to local economic development has focused on recruitment as economic developers sought out established companies—the bigger the better—and tried to lure them in. This approach drew criticism in the 1980s as scholars and practitioners argued that entrepreneurship and local business development could potentially create more jobs, and keep those jobs in the area.8 Others argued that larger firms tend to provide better-paying jobs with benefits and career ladders not found in smaller ones.9 This debate about the best strategy to achieve sustainable economic growth has played out in the Research Triangle. In its early days RTP leaders and others promoting the area’s economic development were largely involved in recruitment. Economic developers sought established companies to lure to the Triangle. The RTP founders sent delegations of professors to research-based

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companies to sell them on the area. The early success in recruiting major information technology, biopharmaceutical, and telecommunications companies provided the foundations upon which these industries were built. The first big recruitment success was IBM, which provided a critical boost to the area’s reputation and a foundation for information technology development in the Research Triangle. IBM created a gravitational field that attracted other IT companies, like Data General, which opened a facility in the RTP in 1977. Yet state and local leaders did not sit back and let the local IT industry develop on its own—they actively encouraged its growth through the development of intentional economic development infrastructure.10 In 1963, Governor Terry Sanford created a committee composed of prominent scientists to advise him on science-based economic development. Out of that committee came the Board of Science and Technology, whose mission was ‘‘to encourage, promote and support scientific, engineering and industrial research applications in North Carolina.’’11 With a $2 million appropriation from the General Assembly, the board, among other activities, established the Triangle Universities Computation Center to provide high-speed computing in the state. When Governor Jim Hunt was elected in 1976 he sought to strengthen the state’s scientific resource base as a way to further economic development. Thus he charged the board with three tasks: create the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (located in Durham), strengthen support for the burgeoning microelectronics industry in the state, and strengthen support for the state’s emerging biotechnology industry. In 1980 the Board of Science and Technology recommended the creation of the Microelectronic Center of North Carolina (MCNC). Governor Hunt saw this center as having the potential to make the Research Triangle the ‘‘Silicon Valley of the East,’’ and he worked with the General Assembly to fund it with $1 million.12

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Figure 25. The Burroughs Wellcome Building of three hundred thousand square feet was designed by Paul Rudolph and constructed in the early 1970s to serve as the company’s corporate headquarters and main research facility. It is now part of the GlaxoSmithKline corporate campus (courtesy of the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).

The MCNC was charged with ‘‘building North Carolina’s technical infrastructure for science based economic development.’’13 In 1982, the center moved into a building of eighty-four thousand square feet in the RTP. Once operational, the center offered an advanced research and technology laboratory and a supercomputing center, and it supported statewide advanced communications networks. The announcement of the MCNC enticed General Electric to open a microelectronic center in the RTP. Over the years, the MCNC has helped bring together the expertise of the state’s universities with area science-based companies and has supported IT industrial development in many other ways. Early recruitment efforts also captured institutes and companies that would enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to grow in the Research Triangle. Both the National Institute

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Figure 26. The North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s headquarters building located in the RTP encompasses forty-seven thousand square feet and houses a staff of sixty-five, a library, and a conference center (photo by author).

of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Center for Health Statistics were lured to the RTP in 1966. The presence of these federal institutes, in turn, was an important factor in drugmaker Burroughs Wellcome’s 1969 decision to move its headquarters and research activities from Tuckahoe, New York, to the RTP.14 Then Burroughs Wellcome’s presence helped attract other pharmaceutical firms, most notably Glaxo, which moved to the RTP in 1983 and acquired Burroughs Wellcome in 1995. Glaxo went on to acquire and merge with other pharmaceutical companies and is now called GlaxoSmithKline. In 2008 the company moved its U.S. headquarters to the RTP, where the company employs over five thousand people. As they did in their efforts in information technology, state and local leaders acted to expand the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries by developing intentional infrastructure, the

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largest and most prominent of which was the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. The center’s publicity states: ‘‘When scientists conducted the first successful genetic engineering experiments in the 1970s, leaders in North Carolina paid attention. They realized that a potent new technology was emerging that could bring substantial economic and social benefits.’’15 That realization led the N.C. General Assembly to create a study commission that recommended creating a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to biotechnology within the state. Acting on this recommendation the General Assembly created the center in 1984 and charged it with providing ‘‘long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business and education statewide.’’16 Located in the RTP, the center is touted as the first government-sponsored organization dedicated to developing the biotechnology industry. Its main activities include science and technology development, business and technology development, and education and training. The center’s science and technology development activities include providing grants to North Carolina’s universities and institutions for research, institutional development, and faculty recruitment. One of the first recruitment grants brought Dr. Oliver Smithies, a 2007 Nobel Prize recipient, to UNC–Chapel Hill. The center also helps to recruit biotechnology companies to the state, retain them, and expand them. Finally, the center’s education and training activities are focused on both workforce preparedness and expanding public understanding of biotechnology. The center helps design and fund ‘‘biowork’’ courses at three community colleges, and provides grants to the state’s public schools to help incorporate biotechnology into primary and secondary educational curriculums. The center has joined with several other organizations to form the Biomanufacturing and Pharmaceutical Training Consortium, which created the $45 million, eighty-two-thousand-square-foot

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Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center on N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus. Since its inception, the Biotechnology Center has received over $200 million from the state. Its 2008 budget was $15.6 million. The center has clearly played an important role in making North Carolina the country’s third largest biotechnology center, with over five hundred companies employing fifty-five thousand people. The largest number of those companies and jobs are in the Research Triangle area.17 Early on, Triangle business recruiters also lured a major telecommunications company, which provided a foundation for the development of that industry in the Triangle. In 1980, Northern Telecom, a prominent Canadian telecommunications company that had recently pioneered the development of a digital switch and a line of digital telecommunications equipment, opened a research and development facility in the RTP. In the 1990s the company branched into computer networking hardware and software and changed its name to Nortel Networks. Its RTP facility grew to employ close to three thousand. In 1990 the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson, a leader in mobile technology and web services, opened a major facility in the RTP. In 1994 Cisco Systems—a provider of routers and switches used to direct data, voice, and video information—opened an RTP facility that, by 2006, employed over twenty-eight hundred people. Since the early 1990s business recruitment efforts, indeed, overall stewardship of economic development in the larger Triangle, have been overseen by the Research Triangle Regional Partnership (RTRP). The forerunner of the RTRP, the Raleigh-Durham Association, was created in 1990 by community leaders in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill who saw a need to market the whole area rather than just individual communities. Prospective local investors said ‘‘this is stupid, I don’t care what county I’m in, I could care less.’’18 The region’s towns and counties began to recognize that if investment went into one area, it would also

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benefit other areas within the region. Then, in 1994, when the General Assembly created seven regional partnerships for economic development in the state, the Raleigh-Durham Association was expanded to cover a wider area and it changed its name to the Research Triangle Regional Partnership. The RTRP covers thirteen counties, including all seven counties in the Triangle metropolitan area, plus the surrounding counties of Granville, Harnett, Lee, Moore, and Warren. The partnership describes itself as ‘‘a business-driven, public-private partnership dedicated to keeping the 13-country Research Triangle Region economically competitive through business, government and educational collaboration.’’19 A key aspect of the RTRP’s mission is to market the region to potential investors and ensure the area remains economically competitive. The partnership has an annual budget of approximately $3 million, about 37 percent of which comes from the state. The remainder is contributed by local businesses and business organizations.20 Operating on a partnership model, RTRP’s staff of seven cooperates and coordinates with the professional economic developers and their staff in each of the thirteen counties. The RTRP convenes a monthly meeting of all economic development professionals in the area to share information and coordinate activities. The recruitment of large firms to the Triangle has done much more than simply providing foundations for the development of industries and adding jobs to the area’s economy. Those firms have been active in a wide range of corporate giving. A 2008 report on local philanthropy estimates there are twenty corporate foundations based in the area and an additional ten with a significant presence.21 Based on 2006 data, the top corporate foundations are GlaxoSmithKline ($5.1 million), IBM ($3.2 million), Progress Energy ($3 million), and BlueCross and BlueShield of North Carolina ($1.7 million). Many large corporations also contribute to the area with in-kind contributions and by supporting employee volunteerism. There is, however, room to grow: The lack { 148 }

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of more large, locally based companies means that corporate giving in the Triangle is ‘‘less mature and robust’’ than in other areas.22 Another often-overlooked benefit of the recruitment of high-tech research and development companies is that they often co-locate their manufacturing operations, which has resulted in an expansion of manufacturing jobs. IBM’s facility in the RTP, for example, housed researchers as well as the manufacture of mainframe computers and, later, network servers and laptops. When Burroughs Wellcome moved to the RTP it also opened a manufacturing plant in Greenville. When Glaxo moved to the area it opened a manufacturing facility in nearby Zebulon that employed 1,350 people in a wide range of jobs by 2007. Another recent example is Novartis’s decision to construct a plant in Holly Springs to manufacture a flu vaccine. Again, large companies like IBM and GlaxoSmithKline create a gravitational pull that attracts smaller companies wanting to do business with them. Moreover, when large companies settle in the Research Triangle, there are secondary and tertiary impacts on the job market as their workers increase demand for goods, services, and housing. Recruitment has also played an important, if unintentional, role in developing small businesses. When large corporations in the area have laid off employees due to economic recession, mergers, or other reasons, many of them have stayed in the area and started their own companies. A good example of this was when Glaxo took over Burroughs Wellcome in the mid-1990s. That merger ‘‘created panic in the region’’ but ‘‘many decided to stay and start small companies. . . . It was the first time people saw the nature of organic growth. People threw out the seeds and, I’ll be damned, they grew.’’23

A FOCUS ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP In the late 1980s many economic developers began to expand their focus from the recruitment of large firms to the nurturing of e v o l v i n g

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small ones. Several factors contributed to this change including the dissemination of research demonstrating that most new jobs are created by small businesses rather than the expansion of large ones;24 the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave federal grant recipients control over inventions and other intellectual property resulting from those grants; and examples of very successful local start-ups. A software company called SAS, for example, was started in 1976 by two former N.C.State University professors. By 2009, SAS had grown to over eleven thousand employees with an annual revenue of $2.31 billion.25 Quintiles, a clinical research company that tests new drugs and compounds, was founded in 1982 by Dennis Gillings, a faculty member in the UNC–Chapel Hill School of Public Health. In 1994 the company went public and by 1999 it was listed among the S&P 500.26 As with the efforts to develop particular industries in the area, intentional infrastructure was developed to support these entrepreneurial efforts. One of the first organizations founded to support the creation and growth of small businesses in the area was the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), which was created in 1984 ‘‘by a group of 24 business leaders, entrepreneurs and academics to capitalize on the technological and educational strengths of the Triangle.’’27 Based in the RTP, its mission is to ‘‘identify, enable and promote high-growth, high-impact companies and accelerate the region’s entrepreneurial culture.’’28 It does that by sponsoring a variety of activities, including an annual venture capital conference to showcase entrepreneurial companies to potential investors. Over the years participating companies have raised more than $732 million in venture capital.29 CED also offers training programs and materials for entrepreneurs at various stages of business development, and provides varied networking opportunities. Successful companies such as Red Hat, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, and Sciquest have taken advantage of CED programs and services.

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For its part, the RTF has sought to promote small business growth and development by creating the Park Research Center. When the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences moved in the mid-1990s from the thirty-acre, eleven-building site it leased from the foundation, it converted the site into an ‘‘accelerator’’ facility where small companies looking to expand could rent space at attractive rates and take advantage of shared facilities, such as labs, conference rooms, and clerical services. Over time this facility broadened its focus to work with start-up businesses as well as already established ones. Former tenants of the center include Paradigm Genetics and Scynexis. The RTP also houses two other small business incubators: the First Flight Venture Center and the BD BioVenture Center. First Flight Venture Center was created as a not-for-profit organization in 1991. The center ‘‘serves the initial needs of entrepreneurs and early stage companies in the Research Triangle area.’’30 Its sixteenthousand-square-foot facility can support approximately 25 startup companies at any one time; over its existence it has graduated more than 170 companies, including some that now have hundreds of employees.31 The center was recently recognized with the Science Alliance’s ‘‘Best Science Based Incubator Award.’’ Business start-ups need more than space and access to services, however. They need seed funding to conduct market analyses, create business plans, develop prototypes, or protect intellectual property. NC IDEA, an acronym for North Carolina Innovative Development for Economic Advancement, seeks to provide that support. Originally developed within the MCNC in the early 2000s, NC IDEA became an independent nonprofit organization in 2005. Its mission is to provide fledgling firms in the areas of information technology, medical devices, and the material sciences ‘‘with funding between startup and venture capital, the socalled ‘valley of death.’ ’’32 With support from the General Assembly, NC IDEA offers grants of up to $50,000 to approximately

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twelve companies per year. From its inception through 2008 it granted $1.3 million to thirty-seven companies.33 Its grantees also receive technical assistance from both its own staff and from partner organizations, including the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, the North Carolina Technology Association, and Southeast TechInventures. In addition, NC IDEA has a venture capital fund to invest in companies in the form of either preferred stock or convertible preferred debt. One of the early obstacles to creating new small businesses in the Triangle was the lack of local venture capital funds. In 1990 businesses in the Raleigh-Durham area had attracted only $25 million in venture capital. In more recent years this has changed considerably. By 2002, the amount of venture capital invested in Triangle businesses had increased to over $1 billion and continues to increase rapidly.34 In 2005, Triangle businesses attracted $430 million in venture capital.35 Some of the largest venture capital companies either located in or targeting Triangle companies include Aurora Funds, InterSouth Partners, and Capital South Partners.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITIES Local universities have been expanding their roles in technology transfer and in promoting small business. Before the mid-1980s, faculty at the Triangle’s three major research institutions, like faculty at similar universities across the country, were largely focused on basic science and discovery. Little attention was paid to the practical application of their discoveries, and even less to commercialization. In fact, involvement in commercialization was often denigrated as beneath the dignity of serious scholars. Faculty members were ‘‘not rewarded for that kind of stuff. That isn’t how you got tenure. In fact, it’s how you didn’t get tenure.’’36

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There was some existing cooperation between university faculty and the business community, largely through outside consulting contracts between individual faculty members and individual businesses. Professors more interested in commercializing their work often left the university to join an existing business or start their own. The universities themselves did not directly benefit from any of that activity. After the Bayh-Dole Act’s 1980 passage, universities across the country began to see the economic potential of commercializing university-based discoveries, and the attitudes of many university faculty members began to change. One observer summed up the shift: ‘‘Now the university values entrepreneurship and many faculty members find satisfaction in both their ideas and their usefulness.’’37 Technology Transfer

Triangle universities began to promote commercialization of their discoveries in several ways. First, all three universities established technology-transfer offices, which assist faculty, staff, and students in commercializing discoveries. More specifically, these offices seek out university discoveries and evaluate their commercial potential, and they assist in obtaining intellectual property protection for the discovery. They also help identify potential investors and business partners, and negotiate licensing agreements that involve sharing potential income with the inventors, their departments, and the university. As of 2006 the three major Triangle universities’ licensing revenues were modest and largely dependent on a small number of successful products. Duke led Triangle universities in licensing revenue for fiscal 2006, at $4.1 million, while N.C. State made $3.6 million, and UNC–Chapel Hill brought in $2.4 million.38 Most of Duke’s licensing revenues come from the sales of a drug called

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Myozyme, which treats Pompe disease, while most of NCSU’s revenues come from the licensing of a technology that delays the ripening of fruits and vegetables.39 Local university licensing revenue figures compare poorly to many other universities, such as New York University ($791 million), Columbia University ($135 million), and the University of Minnesota ($63 million).40 Triangle universities ‘‘were slow to push faculty inventions into the commercial pipeline.’’41 Yet university officials stress that commercialization should be valued for the businesses the universities launch, the jobs that they create, and the quality-of-life improvements they generate. Using these other metrics, in 2007 Duke University had a total of 573 licenses, NCSU had 639, and UNC–Chapel Hill had 248 licenses. Additionally, in 2007 Duke had forty patents approved, NCSU had thirty-eight, and UNC–Chapel Hill had thirty-one.42 The three universities hope that these and earlier patents will lead to increases in their licensing revenues. Given the new attitudes and support for the commercialization of research discoveries, professors can now remain faculty members while being involved, to one degree or another, in commercializing their discoveries. A prominent example of this is Holden Thorp, who in 2008 was named the chancellor of UNC–Chapel Hill. As a professor in the university’s chemistry department, Thorp was involved in founding two companies based on his discoveries. His most recent company, Viamet Pharmaceuticals, was created in 2005, based on a technology ‘‘designed to produce drug compounds that attack disorders in the areas of inflammation, infectious disease and oncology.’’43 In 2007 that company raised over $6 million from venture capital companies and in 2008 it raised another $18 million. After being named chancellor, Thorp pulled away from active involvement in the company.

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Research Campuses

Triangle universities have contributed to the area’s economic development by developing research campuses that include private companies interested in working closely with university facilities and students. NCSU was the first Triangle university to do this: It developed a dedicated research campus just south of its main campus in west Raleigh. By the 1980s NCSU was running out of land for expansion on its historic thousand-acre campus. So university officials began eyeing a large track of land immediately to the south that the N.C. Department of Agriculture was using to grow animal feed.44 Rather than implement a simple campus expansion, however, university officials, under the leadership of Chancellor Bruce Poulton, devised an ambitious plan for a ‘‘technopolis,’’ which would consist of ‘‘R&D neighborhoods with university, corporate and government facilities intertwined.’’45 Poulton enlisted the help of Governor Jim Hunt, who felt that ‘‘we ought to have a place where we can have business and universities and the best thinkers all working together, working alongside each other, parking in the same parking lots, having lunch together.’’46 With Hunt’s help, the Centennial Campus was created in 1984 when a 355-acre tract of farmland was transferred to NCSU. The following year, the new governor, Jim Martin, oversaw the transfer of an additional 450 acres for the campus and more land was purchased privately, for a total of 1,334 acres. The master plan for developing the new campus was based on the creation of ‘‘clusters of buildings in R&D neighborhoods with multidisciplinary themes based on the University’s strengths in cutting-edge research and client-driven training programs.’’47 The themes selected included information and communications technologies, biosciences and biotechnology, advanced materials, and education. The plan also calls for housing for students, faculty, staff,

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and private individuals, a retail center, a hotel, an executive conference center, a golf course, and a people-mover system to better connect the new campus to the historic one and with the rest of the region. Although the Centennial campus’s development was slowed by bureaucratic hurdles and the early 1990s recession, the campus has grown rapidly in more recent times.48 In the mid-1990s the College of Textiles moved there, followed by the Engineering Graduate Research Center. On the corporate and government side, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Plant Health Science and Technology selected the Centennial Campus for new facilities. A big boost came in 2002 when Red Hat, a leading company in open source computing, chose the Centennial Campus for its corporate headquarters. As of 2009, the Centennial Campus had twenty-five major buildings totaling 2.7 million square feet. It included sixty-one corporate and government partners employing 1,600 people. The campus is projected to eventually contain 12,500 corporate and government employees and house 7,000 people. Possibly the best example of a university-corporate partnership is that between Red Hat and the university’s computer science department. Red Hat’s corporate headquarters on the Centennial Campus sit immediately adjacent to the computer science building, facilitating interaction between company employees, faculty, and students. In the mid-1990s UNC–Chapel Hill started discussing a research campus of its own, now known as Carolina North. The university’s informational material on the campus comments: ‘‘As a public research university helping to transform the state’s economy, Carolina must compete with national peers for the talent and resources that drive innovation. Today, that competition demands a new kind of setting—one that enables public-private

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Figure 27. North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus located just south of its main campus contains a mix of university departments, government agencies, private companies, and residential units, as well as recreation facilities (courtesy of North Carolina State University Libraries).

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partnership, public engagement and flexible new spaces for research and education.’’49 This new campus will be built on a 970acre site called the Horace Williams Tract, named for the professor who in 1940 bequeathed most of this land, two miles north of the main campus, to the university. Soon after Williams made his gift to UNC, an airport was developed on the southwest portion of the site closest to the university. The idea for Carolina North came out of a report on alternative uses for the Horace Williams Tract commissioned by the university under then Chancellor Michael Hooker and conducted by the consulting firm Johnson, Johnson and Roy (JJR). JJR developed three options for the use of the property and presented them to a faculty committee for its consideration. That committee favored a ‘‘university village concept’’ that would include academic, research, housing, and commercial uses. JJR, and later Ayers Saint Gross, developed more specific ideas about the property’s physical design in cooperation with several university advisory committees. After a long and sometimes contentious set of discussions with public officials and town residents who were concerned about the community impacts of such a large development, the plan was finally approved by the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2009. Carolina North’s approved plan allows for three million square feet of development on 133 acres of the site over the next twenty years. It also anticipates an additional five million square feet of development on another 100 acres sometime after twenty years. A total of 300 acres of the site will be permanently protected from development. Approximately half of the allowable square footage is designated as academic space, one quarter for private research and development companies, and the remaining quarter for housing, civic, and retail use. The first building to be built at Carolina North is the eighty-thousand-square-foot Carolina Innovation Center, a business accelerator designed to provide ‘‘space, management, and seed capital to emerging high-growth technology

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development, on 233 acres of land about two miles north of the current campus (courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

the long-range plan calls for approximately eight million square feet of development, including academic, private-research, and housing and retail

Figure 28. The development of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carolina North campus has been slowed by the recent recession, but

companies’’ run by the California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.50 As of 2009, however, this project was on hold due to the economic downturn. The UNC Law School, the School of Public Health, and UNC Health Care have also expressed interest in moving or expanding to Carolina North. Given the attention paid to supporting local entrepreneurs and small businesses in the area, it may be tempting to conclude that the days of large-scale business recruitment are over. Charles Hayes, director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, disputes this view: ‘‘It’s real easy for people to say the buffalo hunt is over. That is clearly not so. To give you an example, this week in this region . . . there is over a billion dollars of people who are walking around, kicking dirt, looking at sites. That’s over 1,200 jobs.’’51 So recruitment efforts continue.

NONTRADITIONAL BUSINESSES IN THE TRIANGLE Beyond the hunts and the start-ups, there are several distinctive, nontraditional businesses to be found in the area. These nonprofit and cooperative businesses are unique to the Research Triangle and help to create a distinctive identity. Although there are many others to choose from, the Durham-based Center for Community Self-Help and Carrboro’s Weaver Street Market are two of the most distinctive. Center for Community Self-Help

Martin Eakes and his wife, Bonnie Wright, founded the Center for Community Self-Help (CCSH) in 1980. Eakes grew up in a rural community outside of Greensboro, where he witnessed lowerincome, minority families struggle to achieve economic security.52 He emphasized this background in a broadcast interview: ‘‘Having

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grown up in a community where my friends were unable to do the things that I could do, always struck me as being morally corrupt, and it still does.’’53 He went on to study law at Princeton while Wright studied management. Upon completing their degrees, the couple decided to return to North Carolina to apply their newly acquired expertise to assist workers interested in taking over troubled textile mills and furniture factories. They created the center to provide legal advice to employees, but quickly realized that inability to qualify for traditional loans was one of the main obstacles to worker-owned businesses. This led them to create the Self-Help Credit Union (SHCU), a memberowned, federally insured financial organization. With capital that comes from deposits, it lends to those who normally do not qualify for traditional loans. Once the SHCU was up and running, Eakes became aware of the wealth disparity between blacks and whites, and its major cause: the disparity in homeownership rates. Thus, the SHCU expanded its lending to include mortgage loans. Eakes is quick to say that he is not running a charity, and the self-described ‘‘bleeding heart conservative’’ asserts that if customers fail to make their payments the credit union ‘‘will foreclose on you faster than any bank.’’54 That said, the Credit Union’s actual foreclosure rate has been lower than the rates of most mortgage lenders.55 In more recent years the SHCU has expanded beyond small business and home loans to include loans to charter schools and other community institutions. The SHCU also makes loans to small businesses and nonprofits, concentrating on those headed by or serving women, people of color, and rural residents. The loans range from several thousand dollars to several million. Along with the SHCU, Eakes and Wright created the Self-Help Ventures Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to manage higher-risk business loans. Its capital comes from corporate, foundation, and religious institutions in the form of both loans

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and grants. Over time the Ventures Fund has assumed responsibility for managing a nationwide secondary mortgage market for community development loans supported by a $50 million program-related investment made by the Ford Foundation. Not satisfied with these achievements, in 1996 the CCSH created the Self-Help Community Development Corporation, which purchases and rehabilitates real estate in low-income communities. And in response to predatory lending practices that threatened to strip the home equity of lower-income homeowners, the CCSH created the Center for Responsible Lending, which is engaged in research and education on this issue. The Center for Community Self-Help and its affiliated organizations have made substantial contributions to both the metropolitan area and to the state. Over the last twenty-eight years they have made over $5 billion in loans to over sixty-two thousand individuals, businesses, and community organizations. Of those loans, 46 percent were made to people of color, 42 percent to women, and 33 percent to people or businesses in distressed areas. They have directly provided loans to almost four thousand home buyers, and purchased the loans of over fifty thousand low-income home buyers through a secondary market program. For its part, the Center for Responsible Lending has played an important role in helping pass legislation restricting subprime mortgage loans and capping payday-lending fees for military personnel.56 Weaver Street Market

Ruffin Slater and Randy Tally—two former managers of the Durham Food Co-op—opened the Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery store, in Carrboro in 1988.57 This is one of the businesses supported by the Center for Community Self-Help’s Self-Help Ventures Fund. Over its first twenty years the market

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Figure 29. The Center for Community Self-Help headquarters and nonprofit office building in downtown Durham (photo by author).

has grown, diversified, and become an important community institution contributing to the area’s economy, cultural environment, and social health. Based on the cooperative model of joint ownership and democratic control, Weaver Street Market is governed by a board of

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directors made up of two co-op member-owners, two co-op employees, and two people with particular expertise chosen by the other board members and the general manager. As of 2009, an ownership share in the co-op ranged between $75 and $175 based on family size. Ownership benefits traditionally have included a 5 percent discount on all purchases. In mid-2008, the dividend policy was changed to a system of paying yearly patronage dividends in profitable years. The original Weaver Street Market store opened in downtown Carrboro in a building constructed next to the restored Carr Mill originally built by Thomas Lloyd in 1898, later purchased by Julian Carr, and converted into Carr Mill Mall in 1977. That six-thousandsquare-foot building is set back from the street by an open lawn that quickly became a de facto community square, with the addition of outdoor seating, music performances, and other community events. Once the main store was established, the co-op began to branch out. In 2000 it opened Panzanella, a ‘‘community-owned Italian eatery’’ behind the grocery store in the historic mill building. In 2005, Weaver Street opened a second store in Southern Village, a neotraditional development in southern Chapel Hill. Most recently, it opened a third store in downtown Hillsborough and a new facility called the Food House, to keep up with the rising demand for fresh, locally produced food and freshly baked goods at its three stores. Total sales in 2008 approached $22 million.58 The contributions of the market to Orange County and its primary communities—Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough— have been substantial. In 2008, it employed ninety-two people, making it the largest nongovernmental employer in Carrboro. The co-op’s almost thirteen thousand owners received discounts on their food purchases totaling $400,000. The co-op also supports nearby food producers by buying locally whenever possible. In

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2008 almost 25 percent of its purchases were from local farms, a policy that keeps money in the local economy. The co-op has also established the Community Fund, which it uses to provide financial support to a wide variety of community organizations. The coop estimates that in 2008, it gave over $117,000 in direct or indirect support to community groups. Yes! Magazine recognized Weaver Street Market as one of the country’s ten best alternative businesses in 2007.59 Possibly the co-op’s most important impact is that it has created community gathering places in Carrboro, Southern Village, and Hillsborough. The market serves as an important element in the downtown revitalization of both Carrboro and Hillsborough. In 2008 the co-op hosted 166 community events including a regular Sunday jazz brunch and Thursday evening concerts on the lawn.60

CHALLENGES The Triangle is undeniably one of the country’s major high-tech employment centers. Still, area leaders are aware of the many challenges to its continued growth and prosperity, including the decline of older industries and the emergence of new ones, increasing competition from other areas, erosion of the area’s quality of life, and a small and aging set of regional leaders. The area has already experienced the decline of some of its ‘‘new economy’’ industries over the last two decades. Two industries that took root here are information technology and telecommunications, each of which expanded rapidly from the 1970s through the 1990s. The late 1990s dot-com bust had a significant impact on these industries and on the whole area. Overexpansion in the technology sector eventually led to contraction and retrenchment, and the Triangle did not escape the downside. Between 1999 and 2003, technology manufacturing employment in the region dropped by 30 percent and as of 2007, these jobs had

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not recovered.61 Retrenchment in this industry cost the Triangle area thousands of jobs. More recently, telecommunications industry changes have delivered another local blow. Nortel Networks helped to draw other telecommunications companies to the Triangle. In the late 1990s Nortel employed over 8,500 people in the area. More recently, however, Nortel has taken ‘‘a beating in a market place characterized by weak demand and hearty competition.’’62 And an accounting scandal didn’t help either. In early 2009, Nortel filed for bankruptcy, and soon after it decided to sell off the company in pieces.63 By mid-2009, employment at Nortel’s RTP site was down to 1,850 workers.64 Later that year Sony Ericsson announced that it would close its RTP operation within a year.65 At the time of this writing, the disposition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions unit has not been determined and the future of its employees is uncertain. Another major challenge to the Triangle’s economy is competition from other regions in this country and around the world. Although the Triangle has a head start on many others, competing communities are working hard to lure emerging industries such as biotechnology. As discussed in Chapter 2, not only are other urban regions in the United States investing in biotechnology and other life sciences to gain a competitive edge in these areas, governments in Asia and Europe are doing so as well.66 A total of forty states have life sciences recruitment strategies as part of their economic development plans, and European and Asian countries are spending billions to develop or attract the industry.67 Now that the Triangle area has captured or developed a variety of attractive companies, the tables are beginning to turn. Historically, local economic developers visited companies in other areas to lure them to the Triangle without having to worry too much about losing local companies. Now other areas are sending their economic developers to the Triangle to lure away its companies.

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Charles Hayes observed: ‘‘It did not used to be that people like me came to this region trying to entice our companies to relocate. . . . [Now] we have those people coming here just like we used to go to Boston. Well, I guess we have arrived!’’68 Quality-of-life issues are another challenge to the economy of the Triangle, and economic development leaders show concern about a range of issues including growth management, transportation, and education, as Pam Wall observed: ‘‘We’re all living out of the same bank account if you think about it in terms of the wealth of the region in that regard. So land planning, urban growth, traffic, transportation, housing, all of those success curves, progress oriented things, you have to play water into that, you have to play the environment into that, open space, all of those things are important issues as we have to deal with more than just the simple business of recruiting another company to town.’’69 Jesse White, director of UNC–Chapel Hill’s Office of Economic and Business Development, defined the issue succinctly: ‘‘The RTP area’s biggest challenge is the growth management challenge. We have to avoid being strangled by our own success.’’70 Before Interstate 40 was widened through the Triangle, traffic congestion affected business decisions to relocate. Liz Rooks, executive vice president of the Research Triangle Foundation, observed: ‘‘I think we do have to be careful about our quality of life because that’s one of the things that enable us to recruit so well. And certainly when the traffic got so bad in the late ’90s that affected our ability to recruit.’’71 Triangle leaders often point to the Atlanta area’s sprawl and congestion as characteristics that need to be avoided here. Others are particularly concerned about the education of Triangle residents. Although the public schools in the area are generally good, the dropout rates are quite high. According to Hayes, ‘‘The biggest challenge we have is pre-K to K12 education. What we’re going to rise or fall on is our people. We don’t really have

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other assets. Geographic location is somewhat of an asset, but that’s it. Depending on the figures you look at, somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of kids are dropping out of high school. So let’s make the assumption that a third is the correct number. Think about that. We are going to have a third of our population that’s unemployable. So what does that do to a region, particularly one that’s based on the knowledge worker?’’72 At least some parts of the metropolitan area are having great difficulty keeping up with school construction, and this is affecting the quality of education provided to area students. A final challenge to the growth and prosperity of the Triangle area concerns metropolitan leadership. A small number of businessmen who grew up in the area including Smedes York, Jim Goodmon, and Rodger Perry have been actively advocating regional cooperation but more recent arrivals have not been nearly as active. Many of those interviewed were concerned about the limited number of local leaders who think in terms of the economic health of the whole metropolitan area. Pam Wall expressed this concern: ‘‘I think one of our biggest challenges is leadership. . . . There is a handful of names that come to the top of the list of people who pay the bills, that have sponsored things and take leadership on projects, to push ideas, to push the next best thing, and they are old family names that you hear over and over. You could click them off on one hand.’’73 The diversity and unique histories of the cities and towns within the Triangle metropolitan area show that people may strongly identify with their town or neighborhood rather than with the metropolitan area as a whole. Thus, developing a new cadre of regional leaders has been challenging. Wall continued: ‘‘The creative class people chose where they want to live because . . . it’s a hip place, it’s scenic or eclectic. They get embedded in say Durham, let’s say Ninth Street, or in Carrboro or Pittsboro. . . . They get enmeshed right there and they have no buy-in to this

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whole place as a region. . . . We need to reach out to those people to make them understand that we need them. They are great assets to regionalism in many ways. We need their voices.’’74 The lack of corporate headquarters, and the transience of the top executives of Triangle companies, also poses challenges to metropolitan leadership. The Triangle may boast about the presence of major companies like IBM and GlaxoSmithKline, but these companies are based elsewhere. Local company management is less likely to assume leadership roles because moving around comes with climbing the corporate ladder. Hayes noted this problem: ‘‘The challenge is that everything churns so quickly. . . . What we are seeing is that some of our leading executives were changing. They were just coming in as president or CEO. They didn’t have a history. . . . They come in and they’re here for awhile and they’re gone.’’75 This has also been true of many chief executives in the nonprofit sector, such as the chancellors of the area’s universities.76

TACKLING THE CHALLENGES Interviews with Triangle economic development professionals make it clear that they are well aware of the challenges discussed above, and they are working hard to address them. Rick Weddle, for example, suggests, ‘‘We won’t be allowed to just be happy because we are ahead of most of the rest of the folks in the U.S. . . . A pincer movement is challenging us from above and threatening us from below.’’77 Those above may be Silicon Valley and Boston; below, areas elsewhere that are emerging to challenge the Research Triangle’s position. Beyond its business recruitment efforts discussed earlier, the RTRP has played a crucial role in assessing the area’s economic strengths and weaknesses, and in developing strategies and

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blueprints for remaining competitive. The partnership has commissioned or produced a series of reports addressing the evolution of industry clusters, the Triangle area’s competitive advantages, and the targeting of specific industry clusters to be strengthened or developed. In 1999 and 2003, for example, the RTRP and the Biotechnology Center studied the needs and contributions of the local biotech industry and offered specific recommendations for supporting its growth, including increasing venture capital availability, expanding the skilled workforce, and expanding university and hospital roles in technology transfer.78 The RTRP also invited a team of economic development experts led by Harvard’s Michael Porter to study ‘‘clusters of innovation’’ in the area. Clusters are ‘‘interconnected business and support organizations in a specific industry.’’79 Porter’s study identified fourteen local industry clusters and recommended that area leaders work to keep the well-developed clusters, further develop several other clusters—including analytic instruments, medical devices, and chemicals—and develop new hybrid clusters in environmental sciences, biotechnology, and information technology.80 The Porter report also called for an expansion of economic development activities to the more rural counties beyond the urban core. Following up on Porter’s report and several other local economic studies, the RTRP convened a thirty-seven-member task force of representatives from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to develop an ‘‘action blueprint’’ for remaining economically competitive.81 Released in 2004, Staying on Top: Winning the Job Wars of the Future offered a vision of the area as ‘‘a world leader in intellectual capacity, education and innovation, to enhance productivity and economic growth and achieve a superior quality of life for all our citizens.’’82 This report also offered a fiveyear, $5 million action agenda to create a hundred thousand new

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jobs in the region. More specifically, the plan called for over seventy ‘‘institutional partners’’ to pursue five strategies: • Promote the growth of industry clusters where the region has a competitive advantage. • Use a balanced approach of targeted recruitment, global branding, business creation, and existing business retention. • Integrate higher education into economic development efforts. • Develop creative, inclusive approaches to rural prosperity. • Create agile leadership networks to respond to market challenges, changes, and opportunities.83 This plan also targeted ten industry clusters for special consideration, and offered thirty action items to maintain and enhance the area’s competitiveness. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Commerce recognized the Staying on Top initiative as the country’s premier regional economic development strategy in the country. Since Staying on Top’s publication, the RTRP, in partnership with other groups, has convened yearly State of the Research Triangle Region meetings, and produced yearly reports to update and assess the progress made in implementing the report’s action items. In 2009, the RTRP—in collaboration with the Southern Growth Policies Board, the North Carolina Small Business and Technology Development Center, and a fifty-six-member steering committee—produced a new five-year plan, The Shape of Things to Come. That plan suggests that two valuable lessons have been learned over the previous five years: ‘‘First, clusters and companies designated as being in a specific cluster, are not unique. Many of the targeted clusters overlap, and cluster membership morphs from product to product and among applications. The interaction between clusters is a competitive strength and a source of innovation, and must be encouraged. Second, the region has

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opportunities to compete in emerging clusters and even in areas that do not constitute a single cluster. As regional companies innovate, they transfer existing skills into new products.’’84 The 2009 plan identifies three new emerging cluster opportunities: advanced gaming and e-learning, clean and green technologies, and defense technologies. The plan also lays out measures of success, including traditional business indicators such as employment growth and tax base growth. But these also include quality-of-life indicators, such as the poverty rate and high school graduation rates. Through these studies and plans, local economic leaders are addressing both the challenge of industrial evolution and increasing competition from other areas of the country and the world.85 Triangle economic development leaders have long understood the implicit connection between quality-of-life issues—cost of living, ease of transportation, and community open space—and the area’s continued growth and prosperity. In 1992 the Triangle J Council of Governments held the second of three World Class Region conferences, designed to bring local leaders together to discuss the Triangle’s future. Conference participants identified the need for a think tank to focus on regional quality-of-life issues. Based on this recommendation, key civic leaders created the Greater Triangle Regional Council (GTRC) to identify specific issues, producing white papers and developing action plans to address them.86 The council, composed of local business, government, and nonprofit leaders, met quarterly with staff support provided by the Triangle J Council of Governments. It developed a membership base from which it raised most of its operating budget. From its inception the GTRC relied on staff support from the Triangle J Council of Governments. In 2000, however, the council decided to hire its own executive director. Then, in 2005, the GTRC developed a partnership with the RTRP and changed its

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name to Triangle Tomorrow. Technically Triangle Tomorrow is a program of the RTRP’s, but the executive director of Triangle Tomorrow reports to her own board, the organization has its own office space, and it raises and controls its own funds. Triangle Tomorrow sees itself as complementing the more focused economic development work of the RTRP. As Wall noted, ‘‘If you want to grow or bring businesses to your region and you’re not walking the walk . . . about quality-of-life issues, no one will want to come.’’87 In more recent years, Triangle Tomorrow has focused on a range of quality-of-life issues, including educational leadership, air quality, and sustainable growth.88 In 2009, Triangle Tomorrow even sponsored Reality Check, a regional land-use planning exercise developed by the Urban Land Institute. In addition to Triangle Tomorrow and the Triangle J Council of Governments, the Triangle Community Foundation plays an important role in addressing regional quality-of-life issues. Founded in 1983, the foundation ‘‘connects philanthropic resources with community needs’’ in Wake, Durham, Orange, and Chatham Counties.89 As of 2008, the foundation managed approximately $140 million in funds created by individuals and organizations, most with active donor involvement. The open competitive grant-making program focuses on two topics: civic engagement and youth leadership and development. In 2008, the foundation awarded a total of $13 million in grants.

CONCLUSION The economic recession beginning in 2008 has clearly slowed the Triangle’s economic growth. Yet a combined relatively high percentage of government and university employment and a relatively high quality of life have meant that this region has not been affected as badly as many others. Triangle area unemployment

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has risen but less than in the state as a whole. Moreover, a significant share of that increase represents people moving to the area to look for work. In 2008, the Triangle area actually gained about eight thousand jobs.90 The area’s future economy looks bright. Local universities are likely to continue developing new knowledge and transferring that knowledge to new and existing businesses. As the universities were critically important in attracting IBM and other foundational companies to the region, they will continue to be magnets and generators of economic development. The critical mass of local technology companies and knowledge workers also provides a strong foundation to build upon. The challenge will be to identify emerging industries and to position the Triangle to capture a substantial portion of these. The history of public and civic support for the development of intentional infrastructure designed to recruit selected industries to the area and support their development also bodes well for the area’s economic future. From the creation of the RTP to the development of the MCNC, the Biotechnology Center, and NC IDEA, public and civic leaders in the state and region have been willing to invest in organizational and educational infrastructure that has helped lure or create businesses in emerging knowledgebased industries. The area will be best served if this tradition continues. A final reason the Triangle’s economy is likely to continue to grow and prosper is that local economic developers understand the danger of complacency, and are working hard to ensure that the area continues to be attractive to both employers and employees. They are not dwelling on past successes; rather, they are focusing on the future. They are continuously assessing changes in the national and international economy and considering what needs to be done to position the Triangle to react to them.

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Possibly the biggest threats to the Triangle’s economy are the erosion of the area’s quality of life, and the lack of metropolitanwide organizations or collaborations with sufficient influence to address those threats. The area’s quality of life is threatened by poorly controlled growth and traffic congestion, air pollution, loss of open space, lack of water, crowded schools, and other problems. Worsening of these problems may result in businesses and knowledge workers choosing to work and live elsewhere. Studying these problems will not be enough; organizations with the influence to actually do something about these looming issues are needed.

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Urban Development and Planning The Research Triangle metro area has two distinct physical characteristics. First, most metro areas have at their cores high-rise office and residential towers, public buildings such as courthouses and city halls, major theaters, and retail shopping opportunities. The core of the Research Triangle metro, however, is mostly open space. It is made up of a state park, an airport, and a collection of low-rise office buildings inhabited by research and development firms, hidden behind trees on large campuses. This low-density, monoculture of uses in the heart of the metro has its advantages but it also poses significant challenges in terms of serving the area with public transit and creating the type of mixed-use development that helps to reduce commuting and its related problems of congestion, air pollution, and cost burdens. Second, the development pattern of the Research Triangle metro area is one of the most sprawling in the country. The area is characterized by low-density development, a separation of land uses—such as homes and offices—poor connectivity of streets, and dispersed activity centers. This chapter will discuss these distinctive characteristics of the Triangle and the challenges they present. It will also describe the actions being taken to address those challenges as well as the obstacles to doing more to maintain the area’s high quality of life.

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THE TRIANGLE’S DISTINCT D E V E L O P M E N T PAT T E R N The distinct physical characteristics of the Research Triangle metro have been influenced by both historical and geological factors. As discussed in Chapter 1, the three towns that define the Research Triangle have very different histories and reasons for being. Raleigh was developed as a state capital, Chapel Hill as a university town, and Durham as a center of manufacturing. The area between the three major towns was largely farmland and forests with scattered hamlets such as Cary and Morrisville. Thus, the middle of what is now the Research Triangle metro area was largely, from a development point of view, hollow. It was the outskirts of all three cities and thus it was a logical place to put a five-thousand-acre airport, a six-thousand-acre state park and, later on, the seven-thousand-acre Research Triangle Park. At the time those development decisions were made, no one envisioned this hollow area between the three towns as the center of a future large metropolitan area. Moreover, those early decisions have had staying power. The idea of swapping more peripheral land for William B. Umstead State Park was proposed in the 1970s as it stood in the way of Raleigh’s westward expansion toward the RTP. Open-space advocates mobilized in defense of the park, however, and this proposal was summarily rejected. The relocation of RDU Airport is very unlikely, given its convenience and the cost of replicating the infrastructure. Finally, although it is conceivable that some parts of Research Triangle Park could be redeveloped into an area of higher density and mixed use, most of it will likely retain its lowdensity campus character due to existing building investments and the desires of its landowners. Thus, it is very unlikely that the Triangle will ever be structured like most other metropolitan areas where the highest densities and most intensive uses are

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found in the centers. The Research Triangle metro area’s largely low-density core, for better or worse, will remain a distinctive characteristic of the area’s spatial structure. This is not to say that there are no opportunities for creating higher-density areas in the Triangle’s core. In fact the gravitational pull of the RTP has drawn development toward it, distorting what would have likely been a more conventional suburban development pattern around the individual towns. If we examine the pattern of urbanization from 1950 through 2000 and a projection for the year 2035,1 maps for 1970 and 2000 show evidence of urbanization on the sides of Durham and Raleigh closer to the RTP. (The southwest corner of the park abuts Jordan Lake watershed lands and thus it has development restrictions.) The main reason it took so long for urbanization to reach the eastern side of the RTP was the lack of available water and sewer services. The originally developed section of the RTP relies on Durham County’s water and sewer system so trunk lines were extended to the west side of the park. Other developers could then tap into those lines. No such lines, however, were run from Raleigh. The lines on that side of the park were extended bit by bit as development moved westward. It was not until the late 1990s that Cary’s water and sewer lines reached the eastern edge of the RTP. With the availability of water and sewer, the privately held land around the RTP is being developed at much higher densities. An analysis of development conducted in 2007 by the Research Triangle Foundation indicates that a total of forty thousand units of housing and 13 million square feet of commercial space have been developed within a four-mile radius of the RTP.2 Historical and geological factors also account for another distinct feature of the Research Triangle’s development pattern: urban sprawl. The agrarian roots of the early populace of the three towns, combined with the low wages paid by manufacturers, meant that many town residents wanted lots large enough

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Figure 30. Urbanized areas of the Triangle in 1950 (top left), 1980 (top right), and 2000 (bottom left) with a forecast for 2035 (bottom right) (courtesy of the Triangle J Council of Governments).

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to have substantial gardens. Raleigh’s original plan, for example, contained one-acre lots and Chapel Hill’s plan contained two- to four-acre lots. Moreover, the fact that the Research Triangle area has no natural geological constraints, such as mountains or large bodies of water, helped keep land prices low, which allowed people to afford larger lots. Low-density development was also favored because the area’s soils are rich in clay and not well suited to onsite septic systems. Building lots not served by sewer systems had to be large in order to accommodate both the initial septic systems and ‘‘repair areas.’’ Thus, for most of its history low-density development has been the norm in the Research Triangle. Taken together these historical factors have resulted in a development pattern that might be considered a poster child for urban sprawl. A 2003 analysis of sprawl in eighty-three metropolitan areas across the country found that the Raleigh-Durham MSA was the third most sprawling metro area, behind Riverside–San Bernardino, California, and Greensboro.3 This ranking was based on the combination of four indicators of sprawl: residential density; the mix of homes, jobs, and services; the strength of activity centers; and the accessibility of street networks. The Raleigh-Durham area ranked lowest on the mix of homes, jobs, and services (remember that the RTP has no homes and little in the way of services), and it ranked third lowest in the measure of residential density. The Raleigh-Durham area ranked the sixteenth lowest on the strength of activity centers and the twenty-second lowest on the accessibility of street networks. It is not surprising then that some have begun to refer to Raleigh as ‘‘Sprawleigh.’’4 Sprawl combined with lack of attention to amenities for pedestrians has resulted in the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area being ranked as the sixth most dangerous for pedestrians among the country’s fifty-two largest metropolitan areas.5 The Research Triangle area’s historic low-density, sprawling development pattern has continued in recent years as land prices

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have remained relatively inexpensive and residential developers have largely catered to upper-income households interested in purchasing single-family homes in traditional residential neighborhoods. The total number of building permits issued in the Triangle increased steadily from approximately 6,000 in 1990 to a high of over 18,000 in 2005 before the recession slowed construction in the area.6 During the 1990s the total number of multifamily building permits issued in the seven Triangle counties increased from under 100 to a high of 427, or approximately 3 percent of all approved permits.7 During the 2000s, however, this modest number fell. In 2005, for example, 99.2 percent of all residential building permits were for single-family homes. Moreover the lion’s share of those homes was built in subdivisions that were 100 percent residential. Sprawling development patterns have been associated with a variety of urban problems.8 First, low-density development patterns necessitate a heavy reliance on automobiles to access employment and shopping opportunities and, at the same time, make public transportation less feasible. The heavy reliance on autos, in turn, adds to both air and water pollution and to the generation of greenhouse gasses. It also leads to traffic congestion as major arterials become overcrowded, and to reduced physical activity, such as walking or bicycling, which, in turn, contributes to obesity and its related health problems. Sprawl has also been associated with the loss of open space, including agricultural land and important wildlife habitat, while at the same time drawing people and investment out of central city areas which furthers social divisions and results in inefficient use of public infrastructure. Research has also found that traditional sprawling suburban development is ‘‘costly to create and costly to maintain.’’9 Finally, sprawling development has been criticized for being aesthetically unpleasing and for undermining the sense of community and psychological health of area residents.

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The negative impact of the Triangle’s sprawling development pattern has not been lost on the area’s planners, politicians, and conservationists. Since 2000 they have pursued several strategies for containing it including the promotion of higher density, mixed-use activity centers, open-space preservation, downtown revitalization, and the development of a commuter rail system.

HIGH-DENSITY MIXED-USE ACTIVITY CENTERS In recent years, the Triangle’s major municipalities have been promoting higher density, mixed-use activity centers by revising their comprehensive plans. The City of Raleigh, for example, undertook a two-and-one-half year planning process beginning in 2007 to aid in the transition ‘‘from Mayberry to Metro.’’10 This process resulted in the 2009 adoption of a new comprehensive plan for the city, which seeks to transform its development pattern from one characterized by sprawl to one characterized by high-density, mixed-use nodes along transit corridors. Anticipating both high speed-intercity and regional rail and bus service, the plan calls for a multimodal transit center in downtown Raleigh. It also calls for eleven transit-oriented development nodes around the anticipated stations of the fixed guideway transit systems. These nodes are designated for high-density residential development (twentyeight dwelling units per acre), neighborhood mixed-use development (forty dwelling units per acre along with neighborhood-oriented commercial development), and community mixed-use development (seventy dwelling units per acre along with community retail, office space, hotels, and theaters). These densities are substantially higher than what was allowed under the old plan and development ordinance. For its part, the City of Durham adopted a new comprehensive plan in 2005 designed to encourage mixed-use development;

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promote the use of transit, walking, and biking; discourage autointensive uses; and provide an ‘‘enhanced street level experience.’’11 The plan defines five development tiers: rural, suburban, urban, compact neighborhood, and downtown. The compact neighborhood tier is intended for areas around the proposed regional transit stations and along major arterial roads. It allows mixed-use development and densities as high as 60 dwelling units per acre. The downtown tier allows for densities as high as 150 dwelling units per acre. Even Cary, which has been characterized as the archetype of a low-density, sprawling town, has taken measures to create higher-density, mixed-use areas. The town’s land-use plan calls for eighteen neighborhoods, thirteen communities, and four regional mixed-use activity centers located along current and proposed thoroughfares and transit corridors. The town has also committed to capping the number of lanes on its thoroughfares and collector streets as a means of maintaining community character.12 Another way some Triangle communities have been addressing the urban sprawl is by promoting neotraditional developments characterized by a mix of uses, moderate to high densities, a commercial core, homes with front porches or balconies, and access to mass transit.13 As of 2010 there were more than a dozen neotraditional communities in the Triangle including Carpenter Village in Cary, Meadowmont in Chapel Hill, Bedford at Falls River in Raleigh, and the Green at Scotts Mill in Apex. Southern Village in Chapel Hill is a good example of a neotraditional neighborhood. The original idea came out of the Southern Small Area Plan, developed by a task force composed of area residents and members of the Chapel Hill Planning Board between 1989 and 1992.14 At that time large sections of the southern portion of Chapel Hill were either undeveloped or sparsely developed. The area has many steep slopes and is adjacent to Morgan Creek, which flows into Jordan Lake. In developing a plan for the { 186 }

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area, the task force sought to avoid suburban sprawl, preserve the environmentally sensitive areas, and promote the use of public transit. Its proposed plan called for large-lot zoning for much of the area, while concentrating development in a mixed-use village on a 312-acre site under single ownership. Soon after this plan was adopted by the Chapel Hill Town Council, developers D. R. Bryan and Jim Earnhardt purchased the site and designed a neotraditional village around a village green and central core of commercial and civic properties. The downtown area includes a movie theater, restaurants, retail shops, office space, a church, and an elementary school. The central green is used for live entertainment, including a yearly appearance by the North Carolina Symphony, a weekly farmers’ market, and other community gatherings. There was initial concern that the commercial core would not do well since it is located off the main highway, but the movie theater, Weaver Street Market, and several popular restaurants have made Southern Village a destination not only for local residents but for others in the broader community. The remainder of the developed area of Southern Village is composed of 1,150 residential units including 250 apartments, 230 condominium units, 140 townhouses, and 530 single-family homes on small lots. The village also has ninety-two acres of open space, park land, and greenways. The area is served by Chapel Hill Transit, which offers free bus service throughout the town. Judging by the completed construction after eleven years, this development is quite a success, although some have criticized it for not being built densely enough to absorb potential growth in the surrounding areas. The overall density is only 3.7 units per acre.15

L A N D P R E S E R VAT I O N I N T H E TRIANGLE Between 1997 and 2002, more than fourteen thousand acres of open space was developed each year in the Triangle.16 Thus, it is u r b a n

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not surprising that many area residents have become concerned about the loss of open space. Residents are concerned that ‘‘many of the region’s special places are rapidly disappearing, along with the essential green infrastructure upon which Triangle residents depend for their health and quality of life.’’17 One of the manifestations of the concern over the loss of open space was the creation of the Triangle Land Conservancy (TLC) in 1983. The TLC’s mission is to protect important open space in five of the seven counties that make up the Research Triangle metro area (Franklin and Person Counties are not included, while Lee County is). It does this by identifying the most critical forests, farms, and natural areas in the area and either purchasing them outright or negotiating conservation agreements. It also manages much of the land it protects.18 TLC has identified forty-five thousand acres of what it considers critical land for preservation and, as of 2009, it had preserved eleven thousand acres or about onequarter of the total. The designation of critical land for preservation is based on its importance in maintaining clean water, supporting wildlife, preserving local farms, and connecting people to nature. Much of the funding for land purchases has come from North Carolina’s Clean Water Fund, with other support coming from foundations and individual donations. Concern for open-space preservation also led to the Triangle GreenPrint Project. Sponsored by the Triangle J Council of Governments, the TLC, and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the GreenPrint Project brought together more than 140 ‘‘green space experts’’ from the area to identify the most important land to preserve for parks and greenways, native plant and animal habitat, water quality protection, and historic heritage and farmland preservation. These experts identified about 486,000 acres of land in the Triangle with particularly important greenspace value. Much of that land abuts the major streams and rivers in the Triangle that supply water to Triangle and downstream

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Figure 32. Lower Haw River State Natural Area, a thousand-acre parcel acquired by the state with assistance from the Triangle Land Conservancy (courtesy of Triangle Land Conservancy).

communities. Of that total, a more manageable 158,000 acres was identified as a ‘‘backbone’’ that could ‘‘establish a linked network of green space throughout the region.’’19 An analysis of the land preservation trends in the Triangle suggests that the current rate of land preservation would have to be doubled in order to preserve this backbone over the next twenty years.20 In addition to the preservation efforts of the TLC, many of the Triangle’s counties and towns have adopted regulations designed to preserve open space. The results of a survey of growth controls and land-preservation practices adopted by the area’s counties and larger municipalities show that all of them have adopted regulations protecting stream corridors and all but three permit or require cluster zoning that allows developers to increase development densities on a portion of a site in order to leave the other portion of the site in its natural state. All of the municipalities

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require the developers of residential properties to dedicate land, or make a payment in lieu, for recreation. All but four jurisdictions also reported having purchased land for recreation within the past six years.

D O W N T O W N R E V I TA L I Z AT I O N Another strategy for containing sprawl is to revitalize downtown areas such that they attract businesses and households that would otherwise settle on the periphery of urbanized areas. Given the rapid growth and development of the Triangle over the last several decades, it is easy to overlook the declines that have taken place in many of the area’s downtowns. Unfortunately, the Triangle has not been immune to forces that have spurred the out-migration of both people and businesses from downtowns to their suburbs. This was certainly the case in both Durham and Raleigh from the 1960s to the 1990s. In recent years, however, the public and private sectors in both those cities have been actively pursuing downtown revitalization and they have made significant progress bringing their downtowns back to life, drawing both businesses and residents.

THE FALL AND RISE OF DOWNTOWN DURHAM As in many American cities, the decline of downtown Durham began in the 1950s as people, with the aid of federal programs such as the Federal Housing Administration, began to favor living in new, single-family suburbs rather than in the central cities. Shopping centers and later malls sprung up to serve the retail needs of these new suburbanites. Forest Hills Shopping Center was Durham’s first, opening south of town in 1955. Shortly after, Lakewood Shopping Center opened southwest of town and in

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1960 Northgate Shopping Center, later converted to an indoor mall, opened on the north side of town. This dispersion of retail businesses continued with the opening of South Square Mall in the early 1970s. As discussed in Chapter 1, Durham’s main industries were tobacco and textiles. In the early 1970s many of the textile mills in and around the downtown closed as companies either went out of business or moved oversees to take advantage of less expensive labor. Then, starting in the 1980s, the tobacco industry began to leave town. American Tobacco shut down its operations in the city in 1987, vacating its million-square-foot cigarette manufacturing complex on the south side of downtown. Then in 2000 Liggett & Myers moved out of the city, vacating other large manufacturing and warehouse buildings on the west side of downtown. The sweet smell of curing tobacco that once hung over downtown was gone. Another important contributor to the decline of downtown Durham was the ring of dilapidated homes encircling it. Most of those homes were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s for mill workers and had been poorly maintained over the years. These homes were described in a 1966 newspaper article: ‘‘To get from Durham’s Main Street to some of the most attractive parts of the city it was necessary to drive through a jumble of grimy houses, many falling down, and many streets that were merely paths. Within the area south of Main Street were 1,900 structures of all types. Of these 1,720 were blighted.’’21 This ring of blight left visitors with a highly negative impression of downtown and contributed to a sense that it was unsafe. Finally, traffic congestion due to the unplanned, ‘‘medieval warren’’ of downtown streets discouraged people from patronizing downtown retail stores.22 As discussed in Chapter 1, unlike neighboring Chapel Hill and Raleigh, downtown Durham grew piecemeal, without a formal plan. Its streets were very narrow and

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through traffic competed with local traffic on the poorly planned roadways. The Five Points intersection was a particular nightmare for drivers. Misguided Strategies

In the late 1950s Durham’s public and private leaders decided to take bold action to reverse the declining fortunes of their downtown. Their two-pronged strategy was, first, to improve access to downtown and, second, to remove the worst of the blighted housing surrounding it. The main access improvements included a new east-west freeway that would eventually connect Interstates 40 and 85, passing just south of downtown. This was to make it easier to get in and out of downtown and to link it to the newly created Research Triangle Park. Phase one of the east-west freeway—now called the Durham Freeway—ran from downtown east to I-40. It was begun by the state DOT in 1967 and opened in 1970. The second project designed to improve access was a ring road—the now-infamous Loop—that circled downtown. This idea, first presented in the 1960 Downtown Development Plan, was designed to reduce congestion by allowing through traffic to bypass downtown. The two-lane, one-way Loop was constructed in the late 1960s. Although there is some disagreement as to the impact of the Durham Freeway on the health of downtown, it is hard to find anyone who thinks the Loop helped. In fact, most consider it a disaster. Jim Wise comments that the Loop ‘‘further surrounded the inner-city warren with a confusing and frustrating one-way [road] that served more as moat than thoroughfare.’’23 A local developer has described it as ‘‘a noose rather than a loop.’’24 In addition, building the Loop required razing Union Station, which today would be considered an architectural gem. A second set of downtown renewal strategies focused on removing both the dilapidated housing surrounding downtown and

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part of downtown itself. Beginning in the late 1950s, with the help of federal funding the city pursued an aggressive urban renewal agenda. In a phased strategy the worst of the dilapidated neighborhoods were razed while new public housing developments were constructed to house displaced families. The black business district, called Hayti, located on the south side of downtown was also demolished and its businesses relocated to other areas where most quickly failed.25 Over the years a variety of attempts have been made to redevelop Hayti but all have ended in failure. The destruction of Hayti sowed great mistrust of renewal strategies among Durham’s African American population. As Wise notes, urban renewal’s legacy was ‘‘a wealth of vacant lots and bad will.’’26 Small Successes

During the 1970s and 1980s public and private leaders continued their efforts to turn the tide of downtown decline. The city and county constructed new buildings downtown including a new city hall, a new judicial building, and a new public library. In 1977 the Historic Preservation Society of Durham was successful in having most of the downtown designated as a federally recognized historic district, thus qualifying properties for historic-preservation tax credits. This was crucial in promoting the adaptive reuse of Durham’s vacant textile and tobacco factories. One of the first such projects was the conversion in the early 1980s of two tobacco warehouses located west of downtown into Brightleaf Square, a combination of shops, restaurants, and second-floor offices. Several years later, the West Village project turned another set of warehouses into 240 loft-style rental units, and thirty-six thousand square feet of retail space. This project single-handedly raised the residential population of downtown Durham from 180 to 560.

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For its part, the City of Durham bought and renovated the historic Carolina Theater and the adjacent civic center, which is used by the Durham Arts Council for a variety of exhibitions and performances. Meanwhile, the city developed plans to build a new civic center and hotel on an adjacent site. The voters approved a bond referendum for this project in 1982 and the center opened for business in 1989. The first new office tower in decades was built at this time across the street from the Carolina Theater and the new Civic Center.27 In 1989 the city released a Downtown Durham Revitalization Plan, which was developed with substantial public input, calling for the expansion of rental housing, creating a set of distinct districts, making parking improvements, building a new central park, enhancing the streetscape, and creating a downtown development organization.28 This last recommendation was realized in 1993 when Downtown Durham Inc. (DDI) was incorporated as a 501(c) 6 nonprofit organization. With funding from both the public and private sectors, DDI’s mission is ‘‘to serve as a catalyst for downtown revitalization.’’29 Since its creation DDI has garnered public and private support for the revitalization of the downtown, defined as a .751-square-mile area including the traditional central business district plus the surrounding commercial and industrial properties. An event of particular importance to the revitalization of downtown Durham was the reactivation of the Durham Bulls baseball team franchise in 1980. The class A Durham Bulls had not played a game since 1968, when the Bulls merged with a Raleigh team to form the Raleigh-Durham Mets, which played half their games in Durham Athletic Park and half in Raleigh. The Mets owner suspended play before the 1972 season, and no professional baseball was played in Durham for the remainder of the decade.30 In 1980 new team owner Miles Wolff decided to give it another try with games being played in the old Durham Athletic Park just

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north of downtown. The resurrected team was an immediate success and provided another reason to come to downtown Durham. In spite of these individual projects, however, ‘‘downtown remained a realm of vacant storefronts and plywood-faced windows.’’31 They were not enough to change the negative image that most people had of downtown Durham.

The Turning Point

The turning point for the revitalization of downtown Durham came in the early 1990s when the city agreed to build a new baseball park for the Durham Bulls. The popularity of the Durham Bulls baseball team shot up after the 1988 release of the movie Bull Durham starring Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon, which was filmed in and around the 1939 Durham Athletic Park. Wanting to capitalize on this popularity, team owner Miles Wolff asked the city to build a new baseball stadium with a capacity of ten thousand to twelve thousand seats to help him recruit a Triple-A—highest minor league level—baseball franchise. During those discussions, Jim Goodmon, CEO of Capitol Broadcasting, secured an option to buy the team with the intention of moving it to a new Triangle sports complex that he envisioned building between Raleigh and Durham, close to the RDU airport. The prospect of their iconic Durham Bulls moving out of downtown Durham was of great concern to local leaders. The city responded by offering to build a new ballpark downtown but the original financing strategy relied on general obligation bonds that required a referendum, which failed by a slim margin.32 Undeterred the city gained state approval to use certificates of participation that did not require public approval. Goodmon then dropped his idea for a new sports center in favor of having the Bulls play in a new $16 million, ten-thousand-seat stadium to be

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built just south of the central business district, adjacent to the then-vacant American Tobacco complex. The new stadium, which opened in 1995, was designed by the Freelon Group, based in Research Triangle Park, and HOK Sports Facilities Group, the same architecture firm that designed Camden Yards in Baltimore and Coors Field in Denver. Three years later Goodmon was successful in securing a Triple-A franchise, which further increased the team’s popularity and attendance. Throughout the 2000s over half a million fans a year have come to watch the Bulls play baseball. Building on the popularity of the Durham Bulls, Goodmon continued investing in the immediate area by building the Diamond View I Office Building behind the right field seats and the Diamond View II Building behind the center field seats. Gathering a Head of Steam

In response to the advocacy of both DDI and the city’s office of Economic and Employment Development, the city and DDI hired a consultant to create a new economic-development-based Downtown Durham Master Plan.33 Completed in 1999, that plan called for converting the Loop to two-way traffic, creating better linkages between the area within and outside the Loop, creating a new central park, developing a multimodal transportation center, and revitalizing the vacant American Tobacco complex. To fund many of these proposed projects the city created a Downtown Revitalization Fund capitalized by general tax revenues. The city sets aside one cent of the tax rate for downtown projects. It has also provided a variety of grants, low-interest loans, and tax incentives to recruit new and expand existing downtown businesses. In the same year the new downtown plan was released, Jim Goodmon purchased an option on the million-square-foot American Tobacco complex located just south of the Loop and west of

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the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.34 After fits and starts in securing financing for the first phase of the project, he turned the complex into a mix of office space, retail, and restaurants. This was the largest historic renovation project in the history of North Carolina. The largest leaseholders are Duke University and the marketing firm McKinney, which moved to American Tobacco from Raleigh. The city and county governments invested $43 million in the construction of two new parking decks to support this and future development in the area, while the private sector invested about $200 million in the project. Several years later, the second and third phases of the project converted other buildings in the complex into condominiums and additional office space. The American Tobacco complex, with its restaurants, historic architecture, man-made river flowing 130 yards down the old rail line that ran between the two main buildings, and concerts underneath the restored Lucky Strike water tower, has become a major destination for people in the metropolitan area. Bill Kalkoff, president of Downtown Durham Inc., considers American Tobacco to be ‘‘the first significant public private partnership in Durham and the key for all future projects.’’35 About the time the renovations were begun on the American Tobacco complex, plans were floated for the city to build a performing arts center just north of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. This project met initial resistance from some residents and owners of small businesses within the Loop who felt that their interests were being ignored in favor of large, new, corporately owned projects in the American Tobacco District. The Arts and Business Coalition of Downtown was created to advocate for these interests and it lobbied hard to have a smaller performing arts center built on a site within the Loop. The city, however, decided on the bigger venue in the American Tobacco district. Thus, in 2006 the city broke ground on a theater seating twenty-eight hundred and contracted with Nederlander Productions to book a variety of

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Tobacco Campus contains a mix of offices, shops, and restaurants (courtesy of American Tobacco).

Figure 33. The American Tobacco Campus and the Durham Bulls Athletic Park are centerpieces of Durham’s American Tobacco Historic District. The American

national touring music and theater productions. The Durham Performing Arts Center opened in 2008 and offers approximately 120 shows per year.36 It sold out 25 shows during its first six months and its success has led Raleigh’s Broadway South Series to cede ‘‘most high profile touring Broadway shows to the Durham Performing Arts Center.’’37 Building on the success of the American Tobacco District projects, the city turned its attention to other areas in and around downtown. Within the Loop, the city undertook a $16 million street improvement program that involved the realignment of north-south streets, the restoration of two-way traffic on the major east-west streets, a new central plaza, sidewalk widening, and new landscaping and lighting. On the north side of the Loop, the city and a new nonprofit organization created by DDI also developed the new five-acre Central Park, which contains a permanent facility for the Durham Farmers’ Market, an amphitheater, and other amenities. The city has also refurbished the original Durham Athletic Park, which is now the home field to the North Carolina Central University baseball team. To support public transit the city built the Durham Transportation Center, a $15 million, 11,000-square-foot bus and taxi center just west of the Loop, and a new Durham Train Station in the historic West Village development just across the street. The train station supports the current Amtrak service and would support the proposed regional rail system. Future plans call for a sky bridge to connect the bus and train stations. With the success of the projects in the American Tobacco district and the additional public investments in other parts of the downtown, private-sector investment is increasing in and around the Loop. Within the Loop numerous new restaurants, retail shops, and a 150-room hotel recently have opened. In the Brightleaf area just west of the Loop, West Village II is adding an additional 375 residential units, 164,000 square feet of office, and

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58,000 square feet of retail space in renovated tobacco warehouses. East of the Loop, Scientific Properties transformed one of Julian Carr’s original textile factories—Golden Belt—into artist studios, residential lofts, retail shops, and performance space. A new ‘‘Bull City Connector’’ free circulator bus that links many of these developments was introduced in the summer of 2010. As the economy picks up and with many more projects on the drawing board, the revitalization of downtown Durham will likely continue. The biggest challenge may be to establish a healthy retail sector downtown. A 2010 retail market study indicates that of 122 ground-level retail stores within the Loop, 39 were occupied by retail establishments, while the other 83 were either vacant or dedicated to nonretail use. According to the study’s authors, ‘‘Existing retailers are essentially marooned in a sea of vacancies.’’38 Development of more downtown housing will certainly help create additional demand for retail.

THE DEMALLING OF DOWNTOWN RALEIGH Like Durham, downtown Raleigh was affected, first negatively then positively, by larger social forces. After World War II both new and existing residents began moving to the outskirts of Raleigh and retail and other businesses followed. Cameron Village, Raleigh’s first shopping center, was opened in 1949, and North Hills Mall, Raleigh’s first enclosed mall, was opened in 1960. Being home to the state, county, and city governments, however, downtown Raleigh had both a location-based asset and a large, captive workforce that, first, dampened its decline and, then, spurred its revitalization. Early Missteps

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city hired the consulting firm Olden and Associates to prepare a downtown development plan that included several major development projects such as turning Fayetteville Street into a pedestrian mall and building a new convention center. It also recommended creating a state government complex north of the Capitol and restoring City Market, a public market building built in 1914 but closed since the early 1950s.39 These and other projects were seen as the answers to the decline of the downtown. Acting on the Olden plan’s recommendation, in 1975 the city began closing sections of Fayetteville Street and converting them into a pedestrian mall with benches, plantings, and other amenities. Although most property owners were in favor of the mall, one commented: ‘‘It’s the first time I ever heard tell of expecting to improve business by letting grass grow on the town’s main street.’’40 At this time many of downtown’s two-way streets were converted to one-way pairs, to facilitate through traffic. The result was similar to the experiences of many other cities: The mall was not the solution to downtown Raleigh’s problems. Office workers ate lunch on the mall but the rest of the day the primary users were street people. One journalist commented that ‘‘there are no people about. Were it not for the occasional cobblestones and concrete barriers, you could roll a bowling ball from the capital [sic] end of the mall all the way down to the Civic Center any night of the week and never endanger a human.’’41 Most of the retail establishments along Fayetteville Street either fled to one of the malls or simply went out of business. About the same time the city also built a new convention center which cut across the south end of Fayetteville Street, blocking the historic vista between the Capitol and the classically designed Memorial Auditorium. On a more positive note, the state government complex of new large office buildings and eventually three museums was constructed and City Market was restored and reopened in the late 1980s. Overall, the Olden plan projects were not sufficient to stem the tide of businesses out of downtown. u r b a n

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Two additional blows to downtown Raleigh came during the 1980s and 1990s: the North Carolina Museum of Art decided to move from downtown to a fifty-acre site on the western edge of the city, and the City of Raleigh chose the western edge of the city for its new sports and entertainment arena, now called the RBC Center. Community activists advocated for these facilities to be built downtown, believing that they would spur its revitalization, but the lure of larger and less expensive land on the periphery won out. Yet during this time several corporations, wanting a significant presence in the state capital, decided to construct new office buildings along the lower section of the Fayetteville Street Mall. In the late 1980s, One Hanover Square (now called the Bank of America Building), a fifteen-story office and retail structure, was built. Soon afterward One Exchange Plaza, a ten-story office building, and the Wachovia Capital Center, a thirty-story retail and office tower, were constructed. The development of large office towers on the southern end of Fayetteville Street continued in the early 1990s with the twenty-nine-story Two Hanover Square office building. Several years later the North Carolina Museum of History moved into a large new facility in the state government complex and in 2000 the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences opened there as well. That same year, Progress Energy—the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in the Triangle—announced its intention to build a new headquarters building downtown. Two Progress Plaza, a nineteen-story mixed-use building, was opened on Wilmington Street in 2004, followed in 2006 by One Progress Plaza, a twenty-one-story mixed-use building. The Turning Point

The development of these major office buildings and museums, however, did little to transform downtown Raleigh from a nine-tofive to a twenty-four-hour-a-day downtown as it lacked a healthy

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mix of office, retail, and residential uses. To address these impediments to revitalization, in the late 1990s the city and the Downtown Raleigh Alliance—formed in 1996 to advocate for downtown business interests—undertook an eighteen-month planning process that resulted in the 2002 Livable Streets Plan. The process that produced this plan included consulting a wide range of interest groups including faith-based organizations, neighborhood associations, arts organizations, and, of course, developers and downtown business groups. Co-chaired by a member of the City Planning Commission and the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, and partially funded by Progress Energy, the planning group held a series of meetings and charrettes to garner community input. This planning process generated five key action strategies that its sponsors hoped to implement within a five-year period. First, the plan called for a ‘‘Fayetteville Street Renaissance’’ that included opening Fayetteville Street to vehicular traffic. After years of indecision on whether to fix the mall up or tear it up, the tide of opinion had turned toward tearing it up. Other planned actions of the renaissance were to develop an outdoor festival and performance space along the street and open the historic vista between the Capitol and Memorial Auditorium by razing the outdated civic center. Second, the plan called for the construction of a new convention center ‘‘to attract more national conventions and trade shows and improve the business environment.’’42 Third, the plan called for improving the pedestrian environment by widening sidewalks, converting one-way streets to two-way streets, developing a way-finding system, and promoting the active use of ground floors of downtown buildings. The fourth and fifth strategies were to cut down on ‘‘red tape’’ through regulatory reform and to improve downtown management. Over the next seven years each of these strategies was realized. The phased ‘‘demalling’’ of Fayetteville Street began in 2005 and was completed in 2007. An opening celebration drew over

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forty-five thousand people, who crowded the newly opened street. The mall was replaced by a two-lane, two-way street with parallel parking on each side. The street has thirty-foot sidewalks: fifteen feet for through-pedestrian traffic plus fifteen feet for street plantings, street furniture, and outdoor cafe´ seating. The Fayetteville Street improvements cost the city $12 million, which came from special county-wide hotel and prepared-food taxes passed in the 1990s and 2000s.43 The opening of the RBC Plaza in 2008 has added to the livelihood of Fayetteville Street. This thirty-three-story, mixed-use tower has been called ‘‘the most iconic symbol of Raleigh’s renaissance.’’44 The City Plaza was also created with the intention of creating ‘‘a new active heart of downtown hosting music, parades, markets and special events.’’45 The original design for the plaza was developed by Jaume Plensa, a Barcelona artist with public art in Chicago and many other cities, and was to be paid for by Capitol Broadcasting to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary.46 Capitol CEO Jim Goodmon offered to donate $2.5 million to fund Plensa’s creation. Plensa’s design called for a raised grass plaza with an overhead grid of LED lights that would flash pictures, and a wall of water emanating from an overhead source. This avant-garde design ran into problems, however, when the Raleigh City Council, which was ostensibly concerned about the obstruction of the newly re-created vista from the Capitol to Memorial Auditorium, asked for major changes. Plensa refused and Goodmon said that ‘‘Plensa gave his very best in the design, and he wouldn’t ask him to change it.’’47 He was not willing to fund a project that wasn’t Plensa’s vision and he withdrew his offer to fund a sculpture in the plaza.48 The plaza that was built opened in 2009 and is framed by four fifty-five-foot stainless steel light towers that contain a projection system. It also has four glass pavilions that house small restaurants and shops, and a programmable fountain. Although it is open to through traffic the roadway is closed

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Figure 34. Two views of Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street: as a pedestrian mall circa 1980 (courtesy of the Raleigh News and Observer); opened to traffic, 2010 (photo by author).

off during concerts and other events. The city has contracted with the Downtown Raleigh Alliance to manage and program the plaza. On a Sunday morning in 2006 those who were willing to get up early and go downtown witnessed the implosion of the old convention center. Once the rubble was cleared, ground was broken for a new $200 million convention center, which was set back so that the view from the Capitol to Memorial Auditorium could once again be enjoyed. Opened in 2008, the Raleigh Convention Center’s 500,000 square feet of space includes a 150,000-squarefoot exhibit hall, a 32,000-square-foot ballroom, 30,000 square feet of meeting space, and a 9,284-square-foot LED ‘‘shimmer wall’’ made up of over seventy-nine thousand light and dark aluminum squares that as they are moved by the wind depict a shimmering oak tree, the city’s symbol. A public-private deal was negotiated to build a hotel across the street and the city invested

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an additional $20 million for the Marriott Corporation to construct a sixteen-floor, 290,000-square-foot hotel. Just west of the convention center the city built an outdoor amphitheater, which can hold five thousand people and which opened in the summer of 2010. Again, most of the public funds for these projects came from the hotel and prepared-food tax fund.

Gaining Momentum

Beyond Fayetteville Street, the city improved the pedestrian environment in other areas of downtown. To assist people in finding their way around downtown, for example, the city defined five districts and developed signage to direct people to them: the Glenwood South and warehouse districts, both on the west side of downtown; the Capitol area north of Fayetteville Street; Fayetteville Street; and Moore Square on the east side of Fayetteville Street. With city support, the Downtown Raleigh Alliance provides ‘‘ambassadors’’ who patrol the downtown area to give directions, answer questions, pick up trash, and summon police or social service providers as needed. In 2009 the city created the R-line bus, a free downtown circulator that connects the different areas of downtown. The bus runs every ten to fifteen minutes until 11:00 P.M.

Mondays through Wednesdays and until 2:15

A.M.

Thursdays

through Saturdays. Over the last decade downtown Raleigh also has seen a significant increase in residential units. In 2000 there were less than 1,000 downtown residential units. By 2007 this number had grown to 3,277 with another 1,000 units either under construction or planned. The Glenwood South district is home to a number of new midrise condominium buildings: the fifteen-floor, 170-unit West at North Building; the seven-story, 117-unit 222 Glenwood Building; and the five-story, 179-unit 712 Tucker Building. With a

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rise in residential units, Glenwood has seen a jump in the number of new restaurants and bars. A smaller number of new residential units also have been built in the Moore Square area, on the east side of Fayetteville Street, and around Nash Square on the west side of Fayetteville. Looking forward, the city recently developed a new comprehensive plan that includes a chapter on the downtown area. That plan focuses on expanding the amount of downtown green space, developing transit stations for the anticipated light rail system, and continuing the expansion of downtown housing choices. Large new projects are also under development. One example is the Green Square complex that will include the four-story, 95,000square-foot Nature Research Center affiliated with the adjacent North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences; a 170,000-squarefoot office building that will accommodate approximately 615 N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources employees; and a 60,000-square-foot central office for the State Employees Credit Union.49 And a new contemporary art museum is scheduled to open in the warehouse district in 2011.

THE TRIANGLE RAIL SAGA: TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING Another way Triangle planners and public officials have been trying to tame sprawl and its associated problem of traffic congestion is by investing in public transportation. As the Triangle’s population rapidly grew in the 1980s, key roads became congested and population projections suggested many more people and cars were on their way. This led planners and public officials to begin talking about the need for regional public transit. At the time, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill had bus service, but no regional bus service was available and the main arteries between the three towns were becoming increasingly congested.50 This led

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local leaders in 1989 to create the Triangle Transit Authority (TTA), now rebranded as Triangle Transit.51 TTA’s mission was and is to ‘‘plan, finance, organize and operate a public transportation system for the Research Triangle area.’’ A stable, though modest, source of funding for the TTA was approved by the N.C. General Assembly in 1991 when it allowed the authority, subject to county approvals, to levy a vehicle registration tax of up to five dollars, and in 1997 to levy a rental vehicle tax of up to 5 percent of gross receipts. In 2009, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing countries to increase the vehicle registration fee to eight dollars. TTA’s three main program areas are regional bus service, ridesharing services, and transportation demand management and regional transit planning. As of 2009 TTA provided intercity bus service either directly or via contract to Apex, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Hillsborough, Pittsboro, Raleigh, Wake Forest, RDU International Airport, and the Research Triangle Park. In 2006 over eight hundred thousand trips were made on TTA’s buses. TTA also operated sixty-two car pools that served thirteen counties and it has taken the lead in planning for a regional rail system.52 But as discussed below that effort has run into many obstacles. The Triangle has a chicken-and-egg problem. On the one hand rail transit is not economically feasible without substantially greater development densities along the proposed lines. On the other, without a transit system there is limited interest among developers in building high-density, transit-dependent developments outside the core areas of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. While rail advocates believe that if the system is built redevelopment will occur around the transit stations and eventually justify the cost of the system, rail opponents believe that the area will never be dense enough to generate the ridership needed to justify the cost. Opponents have argued that the funds would be better spent both on road construction and on expanding bus service in the area. Over the past twenty years, however, rail advocates

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have been tenacious in pushing for the development of commuter and light rail systems in the Triangle. Soon after it was created in the late 1980s, the TTA helped organize a conference on the relationship between land use and public transportation. At that conference a Portland, Oregon, transportation official gave a presentation on the success of the Portland light rail system which stirred the imaginations of community leaders in the Triangle.53 That same year, the N.C. Department of Transportation released a study by Barton-Aschman Associates that provided estimates of the density needed to make light rail feasible in the Triangle. It also identified four alternative rail corridors.54 The study concluded that commuter or light rail was only feasible if development densities could be substantially raised within a quarter mile of the proposed transit corridors. Some expressed serious doubts, however, as to whether the density required for rail transit would be accepted by Triangle residents: ‘‘We treasure our half acre subdivision lots, we enjoy the comfort and independence of our personal cars, and, so far at least, the commute isn’t too awful or too expensive most days. Many Triangle residents either grew up with this way of life or moved here . . . because they wanted a piece of it. . . . [Light rail would] require a level of density that—judging from our development standards and home-buying habits—few people in the Triangle want.’’55 In spite of these misgivings an intergovernmental committee urged Triangle leaders to embrace rail transit and select a rail corridor by January 1994.56 Attention quickly focused on the prospect of employing selfpropelled coaches, referred to as diesel multiple units (DMUs), on the existing rail line that runs from Raleigh through Cary and the Research Triangle Park to Durham—the same North Carolina Railroad line that was responsible for the development of Durham and Cary back in the mid-1800s (see Chapter 1). Using the existing tracks was seen as the quickest, least disruptive, and least

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expensive strategy for providing rail service to the Triangle. This view was supported by a 1994 TTA study that assessed the cost and benefits of three transit options: commuter rail using the existing rail corridor, bus ways and high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, and light rail on new rights-of-way.57 Commuter rail on the existing tracks was projected to cost a third to a fifth of the cost of light rail, although it would attract substantially fewer riders.58 Based on this report, the TTA proposed a mixed strategy: commuter rail from North Raleigh to Durham, light rail from Durham to Chapel Hill, and bus ways and HOV lanes along I-40 and other major arterials. Phase 1 of the plan was the development of commuter rail using the existing track from Raleigh to Durham, which was estimated to cost $100 million. Phase 2 of the plan was the development of light rail on newly acquired right-of-way from Durham to Chapel Hill. Phase 3 of the plan would provide service to the RDU Airport. The later two phases were estimated to cost an additional $300 million. There were significant obstacles, however, to running frequent passenger trains on the existing rail lines from north Raleigh to Durham. Although the right-of-way and tracks between downtown Raleigh and Durham were owned by the North Carolina Railroad, it had leased the tracks to the Norfolk Southern and CSX companies for freight service, and they had concerns about sharing the tracks with a commuter rail system. This led the TTA to propose laying new passenger rail tracks within the two-hundred-foot right-of-way. Another obstacle to the use of the existing rail corridor was that the North Carolina Railroad had private shareholders who wanted to rent the tracks to the highest bidder. This would have greatly increased the cost of the commuter rail system. This obstacle was removed in 1998 when the state bought out the private North Carolina Railroad stockholders and several years later the railroad agreed to allow the TTA to lay down its own tracks between Raleigh and Duke Hospital in Durham.59 CSX, however,

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owned the right-of–way from downtown Raleigh north and it would have to sell or lease it to TTA to use for light or commuter rail service. At the time of this writing this still has not happened. Anticipating the resolution of rail corridor access, in 1998 the TTA identified eighteen potential stations along the route running from north Raleigh to west Durham. Duke University, however, objected to a station near its medical center, arguing that the elevated tracks and station, the diesel-powered train cars, and the continuation of an elevated line though Duke’s forest lands was unacceptable.60 The TTA general manager, Jim Ritchey, called the connection ‘‘critically important,’’ but Duke held firm on its opposition causing the TTA to plan on ending its line one stop short of one of the region’s largest employers.61 Others were critical of TTA’s plan for its failure to include service to the airport in the first phase of the project. TTA officials argued that the lack of an existing rail corridor made airport service very expensive, particularly given ridership projections, and would have to come later.62 They instead proposed express bus service from the closest rail station to the airport. TTA’s plan for funding the rail system was to request Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funds to pay for 50 percent of the cost through its New Starts program, for the state to pick up 25 percent of the cost, and for local governments to pick up the remaining 25 percent of the cost. Local funding was to come from the tax on rental cars, which in spite of vigorous lobbying by rental car companies, was approved by the General Assembly and Durham, Orange, and Wake Counties. This led Ritchey to comment: ‘‘What this means is we’ve now received approval from all the primary legislative bodies to go ahead and fund this mass transit system.’’63 Soon after the General Assembly authorized a five dollar local-option vehicle registration fee dedicated to transit, which provided additional revenue for TTA and its proposed train system. The TTA planned to begin construction by 2001 and have the trains running by 2004. { 212 }

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Skepticism about the cost effectiveness of rail transit in the Triangle continued to grow as the cost estimates increased with inflation. In 1998, both the mayor of Raleigh and the John Locke Foundation came out strongly against a rail system in the Triangle. Rob Christenson commented: ‘‘The Triangle is less a metropolis than an overgrown suburb on hormones. The Triangle is simply not urban in character, which is, of course, part of the area’s charm.’’64 Several years later a key member of the State Board of Transportation argued that constructing more highway lanes would be cheaper than rail and that rail would not appreciably improve air quality: ‘‘You can dress it up any way you want to, but this is a high-priced show dog right here.’’65 In addition, the Reason Foundation, a conservative think tank, argued that in comparison to an enhanced bus system, rail would reduce vehicle miles traveled by less than 1 percent.66 A foundation spokesperson argued that ‘‘on the 45th day after the Triangle’s rail line begins operation, congestion will be back to its pre-rail levels.’’67 TTA’s general manager at the time, John Claflin, countered this criticism by saying that while only a small fraction of commuters would ride the trains at first, ridership would grow over time as people and businesses locate near rail stations.68 In 2003 TTA officials received the news that the FTA had approved funding for final design of the thirty-five-mile commuter rail line.69 That approval allowed the TTA to begin spending federal, state, and local funds to purchase land for the stations and the tracks. It did not, however, guarantee federal funding for construction of the project. That required a separate approval process. The federal approval was enough, however, for Raleigh, Cary, and Durham to begin making specific plans for new development in the vicinity of the identified station locations and for the TTA to begin acquiring land for the first twelve stations.70 The euphoria over this approval, however, was short-lived. The following year the soaring costs of steel- and petroleum-based products coupled with anemic growth in revenue from the rental u r b a n

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car and vehicle registration fees forced the TTA both to scale back its plan for Phase 1 of the system and to ask the federal government to pick up a larger proportion of the total costs. The new plan lopped seven miles and four stations (three in north Raleigh and one in west Durham) off the first phase. It also anticipated asking the federal government to cover 61 percent of the total cost, 11 percent more than originally anticipated.71 Although this increase in the federal share of project costs lowered the chances of federal approval, TTA expressed confidence that rail service would begin in 2008. The Derailment

In November 2004 TTA’s plans for bringing train service to the Triangle were derailed when federal officials questioned one of the key projections underlying TTA’s cost-effectiveness analysis. The computer model used to estimate the alternative bus transit option projected that by 2025 it would take four hours to commute by bus from Raleigh to Durham, a distance of twenty-five miles, and ninety-five minutes to commute between Durham and the north end of the Research Triangle Park, a distance of seven miles. Federal officials found these projections to be ‘‘unbelievable’’ and ‘‘beyond comprehension.’’72 Consequently, the FTA changed its rating of the project from ‘‘recommended’’ to ‘‘not rated,’’ and hired a consulting firm to provide alternate travel time estimates.73 Then in early 2005 the FTA adopted stricter standards for judging the cost-effectiveness of new transit projects. Despite these setbacks the TTA proceeded under the assumption that they could be overcome. It began recruiting developers to plan and build high-density development around its transit stops.74 Another serious blow to TTA’s long-term effort to secure federal funding came in October 2005 with the release of the revised computer model. Ridership projections were half those of the

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original model. In December that year TTA officials received a letter from North Carolina’s U.S. senators, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, stating that federal transit officials did not believe the problems with the transit proposal could be overcome and that ‘‘the rail project is likely not an option for the region: we therefore believe it is time for TTA to explore other possibilities.’’75 The TTA decided, however, to continue pursuit of federal funding for the rail project, on which it had already spent $136 million in planning and land acquisition costs—$86 million provided by the federal government.76 In response to TTA’s requests to reconsider its decision, the FTA gave it until September 30, 2006, to meet the cost-effectiveness guidelines. As that deadline approached, however, TTA officials acknowledged that there was no hope of meeting the new, more stringent federal standards and that it would ‘‘spend the next six to 12 months building public support for transit service, talking with people about the possibility of changing the existing plan and looking for other ways to finance it.’’77 The critics felt vindicated. John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, suggested that the rail project had been ‘‘a decades-long distraction that has consumed far too much attention in a low-density environment (where it was) never going to be practical.’’78

Back on Track

In November 2006 the policy boards of the two metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) covering the Triangle (see discussion later in the chapter) created the Special Transit Advisory Commission (STAC) composed of twenty-nine members representing business, civic, environmental, university, and other interests to take a fresh look at transit in the Triangle. Staff support was provided by the two MPOs, the Triangle J Council of Governments (TJCOG),

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the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE), Triangle Transit, and the state DOT. A parallel technical analysis was also conducted to provide the technical basis both for the STAC report and for the MPOs’ 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan. After a year of study, the commission endorsed a three-part transit strategy along with a new financing mechanism.79 The first two parts of the STACs strategy were an enhanced regional bus network to provide rush hour service to outlying communities, and circulators to provide ‘‘flexible travel options within major activity areas.’’80 The third part of the strategy involved a rail proposal similar to TTA’s earlier plan. The revived transit plan included a commuter rail line from north Raleigh to Durham using DMUs in the existing rights-ofway, and a light rail line from Chapel Hill to Durham using electrically powered cars on a newly acquired right-of-way. The STAC came to the conclusion that rail was the most effective way to shape the growth of the Triangle and reduce urban sprawl.81 Some were concerned, however, about the need to switch from commuter rail to light rail to transverse the Triangle and they urged further study of a single light rail system that would serve the entire area. The price tag for the full set of transit investments was estimated at $8.2 billion through 2035. The commission proposed paying for these investments by increasing the vehicle registration fee from $5 to $10 per year, and levying a new half cent sales tax dedicated to transit in Durham, Orange, and Wake Counties. The sales tax alone was projected to cover 53 percent of the total cost. The remaining funding would come from state and federal governments (15 percent and 10 percent respectively), and from several other sources.82 Many of the recommendations of the STAC report were reflected in the joint long-range plan presented by the two MPOs in 2009. One major change, however, was the call for a ‘‘seamless

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electric light rail transit service to link our regional centers to one another’’ rather than a mix of commuter rail and light rail.83 Local transportation planners had been guided by signals that the Federal Rail Administration would not allow light rail in freight corridors due to safety concerns. They learned, however, that federal rail officials had no policy prohibiting this combination of rail service. Thus, an all light rail system seemed feasible. The enactment of a half-cent sales tax is critical to moving forward with any rail system. Two steps are required for that to happen. First, the General Assembly had to pass a bill authorizing a local option sales tax increase for transit. Such a bill was introduced in the 2009 session of the General Assembly and, after considerable debate over whether this tax was regressive, a bill authorizing a half cent increase in local sales taxes, a three dollar increase in vehicle registration fees, and a transit tax of ten cents per hundred dollar property valuation in the RTP was approved.84 The second step required to implement the sales tax increase is to secure the approval of the voters in each of the three counties. At the time of this writing it is not clear when the three counties will put the transit tax proposals on the ballot. Given the down economy, it is unlikely that they will do so before the fall of 2011.85 In the mean time, each of the three counties, and their major cities, are moving forward with more detailed plans to create sections of the rail system in accordance with the long-range transportation plan. TTA’s role will be to help implement those plans by overseeing the construction of the system and working with local jurisdictions to create high-density, mixed-use, transitfriendly development surrounding the proposed rail stations.86 Each of the three counties, however, has its own view of which parts of the system should be built first. For many Wake County officials the first priority is the development of a rail system from north Raleigh to downtown Raleigh to relieve congestion on Capital Boulevard. For those Wake County officials, connecting

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westward to Cary and the RTP is not as high a priority given the RTP’s current low-density development pattern.87 The priority for most of Orange County is to connect UNC–Chapel Hill and Duke University to relieve congestion on the U.S. 15–501 boulevard. But most of that connection lies in Durham County and it is not clear if Durham would rather connect to the RTP or Chapel Hill. In any case, TTA’s general manager estimates that it will take seven to thirteen years after the county referendums are approved for there to be even a partial rail system operating in the Triangle.88 Although there have been many obstacles to developing a passenger rail system in the Triangle, there seems to be growing support among both the areas’ leaders and citizens. At a debriefing meeting for the Reality Check exercise conducted in the Triangle in 2009, for example, over 90 percent of the several hundred persons present supported the development of passenger rail in the Triangle. Moreover, as described above, the major cities and towns in the Triangle are making plans to create high-density, mixed-use developments around the proposed transit stops. Over time, these efforts are likely to create land-use patterns that make passenger rail service more cost-effective. Many people have come to realize that if the population projections for the Triangle are even close to accurate, rail transit must be an essential component of the area’s transportation system if severe congestion is to be avoided.

CHALLENGES TO CONTAINING SPRAWL The planning efforts described above have had a positive impact containing sprawl but with another million persons forecast to settle in the area over the next twenty years, much more will need to be done if the area’s relatively high quality of life is to be maintained. The adoption of additional sprawl-containment measures,

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however, will be inhibited by three characteristics of planning in the Triangle: jurisdictional fragmentation, lack of coordination between land use and transportation planning, and relatively weak regional cooperation and planning.

Fragmented Decision Making

One of the significant features of public planning in the Triangle is its fragmentation. There are thirty-six municipalities within the Triangle metropolitan area with the authority to develop plans and manage growth. Some of those municipalities, like Raleigh and Durham, cover a hundred square miles, while others such as, Bunn and Micro, cover less than one square mile. None of these municipalities, however, is large enough to have a significant influence on the rest of the metropolitan area as is the case in many other metropolitan areas. Raleigh is the largest jurisdiction in the Triangle, but it contains only about 25 percent of the area’s population. In addition, each of the seven counties is responsible for planning and managing growth outside its municipalities. Although the Triangle J Council of Governments has worked hard to facilitate communication and cooperation among these various planning agencies, much planning in the area remains fragmented and disjointed. Each jurisdiction is largely focused on its own issues and concerns, with scant consideration of how its decisions affect neighboring jurisdictions and the larger metro area. A closer analysis of the seven counties and thirty-six municipalities responsible for planning and managing growth in the Triangle reveals considerable variation in their growth management and open land preservation practices.89 A survey of planning practices among the seven counties and sixteen largest municipalities in the Research Triangle metro finds that all have comprehensive plans to guide development, and all but three have updated those

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plans since 2000. Of the twenty that have updated plans, however, only eight of the plans called for an increase in development densities and only six recommended increases in allowable densities of more than 9 percent of their jurisdictions. Moreover, only six of the twenty-three counties and cities surveyed have more than 10 percent of their developable land zoned for multifamily residential development. Raleigh has the highest percentage at approximately 25 percent followed by Knightdale at 15 percent, Cary at 13 percent, and Durham city and county at 10 percent. Among the remaining seventeen jurisdictions several have no land prezoned for multifamily residential development. Thus, a discretionary hearing is needed to build any multifamily housing in those jurisdictions. The lack of land zoned for multifamily residential development suggests that urban sprawl will continue to be the dominant land-use pattern in the near future. There is also great diversity in the use of growth policy or regulations among the twenty-three largest jurisdictions. One growth policy often adopted in fast-growing areas is the use of impact fees to help pay for new roads, open space, water and sewer systems, and schools. These fees are typically charged to developers based on a per unit basis. Among the twenty-three largest jurisdictions in the Triangle metro, sixteen charge impact fees dedicated to the building or widening of off-site roads or recreation areas. Among the seven counties in the metro area only two, Franklin and Orange, rely on impact fees to support school construction. Given Wake County’s problem in keeping up with school construction, it is particularly surprising that it has not adopted school impact fees to address its unmet need. Another way jurisdictions control growth is to establish urban service boundaries that establish the geographic limits of future water, sewer, and possibly other urban services. By establishing those boundaries the jurisdictions are limiting the density of

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development, since any development outside of the service area will have to rely on private services, such as on-site septic systems or privately owned and managed sewage-treatment facilities. Fourteen of the twenty-three largest jurisdictions in the Triangle metro have established urban services boundaries for the purposes of limiting growth in the watersheds of lakes used for water supply and for maintaining rural buffers among municipalities. The towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, for example, have worked with the Orange Water and Sewer Authority to establish a service boundary as a means of maintaining a rural buffer between the two towns and Hillsborough. Another means of reining in sprawl is by adopting policies that facilitate or encourage infill development or property redevelopment. Infill development is development in areas that are already served by roads, water and sewer lines, and other urban services. Such policies might include ‘‘upzoning’’ areas to allow higherdensity development or adopting redevelopment codes that account for the different building standards in effect at the time a building was constructed. Among the twenty-three largest jurisdictions in the Triangle metro only ten have policies that facilitate infill or redevelopment. Adequate-facilities ordinances are a means of controlling the pace of development, since they condition the approval of new development on the ability of the existing or planned infrastructure to accommodate that development. If, for example, school facilities or road capacity is found to be inadequate, development would be stalled until that capacity is achieved. Of the twentythree largest jurisdictions in the Triangle metro area, only three, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, and Franklin County, currently have adequate-facilities ordinances that allow the denial of development applications due to lack of school capacity. The Town of Cary adopted such an ordinance in 1999, but the Wake County School Board always supported new development even when schools

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were overcrowded. That and other criticisms of the ordinance led to its repeal in 2004.90 Rate-of-growth control is another planning mechanism that has been used to control growth in fast-growing municipalities across the country.91 This involves establishing an upper limit on the number of residential permits that will be granted in a given year. This ensures that the municipality will not be overwhelmed by new development and it gives the municipality time to provide adequate infrastructure to accommodate the new growth. Given the high rates of growth in several of the communities in the Triangle one might expect to find some examples of this technique being adopted in the area. Yet none of the jurisdictions in the Triangle metro have rate-of-growth controls.92 Inclusionary housing policies and ordinances are designed to ensure that households with modest income can afford to live in the communities where they work. In return for density bonuses and other benefits, inclusionary housing policies and ordinances require large developers to construct and sell a certain percentage of their units at prices affordable to modest-income households, typically defined as those with income below 80 percent of the area’s median income. Such ordinances and policies are particularly applicable in high demand markets such as the Triangle metro where developers have typically catered to upper-middleincome and upper-income households. Among all of the jurisdictions in the Triangle metro area, however, only one, Chapel Hill, has an inclusionary housing policy that allows the Town Council to consider whether developers are producing affordable units in the development approval process. The lack of new affordable housing in many Triangle communities means that many modestwage workers are forced to commute from outlying areas, which adds to traffic congestion and air pollution and costs those workers a substantial proportion of their salaries.

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In looking at the total number of growth controls utilized by jurisdictions in the Triangle, the more Democratic counties of Durham, Franklin, and Orange and the Town of Chapel Hill have the largest number of growth controls, while the more Republican counties of Johnston, Wake, and Chatham and the towns of Smithfield, Roxboro, Franklinton, and Morrisville have the fewest number of growth controls (see Chapter 3 for a discussion of political differences in the Triangle). It is not surprising that the growth rates in the counties and towns with the fewest number of growthcontrol policies are among the highest in the Triangle. Clearly, Triangle communities have very different attitudes about growth and the extent to which it should be controlled. These different attitudes toward growth do not bode well for cooperative and coordinated efforts to control the growth of the Triangle metro. Lack of Coordination Between Land Use and Transportation Planning

Adding to the difficulty of coordinated planning among the Triangle’s forty-three jurisdictions is the separation of responsibility for land-use and transportation planning. Coordination of landuse and transportation planning is a significant challenge in most metropolitan areas, but it is particularly so in North Carolina. During the Great Depression the state took over county roads and assumed responsibility for new highway construction. Thus, North Carolina lacks a county-owned road system like most other states. This means that the counties and municipalities that are responsible for land-use planning do not have direct control over the major roads that serve their areas. Rather the state DOT has the final say on whether or not to build or widen highways, and on how those roads are designed. Adding to the challenge, as noted earlier, is that there are two metropolitan planning organizations covering the urbanized

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areas of the Triangle.93 In 1962, the federal government mandated the creation of MPOs in urbanized areas with populations of at least fifty thousand. Their purpose is to ensure that federal transportation funding is spent according to metropolitan plans, developed through intergovernmental cooperation. MPOs are governed by a transportation advisory committee made up of elected or appointed representatives of local government, state agency officials, and representatives of transportation modes such as public transit agencies. MPOs are responsible for developing longrange transportation plans, prioritizing specific transportation improvements, and developing annual work plans for their areas. The North Carolina Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) covers Wake County and parts of Franklin, Granville, Harnett, and Johnston Counties. The Durham–Chapel Hill–Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization covers Durham County and parts of Orange and Chatham Counties. The reason the Triangle has two MPOs is because in the 1960s Raleigh and Durham–Chapel Hill were defined as separate urbanized areas. Over time, however, these areas have grown together. At this point, the MPOs’ long-range plan indicates, the ‘‘largest commute pattern and heaviest travel volumes occur at the intersection of the MPO boundaries.’’94 In the early 2000s the boards of the two MPOs discussed merging, but differences in attitudes about the roles of roads versus transit and the potential domination of Raleigh and Wake County in the combined MPO scuttled this idea.95 The two MPOs have, however, been coordinating their planning efforts. In 2006 they created the Special Transit Advisory Committee to take a fresh look at transit options for the area and they also agreed to develop the joint 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan, which was adopted in 2009. These collaborative efforts led the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations

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to award its 2009 National Award for Outstanding Achievement in Metropolitan Transportation Planning to the Triangle’s two MPOs. Regional Planning in the Research Triangle

There is a fifty-year history of regional planning in the Triangle area but the impact of those efforts has been modest as planners have lacked the authority to shape the physical development of the area. To the extent that they have influenced development, it has been through education and analysis and through facilitating communication among local and state decision makers. The first regional planning effort in the Research Triangle was led by Pearson Stewart, who was hired to develop the initial plan for the Research Triangle Park (see Chapter 2). In planning the RTP Stewart realized that the development of the park would generate new residential and commercial development in its vicinity, and that the quality and attractiveness of that development would affect the park’s success. Thus, Stewart and his boss, George Simpson, lobbied for state legislation to create the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission (RTRPC), which was approved in 1959. Its mission was ‘‘to prepare, in collaboration with counties and municipalities in the area, plans which would promote the orderly and economical development of the area, to submit such plans to county, municipal, state and federal agencies having jurisdiction in the area, and to encourage the execution of such plans.’’96 Pearson Stewart was hired as the director of the Commission, splitting his time between it and the Research Triangle Foundation. The Commission was composed of representatives from Durham, Orange, and Wake Counties, and from Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. The following year the Commission released Guides for the Research Triangle of North Carolina, which offered economic and

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population growth projections, along with three scenarios for accommodating that growth: compact development around the existing cities, nucleated development in independent new communities, and corridor development following natural drainage courses.97 This report contained exceptional foresight in predicting the growth of the area and in suggesting a compact development scenario. It also called for an ‘‘inter-city, inter-county organization to develop and administer utility services for the region’’ and suggested that ‘‘zoning and subdivision regulations be determined by regional consideration rather than by boundaries of local governmental units.’’98 Unfortunately, these recommendations were not embraced by the area’s county and municipal governments. The RTRPC continued to advocate for regional approaches to controlling development in the Triangle. In 1970 Governor Bob Scott created a council of governments system in the state and designated seventeen such councils, including one covering the Triangle area. Two years later the General Assembly approved legislation institutionalizing that system. Rather than creating a new regional organization in the Triangle, local leaders agreed to expand the existing RTRPC to include Chatham, Johnston, and Lee Counties. The new organization was named the Triangle J Council of Governments; its mission was ‘‘to serve as an intergovernmental organization for local elected officials that works proactively on regional issues in order to sustain and improve the quality of life for our citizens.’’ A limited amount of state funds was allocated to supporting the TJCOG. The lion’s share of its budget was to come from its constituent local governments including the six counties and thirty municipalities. Pearson Stewart served as the executive director of this new organization until his retirement in 1977. In 2001, Moore County and its municipalities were added to the list of eligible members. The seven counties covered by the TJCOG are different from the seven counties that constitute the

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Triangle’s two MSAs. Person and Franklin Counties, are part of the Kerr-Tar Council of Governments. TJCOG is a voluntary organization whose members each have one representative on the governing board called the Board of Delegates. It also has an Executive Committee composed of one county delegate and one municipal delegate from each county. The member organizations provide financial support based on the size of their respective populations. Members can withdraw from participation, as did Wake County, Holly Springs, Wake Forest, and Cary during the mid 1990s. Wake County in particular was unhappy with having to cover such a large portion of the budget. According to a newspaper report, ‘‘Although two Democratic commissioners argued Tuesday night that withdrawing from Triangle J would be shortsighted, the four Republican board members contended that the county got little more than reams of studies for its $220,000 in membership dues.’’99 The county and towns all rejoined over the next several years. Local dues make up only 2 to 3 percent of the council’s budget; the remainder comes mostly from contracts and grants, and fees for services provided. The voluntary nature of participation in the council means that it has to be very cautious in the stances it takes on growth and development issues. It has to be ‘‘attentive to promoting harmony’’ among its member governments.100 Among a host of other activities, TJCOG initiated several regional planning initiatives during the 1980s and 1990s.101 The first of these was the Focus on Tomorrow: Project 2000 to Maintain Quality of Life Project, which was designed to ‘‘identify the issues [facing the region], flesh them out with facts and figures, and outline choices of possible strategies for dealing with the issues.’’102 The 1982 effort was led by a steering committee composed of public, private, and nonprofit leaders and involved residents through a series of public meetings. On the topic of the built environment the final report concluded: ‘‘Developments that

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offer ‘homes in the country’ are not dense enough to permit effective, efficient public transportation. We live in housing patterns that simply ignore the cost of transportation.’’103 The report recommended that the region reduce its dependency on singleoccupant automobile transportation. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s the TJCOG continued to draw attention to the region’s growth projections and the need to manage that growth in a way that maintains the area’s quality of life. In 1988, 1992, and 1998 it held three ‘‘World Class Region’’ conferences in which participants were presented with a variety of data on the challenges facing the area and on potential solutions. The 1988 World Class Region Conference was overseen by a 64-person steering committee headed by former governor Jim Hunt.104 This conference and its related activities led to the creation of Triangle Transit; a Triangle-wide, toll-free telephone system; and the Triangle Area Water Supply Monitoring Project. The 1992 World Class Region Conference was organized by a 160-member steering committee, which formed focus groups on economic competitiveness, quality of life, education, and regional leadership. Among other ventures recommended by these focus groups was the development of a regional leadership council composed of ‘‘progressive, assertive leaders from business, government, civic groups, and academia to set strategic direction for the region and consider ventures needed to achieve success, identify resources needed to undertake the ventures, and muster the teamwork to see that the ventures are implemented.’’ This led to the development of the Greater Triangle Regional Council described in Chapter 4.105 The focus of the 1998 conference, which was cosponsored by the Greater Triangle Regional Council, was on introducing the Regional Development Choices Project. That project involved the development of three growth scenarios: ‘‘suburban expansion,’’

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‘‘walkable communities,’’ and ‘‘town and country.’’ These scenarios were then presented at the third conference and at community meetings where participants were asked to express their preferences for the alternative growth scenarios. TJCOG staff then embarked on an extensive, multimedia community-outreach campaign to educate residents about the scenarios and solicit their preferences. The feedback received was distilled into principles— such as integrated transportation, mixed-use activity centers, and walkable communities—that were adopted by the TJCOG’s Governing Board, the GTRC, and a coalition of environmental, business, and community groups, which then worked to persuade public and private actors to use the principles in guiding their development-related decisions. The actual impact of this project on the growth pattern of the area, however, is difficult to assess. Most recently, TJCOG has been organizing and managing a series of multi-sponsor partnerships to address issues including land use, transit, water quality, and air quality. The Triangle Development and Infrastructure Partnership, for example, has twenty-five public, nonprofit, and private organization sponsors, which are working to better coordinate development in the area with the infrastructure to support it.106 Reality Check

Building on the lessons learned from the Development Choices Project, the most recent regional visioning initiative was the Research Triangle Regional Reality Check, sponsored by Triangle Tomorrow and the Research Triangle District Council of the Urban Land Institute. Reality Check was designed to promote regionwide awareness of growth projections, envision how these new residents might be distributed throughout the area, and create a list of ‘‘next steps to support regional planning and ensure quality growth for the region.’’107

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On February 24, 2009, a group of 280 community leaders from fifteen counties in the Research Triangle region came together in a large banquet room in Raleigh’s Convention Center. The room contained twenty-eight tables with large-scale maps of the region. Ten attendees were assigned to each table, on which were placed bins of red and yellow Legos and spools of purple, orange, and green yarn. The number of Legos in each bin was related to the projected increase in the number of people and jobs in the region by 2030. The task given to each table was to place all the Legos on the map by the end of the allotted time and to use the different colored yarn to indicate new or widened roads, new or expanded transit service, and green space to be protected. One of the key ground rules of this exercise was that the growth projects were not negotiable. Participants had to allocate all of the blocks representing the projected increase in population and jobs. Participants were not given the option of suggesting that measures should be taken to slow the projected growth. With the help of facilitators and recorders, each group began by discussing and deciding upon the key principles that they would use in locating the new growth. With those principles in mind the groups began to place the 800 yellow bricks (representing 1.2 million new residents) and 368 red bricks (representing 700,000 new jobs) on the maps and connecting them with yarn. Throughout the process, there was considerable discussion among the participants as to the implications of the allocations being made. All twenty-eight groups completed the exercise in the allotted time. Once it was completed, the organizers captured and analyzed the patterns of development on each of the maps using special software designed for the purpose. The results of this exercise were presented three days later in a meeting attended by about 500 local leaders and other citizens. The most frequently adopted principles used to allocate the new growth were improve transit (86 percent of the tables), encourage

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Figure 35. Reality Check participants plan for 1.2 million new residents and 700,000 new jobs expected in the Triangle’s fifteen-county region by 2030 (courtesy of Joe Meno).

mixed-use development (57 percent of the tables), protect watersheds and open space (50 percent of the tables), and reinvest in urban centers (50 percent of the tables). Three development scenarios were distilled from the twentyeight versions produced, including a clustered scenario characterized by mixed-use and dense development along new and existing transit corridors, a compact scenario characterized by the concentration of growth in existing urban areas, and a dispersed scenario characterized by a more even distribution of growth in towns throughout the region. When meeting attendees were asked to vote for their favored scenario the cluster scenario received the most votes, followed by compact and dispersed scenarios respectively. When asked to vote on the barriers to implementing this vision, the attendees most frequently identified the lack of an effective regional government followed by lack of funds for infrastructure and community resistance to higher-density development.

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To implement the guiding principles and growth scenarios developed in the Reality Check visioning exercise, Triangle Tomorrow has created the Research Triangle Regional Quality Growth Initiative. At the time of this writing, the initiative has formed four action committees: one focused on transit, one on green space, one on vibrant centers, and one on obtaining endorsements of the guiding principles from local governments and on raising awareness. A year after the event, the heads of those committees—all well-respected community leaders—reported on early efforts to implement the guiding principles. It is too early to tell, however, if this effort will be any more effective than earlier efforts in changing the growth patterns of the area.

CONCLUSION The result of historical and geological factors, the development pattern of the Research Triangle is distinctive for its ‘‘hollow’’ core and its sprawling layout. The area’s core contains large expanses of open space, and its overall development pattern is one of the most sprawling among the country’s major metropolitan areas. Recognizing the relationship between this hollow-core, sprawling development pattern and problems including traffic congestion, air and water pollution, and loss of open space, Triangle leaders have been encouraging higher-density and mixed-use development, expanding public transit, and preserving areas of critical environmental concern. They have also focused on revitalizing the area’s traditional downtowns to lure both residents and businesses to already developed areas. Although these actions are laudable, much more will need to be done if the Research Triangle area is to accommodate future growth. Containing sprawl and its negative impacts, while maintaining a relatively high quality of life, will require overcoming

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three significant obstacles: fragmented decision-making authority, poor coordination between land-use decisions and transportation infrastructure investments, and weak regional cooperation. The next chapter will present ideas on how these obstacles might be addressed.

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Where Are We Headed? The short-term prospects for the Research Triangle metropolitan area look bright. There is little doubt that the area’s three major research universities will continue to develop new knowledge and products that will continue to fuel the area’s economic growth. Moreover, those universities, along with the smaller universities and colleges, will continue to recruit and develop the human capital needed to support start-up companies and attract existing companies. In addition, although the region has grown very rapidly over the past several decades its quality of life is still relatively high. A recently released Brookings Institution report indicates that the Raleigh-Cary MSA was the nation’s second fastest growing metropolitan area between 2000 and 2009. The area even continued to add residents throughout the economic recession, with growth of 12.7 percent from 2006 to 2009.1 As the economy recovers, it is very likely that this area’s growth rate will skyrocket. But the area’s long-term prospects are more uncertain, even troubling. Population forecasts suggest that the Triangle metro area will be home to another million people by 2030. Where will they live? Where will they work? Where will they go for recreation? How will they get around? How will they get along? The answers to these questions will determine whether the Research Triangle will maintain its appeal into the future.

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As previously discussed there are positive indications that communities are taking actions to protect the area’s quality of life. But really bold action is needed to accommodate the anticipated flood of businesses and households into the Triangle. First and foremost, local people and institutions need to understand that the region’s once independent communities are now part of a larger metropolitan area, and that their economic and social health depends on the health of that larger area. Air and water pollution, traffic congestion, crime, and other problems do not respect jurisdictional boundaries; they affect everyone. For example, while Falls Lake is the major water supply for Raleigh and many other Wake County communities, most of the lake’s watershed is in Durham and Orange Counties. Thus, the types and intensity of development that Durham allows in the Falls Lake watershed will have a tremendous impact on the cost and quality of Wake County drinking water. As Kathryn Foster notes, ‘‘The cross-border, networked patterns of contemporary metropolitan life transform local issues into metropolitan ones, warranting metropolitan solutions.’’2 Addressing cross-border regional problems will require substantially increased cooperation among the counties, cities, towns, and rural areas that make up the Triangle metro area. This is not to deny that there hasn’t been past cooperation. As discussed, several regional organizations have been created including the Raleigh-Durham International Airport Authority, Triangle J Council of Governments, Triangle Transit, Research Triangle Regional Partnership, and a variety of informal agreements between and among jurisdictions and authorities. But these organizations and agreements are either focused on a single issue, such as public transit, or lack any real authority to develop or implement regional growth-management plans. Broader and stronger regional cooperation is needed to address the approaching tsunami of residents and businesses. As Benjamin Hitchings notes, ‘‘Jurisdictions that establish and use controls in isolation risk simply

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deflecting new development to outlying jurisdictions that often have fewer resources to manage it. In so doing, they risk accelerating the degradation of important regional systems such as watersheds, air sheds and transportation networks.’’3 How might enhanced regional coordination in the Triangle be organized? A scan of other metropolitan area approaches to regional cooperation suggests three general paths. First, there are single-purpose authorities or compacts such as water and sewer or transportation authorities. Second, there are multipurpose cooperative agreements, such as councils of governments. Third, there are full-fledged regional governments such as the Metropolitan Council in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area and the Portland (Oregon) Metropolitan Council.4 While it is tempting to suggest that the Triangle needs a full-fledged metropolitan government, such a recommendation would fall on deaf ears. There is, as Smedes York notes, ‘‘a certain pride in separate cultures’’ that helps explain why people come to the Triangle and why communities want to maintain individual identities and autonomy.5 Moreover, in places with regional governments, their respective states have played a major role in promoting these. Beyond supporting the network of COGs, North Carolina state government has not actively promoted regional government or regional land-use planning. Thus, the idea of creating a Triangle-wide regional government is not politically feasible, even if it was desirable.6 Given the local political reality, enhanced regional cooperation will need to be achieved through the consent of local jurisdictions, not by state-imposed mandates. The Triangle needs to develop a ‘‘regional stewardship model, which emphasizes a commitment to place rather than issue, an integrated approach to issues and solutions, and the development of broad coalitions sharing a regional vision.’’7 If we consider other regional stewardship models, the most appropriate model for the Triangle is Denver’s ‘‘Mile High

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Compact.’’ Similarly to the Triangle, the Denver metro area has experienced rapid growth that has seriously threatened its quality of life. It also has a similar degree of jurisdictional fragmentation containing ten counties and over forty municipalities, and it has a culturally and politically diverse population. In response to its own rapid growth the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG, known as ‘‘Doctor Cog’’) developed the Mile High Compact to ‘‘find ways to prepare for, modify and manage growth.’’8 This agreement is particularly noteworthy for being initiated by the area’s local governments rather than imposed by state legislation.9 In signing the compact, counties and municipalities agreed, among other things, to ‘‘acknowledge that Metro Vision 2020 is the comprehensive guide for the development of the region’’ and to develop comprehensive plans that are consistent with the regional vision.10 Metro Vision is a long-term regional plan developed by DRCOG with the participation of government officials, environmental interests, business leaders, and citizens. This plan is seen as a ‘‘dynamic document that reflects changes in the region.’’11 It is reviewed on a regular basis and is periodically updated. As of 2010, the current plan is called the Metro Vision 2035 Plan. It addresses three major topics: growth and development, transportation systems, and environmental quality. It also contains a set of implementation guidelines and actions.12 Of particular interest in the Metro Vision plans is the delineation of urban-growth boundaries designed to ‘‘define where future urban development will occur so infrastructure can be planned and constructed more cost-effectively’’ and to ‘‘encourage a more compact development pattern by directing growth inward, stimulating infill and redevelopment activity and capitalizing on the use of existing infrastructure.’’13 The urban-growth boundaries are established collaboratively with each of the local jurisdictions and are modified over time. By most accounts the Mile High Compact

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has been a great success. As of 2007, counties and cities representing 90 percent of the DRCOG area had signed the compact. Clearly, the local jurisdictions in the area have come to appreciate the benefits of this sort of regional planning. Developing something similar to Denver’s Mile High Compact and its Metro Vision plan would be a major step toward protecting the Triangle area’s quality of life going forward. The Reality Check exercise discussed above is a first step toward a region-wide consensus on the future shape of the metro area, but what the Triangle desperately needs is a metropolitan land-use and transportation plan to guide local development and transportation investments. Without a regional plan that is taken seriously by local jurisdictions the Triangle area is destined to grow unchecked, undermining the very characteristics that have made it so successful. Developing such a plan will be difficult. It will require uncomfortable compromises as well as difficult choices that go against the status quo. Not all decisions can be made by consensus. There will be times when bold decisions must be made for the benefit of the entire metro area. It will also require a commitment of financial resources to conduct the analysis and citizen outreach to develop such a plan. Moreover, once it is developed, local jurisdictions will need a concerted effort to alter their land-use, transportation, and capital-improvement plans to be consistent with such a plan. Compared to many other metropolitan areas, the Research Triangle metro is relatively young. Much of its development history is yet to be written. This provides an opportunity to avoid many typical development problems experienced elsewhere. As Kirby Bowers, executive director of the TJCOG, observes, ‘‘This region has a chance to be a model of a region that got it right.’’14 Literature on the development of regional action suggests that it often

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comes about in response to a crisis, such as a major water-supply problem. The question is: Will the Triangle wait for such a crisis to hit or will local leaders have the foresight to anticipate future problems and to take actions to avoid them? To ‘‘get it right’’ several things need to happen. First and foremost, public officials and citizens alike will need to identify more strongly with the whole metropolitan area, rather than just their neighborhoods or towns. A 2007 survey commissioned by the Raleigh News and Observer found that 1 percent of metro residents, answered ‘‘the Triangle’’ or ‘‘Raleigh-Durham Triangle’’ when asked while traveling where they live, while 57 percent saw the Triangle as ‘‘a loose collection of individual cities, suburbs, and towns’’ rather than ‘‘one metropolitan region.’’15 It is natural for people to identify with their neighborhoods and towns, but this does not preclude identifying with the region as well. Community leaders will need to continue making the case that (1) the Triangle is a functioning region, and not just a collection of independent places; and (2) many local problems can be effectively addressed only on the regional scale. In the News and Observer survey, 24 percent of respondents agreed that a regional authority should take charge of issues related to growth and another 15 percent offered that a combination of city and county governments and a regional authority should do so. There seems to be a visible base of citizen support for regional approaches to growth management. Nonetheless, building a regional identity and a willingness to address existing and emerging problems through regional collaboration will be challenging. As we’ve seen, the Triangle’s communities have their own distinct histories, population characteristics, and political orientations. This diversity is a positive local characteristic, but also presents a formidable obstacle to strengthening regional cooperation. Parochialism, invested interests, and mistrust among the communities that make up the

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Triangle must be addressed and overcome if the region is to effectively handle emerging challenges. Triangle leaders would be wise to heed the words of Eddie Rickenbacker cited earlier, who when promoting a regional airport in the area said: ‘‘Do not allow civic jealousies or selfish motive to creep into a project that means so much to all of you.’’16 Local public officials must recognize the benefits of regional cooperation and be willing to engage in collaborative planning and service-provision agreements. Triangle civic leadership also needs to be renewed and expanded. As described, the mantle of civic leadership has been worn by relatively few, for an extended period. This leadership group needs to be renewed with others who have the same level of commitment to sustaining both economic growth and the region’s high quality of life. At this point it is not clear from where this new leadership will come. Triangle leaders also need to have an open discussion on rapid growth and its costs. As noted earlier, a variety of costs come with rapid growth including traffic congestion, water shortages, and school wars. When growth heats up again those problems are only going to worsen and many qualities that have made the Triangle a desirable place to live and do business will be greatly diminished. Here, as in other places, some think the more growth the better and quickly dismiss the idea of controlling the amount and rate of growth with such comments as ‘‘if you don’t grow you die’’ and ‘‘that would be an infringement on individual property rights.’’ The one disappointing aspect of the Reality Check exercise was that participants were asked to take as given the addition of 1.2 million additional residents and 700,000 new jobs to the fifteen-county region by 2030. Rather than taking this number as given, organizers should have asked if the area can reasonably accommodate this figure without undermining the quality of life. If the answer is no, leaders should carefully consider strategies that might control it.

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Figure 36. Editorial cartoon spoofing the competition between Wake and Mecklenburg Counties over which will have the largest population in the state (courtesy of V. C. Rodgers 2010).

One way to control the rate of growth would be for jurisdictions to set quotas for the amount of new development that will be approved each year, based on an area-wide regional plan and on the jurisdiction’s ability to provide adequate infrastructure. The Denver regional plan includes growth plans for each jurisdiction to concentrate infrastructure investments. Another idea is to develop a point system based on environmental, economic, and social criteria to evaluate development applications, with highestranked proposals selected for approval. Those not approved could be altered to better meet the criteria and resubmitted. Such a system would have the dual benefit of improving development quality and aiding local jurisdictions in providing necessary public infrastructure. For this to work effectively, however, regional cooperation is necessary so that development does not move to outlying areas and worsen traffic congestion. At least part of the Research Triangle’s success is attributable to the willingness of the state government of North Carolina to { 242 }

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support innovative ideas including the Research Triangle Park and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. At this point, the state could potentially play a critical role in getting the Triangle and other metropolitan areas in North Carolina to embrace regionalism. In 2008 the state’s General Assembly established the Legislative Study Commission on Urban Growth and Infrastructure issues. Its mission was ‘‘to determine the measure the General Assembly may take to foster regional water resource and transportation planning, incentive-based local land use planning and more responsive and cost-effective planning to accommodate rapid population growth in North Carolina’s urban areas.’’17 Among the commission’s findings are that ‘‘North Carolina should consider developing statewide planning principles and guidelines’’ and that ‘‘the General Assembly should consider legislation that encourages State and local cooperation and coordination for multi-jurisdictional projects.’’ In the summer of 2010 the General Assembly passed legislation creating the North Carolina Sustainable Communities Task Force, which is charged with promoting regional partnerships, recommending policies for the promotion of sustainable communities, coordinating state agency development and infrastructure programs, and administering the new North Carolina Sustainable Communities Grant Fund to support regional planning efforts.18 This thirteen-member task force will include representatives from the state Departments of Commerce, Environment and Natural Resources, Transportation, and Administration as well as representatives from various public, nonprofit, and private interest groups. This task force has the potential to engage the state in promoting collaborative regional planning, but it is too soon to tell if it will realize that potential. Another challenge the area must successfully meet if it is to continue to prosper is the presence of social divisions within the metropolitan area. One factor that drew companies to North Carolina and the Research Triangle area was their progressive attitudes toward racial integration. More recently, the City of Durham w h e r e

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and Durham County took an important step in that direction by consolidating their school systems, one predominantly black and the other predominantly white.19 For its part, Wake County also took action to maintain a semblance of ethnic and income diversity in its schools, but the school board has recently abandoned this goal. While it’s too early to see the impact of that decision, the most likely result is further segregation by both race and class that will further widen the county’s social divisions. Residential segregation also contributes to social divisions within the Triangle. The lack of affordable housing in many areas means that modest-wage workers face long commutes from outlying areas to their jobs. This consumes a significant proportion of their paychecks and adds to the area’s traffic congestion and air pollution. Chapel Hill is the only Triangle jurisdiction that has explicitly addressed this challenge through an inclusionary housing ordinance that, in return for greater density, requires residential developers to set aside 15 percent of their units for modest-income households. Other jurisdictions need to follow suit if areawide residential segregation is to be reduced. The Hispanic population has contributed to the region in many ways, but its rapid increase has strained relations and public services, leading some Triangle communities to enroll in the 287(g) program. If used judiciously, this program can remove criminals from the community. Used liberally, it can damage relationships between the Hispanic community and both the police and the non-Hispanic population. The relatively new requirement that applicants for North Carolina driver’s licenses show proof of citizenship will cut down on the migration of undocumented residents to the area, but federal immigration policy and enforcement will ultimately define this issue. If the region’s population is going to grow without undermining quality of life, several physical transformations are needed. First, the area’s low-density, homogeneous land-use pattern

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needs to be altered. The area must have more higher-density, mixed-use developments to rein in sprawl. This transformation may not be popular with some residents who either grew up locally or moved here for the area’s suburban atmosphere, but such development, coupled with preserving additional open space, will lessen both traffic congestion and the negative environmental impact of growth. The RTP is a prime target for at least partial redevelopment. As we see daily, its very low-density, homogeneous land use necessarily contributes to traffic congestion and environmental problems. Creating mixed-use urban villages in the center of the park, as the ULI Advisory Panel recommended, would go a long way toward bringing the park’s physical structure into the twenty-first century. Clearly, there are formidable obstacles to the park’s redevelopment, but the metropolitan area cannot be restructured without this shift. Increased density should be balanced, however, by preserving additional open space. Of particular concern is land vital both to the area’s ecological systems and to its water supply. The Triangle GreenPrint Project has identified the land of greatest ecological value and it will be important to continue the ongoing environmental preservation efforts. Expanding the Triangle’s public transit system will also be critical to maintaining its high quality of life. It is very hard to imagine what traffic will be like without a much-expanded public transit system if a million more people move to the Triangle. I-40 is already congested during rush hour; add another million people and it will be a nightmare. Although light rail is not the only option, it seems the most feasible way to get a significant number of commuters out of their cars and onto public transit. Approving referendums to increase sales taxes for public transit will be critical to creating such a system. Strategically located higher-density, mixed-use development will be necessary to support that system.

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Citizens and community leaders alike must accept the fact that successfully accommodating growth will require significant new public investments in physical and social infrastructure. A significant portion of public transit expansion will need to be paid from local sources. In addition, many new schools will be needed, roads will have to be widened, and municipal facilities and services will have to be expanded. The Triangle’s towns and counties need to be realistic about these necessary investments and how to pay for them. Wake County’s inability to keep pace with needed school construction is a cautionary tale of what happens when a jurisdiction is not realistic about the costs of growth, and fails to adopt responsible financing mechanisms. Moderate growth can be good for communities but only if they can provide the necessary infrastructure to accommodate it.

WHAT CAN OTHER METRO AREAS LEARN FROM THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE EXPERIENCE? Each metropolitan area is unique. So before borrowing development strategies from other metropolitan areas their applicability should be carefully assessed. There is no substitute for a careful analysis of a metropolitan area’s assets and liabilities, and then the formulation of strategies to capitalize on the former and diminish the latter. Nonetheless, in preparing a metropolitan development strategy it is prudent to consider what has worked, and not worked, in other metropolitan areas. The growth and development of the Research Triangle metro offers several potential lessons for other metropolitan areas. First, research universities are an important asset for any metropolitan economy. The Research Triangle has been blessed with three such universities, which civic leaders have involved in creating a major research park and in recruiting and incubating many

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new businesses. The RTP, however, had a ‘‘first mover’’ advantage, so replicating that experience now, given the proliferation of research parks in cities around the world, may be difficult. But those interested in metropolitan economic development might ask this question: How can partnerships between both public and private organizations and university officials be strengthened to increase an area’s human capital, and its attractiveness to both residents and businesses? There may be many different answers to this question depending on local circumstances.20 Another lesson from the development of the Research Triangle metro is the importance of collaboration among the public, civic, nonprofit, and private sectors. This was clearly critical to the RTP’s development. The three research universities put aside their rivalries, the universities and the business community found common ground, and the state and local governments supported the effort by making infrastructure improvements. Whether from ‘‘a generosity of spirit’’ or enlightened self-interest, the willingness of these diverse parties to work across traditional boundaries was essential to creating the RTP and to spurring the area’s development. Cooperation among the area’s political jurisdictions has also been important. While no leader in regional cooperation, the Research Triangle has managed to create a joint airport authority, a regional transportation authority, and several more informal cooperative arrangements. Such cooperation has clearly been needed to accommodate the Triangle’s growth, although additional cooperation is clearly needed. The lesson for other metropolitan areas is to look for ways to act as a region, rather than as a collection of individual communities. The importance of public investment in both physical and institutional infrastructure is another lesson to be drawn from the Research Triangle experience. Early infrastructure investments, such as Raleigh-Durham Airport and Interstate 40, were crucial to

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the area’s growth. Moreover, as the region has grown, keeping up with the need for improved and expanded infrastructure— transportation, water, schools, and other supports—has been essential. State and local investments in institutional infrastructure have been equally important to the area’s development. Public investments in the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, the NC IDEA, the Triangle J Council of Governments, and other organizations that provide information and analysis, technical assistance, marketing, and other services have been essential. The directors and staffs of these organizations have looked to the future and helped prepare the area for anticipated changes. Other metropolitan areas might consider investing in similar institutional infrastructure. A final lesson from the Research Triangle experience is that rapid growth comes with both blessings and curses. On the one hand, the Triangle area’s rapid growth has led to relatively low unemployment rates and relatively high incomes. It has also led to expanding cultural opportunities and the creation of a sense of regional vibrancy. On the other hand, growth has brought traffic congestion, air and water pollution, water-supply issues, difficulty in responding to public infrastructure needs, particularly school construction, and social conflict. While many slowly growing or declining metro areas might be more than willing to accept these growth-related problems, they are not inevitable. With comprehensive regional planning and growth controls, the benefits of growth can be achieved while minimizing growth-related problems.

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n o t e s

Introduction

1.

Previous research suggests that metropolitan growth is influenced by three sets of factors: The characteristics of the population; the characteristics of business and industry; and locational characteristics such as climate, tax rates, cost of living, transportation and communication infrastructure, and cultural and recreational activities. The interactions among these factors, however, play out very differently in individual metropolitan areas. If we hope to further understanding of metropolitan growth, we must understand how the characteristics of people, industry, and places come together to determine specific metropolitan trajectories.

2.

U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘American Fact Finder,’’ http://factfinder.census.gov, accessed August 10, 2010.

3.

Ibid.

4.

Ibid.

5.

N.C. Office of Budget and Management, ‘‘County/State Population Projections,’’

http://www.osbm.state.nc.us/ncosbm/facts_and_figures,

accessed

August 10, 2010.

Chapter 1. Early History

1.

Sam Bass Warner, Greater Boston: Adapting Regional Traditions to the Present (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 19.

2.

Kevin Stewart and Mary-Russell Roberson, Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 36.

3.

Ibid.

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4.

Andy R. Bobyarchick and John A. Diemer, The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for a New Century, ed. Douglas M. Orr, Jr. and Alfred W. Stuart (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 10–11.

5.

Ibid.

6.

Donald Steila, ‘‘Soils,’’ in Orr and Stuart, The North Carolina Atlas, 40.

7.

William G. DiNome, ‘‘American Indians,’’ in Encyclopedia of North Carolina, ed. W. Stevens Powell and Jay Mazzocchi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 33.

8.

Ibid.

9.

J. Bradley Anderson, Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Caro-

10.

R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., ‘‘Great Trading Path’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, eds.,

lina (Durham: Duke University Press,1990), 8.

Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 533–534. 11.

DiNome, ‘‘Settlement Patterns,’’ 1020.

12.

Elizabeth Shreve Ryan, Orange County Trio: Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina and Carrboro, North Carolina, Histories and Tour Guides (Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill Press, 2004), 4.

13.

Ibid.

14.

Ibid.

15.

Ibid., 5.

16.

‘‘The name ‘Hillsborough’ had been shortened to ‘Hillsboro’ during the 1800s, and the altered version was the accepted spelling, until the historic-preservation movement of the 1960s prompted a move to have the ‘ugh’ officially restored.’’ Ibid., 56.

17.

Ibid., 6.

18.

Anderson, Durham County, 24.

19.

Ryan, Orange County Trio, 8.

20. Anderson, Durham County, 28. 21.

Ryan, Orange County Trio, 10–11.

22. William S. Powell, ‘‘Regulator Movement,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 958. 23. Anderson, Durham County, 32.

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24. Alan K. Lamm, ‘‘American Revolution,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 40. 25. Anderson, Durham County, 35–36. 26. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 16. 27. Anderson, Durham County, 35. 28. Ibid., 42. 29. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 19. 30. David A. Norris, Capitals, ‘‘Colonial and State,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 179. 31.

J. Vickers, Raleigh, City of Oaks: An Illustrated History (Woodland Hills, Calif.: Windsor, 1997), 15.

32. Ibid. 33. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 19. 34.

Ibid.

35. Vickers, Raleigh, City of Oaks, 19. 36. Ibid. 37.

W. D. Snider, Light on the Hill: A History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 3.

38. Kemp Plummer Battle quoted in ibid., 4. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 7. 41.

Ibid., 8.

42. Ibid., 10. 43. Kemp Plummer Battle quoted in ibid., 11. 44. Snider, Light on the Hill, 12. 45. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 135–136. 46. Ibid., 136. 47. Ibid., 138. 48. Ibid. 49. David R. Goldfield, ‘‘History,’’ in Orr and Stuart, The North Carolina Atlas, 54. 50. Ibid., 53–54. 51.

Ryan, Orange County Trio, 22.

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52. Chapel Hill Bicentennial Commission, A Backward Glance: Facts of Life in Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill Bicentennial Commission, 1994). 53. Anderson, Durham County, 101. 54. Ibid., 102. 55.

Ibid.

56. Jim E. Wise, Durham: A Bull City Story (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002), 27. 57.

Ibid.

58. This line roughly followed the Great Indian Path and became the backbone of the Piedmont Crescent, which transformed the North Carolina economy in the twentieth century. See Goldfield, ‘‘History,’’ 55. 59. Wise, Durham, 30. 60. Ibid. 61.

Ibid., 30–31.

62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 8–9. The type of seed used and soil qualities of the area are also important to creating bright leaf tobacco. 64. Anderson, Durham County, 112, 139. 65. Wise, Durham, 35. 66. Anderson, Durham County, 115–116. 67. The mayor of Raleigh surrendered the city, which saved it from being destroyed. It was in Raleigh that Sherman received word that Lincoln had been assassinated; he is credited with saving the city from ruin by restricting his troops to barracks until emotions settled down. 68. Johnston surrendered not only his thirty-two thousand troops but an additional fifty-two thousand Confederate soldiers in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. 69. Anderson, Durham County, 126. 70. Julian Carr quoted in Wise, Durham, 80. 71.

Anderson, Durham County, 145.

72. The year before Brody Duke joined his father’s firm, a young man named George W. Watts bought a share in W. Duke, Sons and Company and moved from Baltimore to Durham. He would go on to become one of Durham’s, and indeed North Carolina’s, most important philanthropists. He built Durham’s

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first hospital in 1894 and donated it to the county, and when that facility no longer adequately served Durham’s growing population, he built a replacement. 73.

Wise, Durham, 75.

74. Anderson, Durham County, 177. 75.

Wise, Durham, 79.

76. Rodney D. Barfield, in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 825. 77.

Kenneth Boyd quoted in Wise, Durham, 82.

78. Wise, Durham, 97. 79. The land donated by Carr had been used as a park, which included a racetrack. The lumber from the racetrack’s grandstands was used to construct the college’s gymnasium. 80. Professor John Spencer Bassett quoted in Wise, Durham, 103. 81.

Anderson, Durham County, 329–330.

82. J. Morrill Bryan, Duke University: An Architectural Tour (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), vii. 83. Ibid., viii. 84. Robert F. Durden, ‘‘Duke University,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 359. 85. Wise, Durham, 128. 86. Anderson, Durham County, 384. 87. Allen W. Trelease, ‘‘Reconstruction,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 949–950. 88. Goldfield, ‘‘History,’’ 61. 89. Ibid., 61. 90. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided grants of federal lands to states. Funds from the sale of those lands were to be used to support colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts (engineering). 91.

Walter H. Page quoted in Vickers, Raleigh, City of Oaks, 82–83.

92. William C. Harris, ‘‘North Carolina State University,’’ in Powell and Mazzocchi, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 831–832. 93. Vickers, Raleigh, City of Oaks, 58.

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94. Ibid. 95. Ibid., 123–124. 96. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 175–176. 97. Ibid., 289. 98. Carrboro was originally called West End; then its name was changed to Venable in honor of the university president, and finally in 1911, it was changed to Carrboro to honor Julius S. Carr, who purchased the two largest mills in the town and adopted enlightened management practices such as profit sharing and worker participation in management decisions. 99. Ryan, Orange County Trio, 206. 100. Due to the unwillingness of property owners to pay a portion of the cost, Chapel Hill’s main streets were not fully paved until the early 1940s.

Chapter 2. The Birth of the Research Triangle Metropolitan Area

1.

U.S. Census Bureau, Metropolitan Area, http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ tiger/glossary.html.

2.

Alfred E. Eckes, ‘‘The South and Economic Globalization, 1950 to the Future,’’ in Globalization and the American South, ed. J. C. Cobb and W. Whitney Stueck (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 39.

3.

Ibid., 47.

4.

Albert N. Link, A Generosity of Spirit: The Early History of the Research Triangle Park (Research Triangle Park: Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, 1995), 10.

5.

Charles Larrabee, Many Missions: Research Triangle Institute’s First 31 Years (Research Triangle Park: Research Triangle Institute, 1991), 58.

6.

John Wilson Productions, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park: An Investment in the Future, 2008.

7.

M. I. Luger and H. A. Goldstein, Technology in the Garden: Research Parks and Regional Economic Development (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 77.

8.

Ibid., 79.

9.

Albert N. Link, From Seed to Harvest: The Growth of the Research Triangle Park (Research Triangle Park: Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, 2002), 36–37.

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10.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 10.

11.

Luther H. Hodges quoted in ibid., 2.

12.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 29.

13.

Walter W. Harper quoted in ibid., 29.

14.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 30.

15.

Ibid., 34.

16.

Ibid., 49, citing Harper.

17.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit,, 41–42.

18.

Harper quoted in ibid., 42.

19.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit,, 44.

20. John Wilson Productions, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park: An Investment in the Future, 2008. 21.

Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 42.

22. Ibid., 55. 23. Ibid., 58. 24. Luger and Goldstein, Technology in the Garden, 77. 25. Davis quoted in Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 68. 26. Bill Friday quoted in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. 27. Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 73. 28. Ibid., 40. 29. Herbert kept the title of president emeritus and remained on the institute’s board of governors as vice chairman until his death in 1995. Obituary, Durham Herald Sun, January 16, 1995. 30. Larrabee, Many Missions, 5. 31.

Ibid., 23.

32. Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 78. 33. Franco quoted in ibid., 78. 34. Larrabee, Many Missions, 84. 35. Pearson Stewart, personal interview, June 20, 2007. 36. Link, A Generosity of Spirit, 84. 37.

Elizabeth J. Aycock quoted in ibid., 90.

38. Gertrude Elion quoted in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. 39. Luger and Goldstein, Technology in the Garden, 50.

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40. Rick L. Weddle, Elizabeth Rooks, and Tina Valdencanas, Research Triangle Park: Evolution and Renaissance (Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, 2006), 4. 41.

Sabine Vollmer, ‘‘Planner Devoted Career to RTP,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, April 8, 2007, E4.

42. Ibid. 43. Stewart, interview, June 20, 2007. 44. Ibid. 45. Weddle, Rooks, and Valdencanas, Research Triangle Park, 6. 46. Luger and Goldstein, Technology in the Garden, 94. 47. Liz Rooks, personal interview, August 15, 2007. 48. Weddle, Rooks, and Valdencanas, Research Triangle Park, 6. 49. Luger and Goldstein, Technology in the Garden, 88. 50. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, BEA Archive: Regional Accounts, http://www .bea.gov/regional/. 51.

Rick Weddle, personal interview, October 29, 2007.

52. Link, From Seed to Harvest, 51. 53. Rooks interview. 54. Hammer, Siler and George Associates, The Research Triangle Park: The First Forty Years (Silver Spring, Md.: Hammer, Siler and George Associates, 1999), v. 55.

Retrieved from the RTP website, http://www.rtp.org/files/Fact%20Sheets/rtp_ general.pdf, accessed May 28, 2010.

56. Weddle, Rooks, and Valdencanas, Research Triangle Park, 7. 57.

Urban Land Institute, Research Triangle Park Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2008), 21.

58. Rick Weddle, ‘‘Research Triangle Park: Evolution and Renaissance,’’ paper presented at the International Association of Science Parks World Conference, Helsinki, June 2006. 59. IBM Building Consulting Services, Triangle Innovation Project: Practices and Possibilities for Regional Innovation, Research Triangle Park, 2005. 60. Urban Land Institute, Research Triangle Park, 21. 61.

Ibid., 10

62. David Bracken, ‘‘RTP’s Vacancy Rate Hits 27%,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, November 26, 2009, 4B. { 256 }

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63. Rooks interview. 64. Rick Weddle, personal interview, October 7, 2007. 65. Rusti Rains, ‘‘Raleigh-Durham Army Air Field,’’ in Encyclopedia of North Carolina, ed. W. Stevens Powell and Jay Mazzocchi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 943–944. 66. Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, Raleigh-Durham Airport Long-Range Development Master Plan and Environmental Assessment: Summary Report (Research Triangle Park: Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, 1980). 67. Rickenbacker quoted in RDU History, http://www.rdu.com/aboutrdu/history .htm, accessed November 12, 2007. 68. J. Bradley Anderson, Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina (Durham: Duke University Press,1990), 359. 69. Ibid. 70. From RDU History, http://www.rdu.com/aboutrdu/history.htm. 71.

From RDU History, http://www.rdu.com/aboutrdu/stats.htm, accessed May 28, 2010.

72. From Terminal 2, http://www.rdu.com/terminal2/aboutproject/architecture.htm, accessed May 28, 2010. 73.

RDU Airport Authority, RDU Airport Authority Annual Report, 2006 (Research Triangle Park: Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, 2006), 14.

74. From Fast Facts, http://www.rdu.com/news/fastfact.htm. 75.

Adam Price, ‘‘To Shore: North Carolina’s Struggle to Build Interstate 40 to the Atlantic Coast,’’ Gribble Nation, http://www.gribblenation.com/ncpics/history/ i40.html, accessed June 1, 2010.

76. Quoted in ibid. 77.

Ibid.

78. U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘Characteristics of the Population, Number of Inhabitants, North Carolina,’’ 1980 Census of Population, Table 2.

Chapter 3. Population Growth and Its Impact

1.

N.C. Office of Budget and Management, ‘‘County/State Population Projections,’’ www.osbm.state.nc.us/ncosbm/facts-and-figures, accessed July 23, 2008.

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2.

T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Crisis Was Years in the Making,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, May 6, 2007, News section.

3.

Of the seven counties in the Triangle, Wake had the lowest 2008–2009 property tax rate at fifty-three cents per hundred dollars of valuation. Chatham County was a distant second with a sixty-five cent rate, while Orange was the highest with a ninety-nine cent rate (North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, Research and Survey, http://www.ncacc.org/taxrate.htm), accessed September 23, 2010.

4.

The Council for Community and Economic Research, ACCRA Cost of Living Index, http://www.coli.org/AboutIndex.asp, accessed October 18, 2008.

5.

Kristin Collins and Lorenzo Perez, ‘‘Cary Booms Again: It’s Ranked 5th in Growth,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, July 10, 2008, News section.

6.

Intersil, ‘‘Living There: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina,’’ Intersil Americas Inc., http://www.intersil.com/about/RTPLiving.asp., accessed July 8, 2008.

7. 8.

John Hodges-Copple, personal interview, April 17, 2007. Maia Dery, Adventure Guide to the Triangle (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 2005), 216. In the early 1930s the land making up the current park was exhausted farmland. The Federal Resettlement Administration purchased it from its private owners and the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed several lakes, roads, picnic shelters, and other improvements. The area was turned over to the state in 1943 and it was incorporated into the state park system. In 1950 over a thousand acres of the park were designated as the Reedy Creek State Park, which was to serve the African American population of the area. The two parks were reunited in 1966.

9.

The Eno River State Park was created in 1972 after the Eno River Association thwarted a plan to dam the river. The association continues to advocate and fund-raise to expand the size of the park.

10.

Falls Lake was built by the Army Corps of Engineers between 1978 and 1983, primarily for flood protection. But water supply to Raleigh, and recreation, fishing, and wildlife conservation were also important objectives. Raleigh draws up to a hundred million gallons of water per day from the lake to help quench the thirst of its ever-growing population.

11.

Jordan Lake was built by the Army Corps of Engineering between 1967 and 1982. It was designed to control flooding in the Cape Fear River Basin, provide

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additional drinking water to a growing population, offer recreational opportunities, and conserve fish and wildlife. 12. 13.

Dery, Adventure Guide to the Triangle, 23. Ida Phillips Lynch, The Duke Forest at 75: A Resource for All Seasons (Durham: Office of the Duke Forest, 2006), 12. In 2004 Duke University voluntarily entered into the North Carolina Registry of Natural Heritage Areas, indicating that the university intends to maintain the land in its natural state.

14.

North Carolina Botanical Garden, ‘‘A Conservation Garden,’’ http://www.ncbg .unc.edu (accessed April 1, 2009).

15.

The N.C. Botanical Garden recently completed a new thirty-thousand-squarefoot ‘‘green’’ Education Center that is said to be the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum building in the state.

16.

Triangle Land Conservancy, ‘‘About TLC,’’ http://www.triangleland.org/about/

17.

Chris Gaffney and Rex Miller, ‘‘Poised to Fly,’’ Independent Weekly, June 6,

about.shtml (accessed April 1, 2009).

2007. 18.

Originally a privately-owned stadium called El Toro Park, it was purchased by the city in 1933 and its name was changed to the Durham Athletic Park.

19.

A local sports writer, quoted in Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), suggests that the area’s passion for basketball grew out of its agricultural economy: ‘‘The dominant culture in North Carolina in the Fifties and even the Sixties was agriculture, and tobacco in particular. People worked like hell in the heat of the summer and in the fall. Then, in the wintertime, they listened to college basketball on the radio and went to basketball games at the high schools,’’ 64–65.

20. Blythe, To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, 64. 21.

Ibid., 5.

22. Ibid., 6. 23. Collins and Perez, ‘‘Cary Booms Again.’’ 24. U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘State of Birth,’’ 1970 Census of Population and Housing, retrieved from Minnesota Population Center, National Historical Geographic Information System: Pre-release Version 0.1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2004), http://www.nhgis.org/. n o t e s

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25. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, retrieved from Minnesota Population Center. 26. U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘County to County Migration Flow Files,’’ 2000 Census of Population and Housing. 27. Kristin Collins and Lorenzo Perez, ‘‘Immigrant Tide May Be Turning,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, November 23, 2008, News section. 28. U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘Social Explorer.’’ All data is reported in 1999 adjusted dollars. The percentage of households in the $0–$9,999 bracket dropped from 25.64 percent in 1970 to 8.14 percent in 2000 while the percentage in the $150,000 plus category went from .62 percent to 5.46 percent. 29. This is probably a very conservative figure given that a substantial proportion of the Hispanics in North Carolina are undocumented, thus are not likely to cooperate with the census and the American Community Survey. 30. See Paul Luebke, Tar Heel Politics 2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), for a discussion of the dominance of the Democratic Party from the Reconstruction era through the mid-1960s. 31.

Luebke, Tar Heel Politics 2000, 189. At the state level many of the registered Democrats began to ‘‘crossover to vote for Republican candidates at this time. In 1972 the state supported Richard Nixon for President, Jesse Helms for U.S. senator and Jim Holshouser for governor.’’

32. Schley R. Lyons, ‘‘Government and Politics,’’ Orr, Jr. and Stuart, The North Carolina Atlas, 248. 33. Other challenges related to rapid population growth and diversification include maintaining air quality, preserving open space, and providing a sufficient supply of affordable housing close to employment centers. Unfortunately there is insufficient space in this book to cover those challenges. 34. Rex Clay and H. William Heller, ‘‘Public Education,’’ in Orr and Stuart, The North Carolina Atlas, 340–354. 35. Marti Maguire and Peggy Lim, ‘‘Wake Schools Upheaval Rattles Families,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, May 6, 2007, News section. 36. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Money from Bonds Will Go to Work Soon,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, November 8, 2006, News section.

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37.

Bob Geary, ‘‘Breaking Point,’’ Independent Weekly, February 28, 2007, News Feature, 17.

38. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Wake Proposes 30 School Sites,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, October 4, 2006, News section. 39. Kinea White Epps, ‘‘Wake Schools Fight Goes Year-Round,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, March 14, 2008, News section. 40. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Diverse Wake Schools Famous,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, July 31, 2007, News section. 41.

T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Wake Schools Relax Goals on Student Diversity,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 25, 2007, News section.

42. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Wake to Seek Parity in Schools,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 5, 2007, News section. 43. Rob Waters, ‘‘School Diversity: Why Does Wake Keep Trying?’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 11, 2009, News section. 44. T. Keung Hui and Kinea White Epps, ‘‘Wake Schools Regain Control over YearRound Assignments,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, May 7, 2008, News section. 45. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Critics Mobilizing for Election,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 2, 2009, News section. 46. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Parents Out to Shake Up Schools,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 6, 2009, News section. 47. T. Keung Hui, and Thomas Goldsmith, ‘‘Partisan Money Pours In,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, October 2, 2009; T. Keung Hui, ‘‘2 Invested Big in Schools Race,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 9, 2010, News section. 48. Herbert Baker, ‘‘Wake Co. Vote Ends Bussing for Diversity,’’ Chapel Hill Herald, March 23, 2010,M4. 49. T. Keung Hui and Thomas Goldsmith, ‘‘School Board Majority May Search Wide,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 18, 2010, News section. 50. T. Keung Hui, ‘‘Wake Board Sticks with Hargens,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, April 7, 2010, News section. 51.

Matthew Eisley and Kinea White Epps, ‘‘Could Growth Hobble Wake?’’ Raleigh News and Observer, May 13, 2007, News section.

52. David Schrank and Tim Lomax, 2007 Urban Mobility Report (College Station: Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M University, 2007), B-26.

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53. Special Transit Advisory Commission, Regional Transit Vision Plan: Recommendations for North Carolina’s Research Triangle Region (Research Triangle Park: Special Transit Advisory Commission, 2008), 1. 54. Schrank and Lomax, 2007 Urban Mobility Report, 39. 55.

Mack Paul, ‘‘Where N.C. Could Stand Some Stimulating—On Transit,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 13, 2009, Editorial section.

56. Figures courtesy of the N.C. Department of Transportation. 57.

N.C. Department of Transportation, ‘‘Western Wake Freeway: Project Chronology,’’

http://www.ncdot.org/projects/i540/download/westernwake_chrono

logy.pdf., accessed April 2, 2008; Kurumi.com, ‘‘Interstate 540: North Carolina,’’ http://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/i540.html, accessed April 2, 2008. 58. Brian LeBlanc, ‘‘Interstate 540,’’ Wake County Roads, http://www.wakecounty roads.com/numbered/i540.html, accessed April 2, 2008. 59. Matthew Eisley and Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘I-540 Steers Swift Growth,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 9, 2007, News section. 60. Mark Roberts, ‘‘I-540 Speeds Growth in Knightdale,’’ WRAL.com, June 19, 2007, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1501713/, accessed April 3, 2008. 61.

Eisley and Siceloff, ‘‘I-540 Steers Swift Growth.’’

62. Ibid. 63. North Carolina Turnpike Authority, ‘‘North Carolina Turnpike Authority: Home,’’ http://www.ncturnpike.org., accessed April 2, 2008. 64. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Bonds Raise $624 Million for Toll Road,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, July 15, 2009, News section; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Turnpike Board Starts Spending for the Toll Road,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, July 30, 2009, News section. 65. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Southern Wake Loop in Planning,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, October 22, 2009, News section; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Southern Wake Loop’s Roadwork to Start in 2014,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, March 30, 2010, News section. 66. Syd Miller, personal interview, February 20, 2009. 67. Most households outside urbanized areas rely on private wells for their water supplies.

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68. N.C. Division of Water Resources, Jordan Lake Water Supply Storage Allocation Recommendations, October 2001 (Raleigh: Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 2001), ii. 69. Water Resources Advisory Committee, Water Supply Plan Report, May 1995 (Research Triangle Park: Triangle J Council of Governments, 1995), 2. 70. Sloane Heffernan, ‘‘Economist: Water Shortage, Tighter Restrictions May Dampen Business,’’ WRAL.com, August 28, 2007, http://www.wral.com/news/ local/story/1749418/, accessed February 16, 2009. 71.

Bruce Mildwurf, ‘‘Rains Boost Raleigh, Durham Water Supplies,’’ WRAL.com, December 31, 2007, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2236132/, accessed February 16, 2009.

72. Department of Water Management, ‘‘Durham Eases Water Restrictions— Allowing Outdoor Watering,’’ City of Durham, April 1, 2008, http://www.dur hamnc.gov/news/NewsDisplay.cfm?vNewsID1535, accessed February 16, 2009. 73.

Mildwurf, ‘‘Rains Boost Raleigh.’’

74. Tammy Biodi, ‘‘Raleigh-Durham Drought Forces Residents to Cut Water Use,’’ About.com Raleigh-Durham, http://raleighdurham.about.com/od/localgovern menthistory/a/RaleighDrought.htm. , accessed February 16, 2009. 75.

Matthew Eisley, ‘‘As Water Levels Sink, Houses Likely Will Continue to Rise,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 20, 2008, News section.

76. Ibid. 77.

The other major water systems in the Triangle were in a much better position but they too began to question whether changing weather patterns may result in future supply problems.

78. Dave Moreau, interview, February 25, 2009. 79. Sydney Miller, ‘‘Future Water Supplies for Durham and Its Neighbors,’’ report issued by the Triangle J Council of Governments, January 8, 2008. 80. Beau Minnick, ‘‘Rolesville, Raleigh Mayors Exchange Words over Water,’’ WRAL .com, May 30, 2008, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2959784/, accessed February 16, 2009. 81.

Beau Minnick, ‘‘Raleigh Asks Franklin County Not to Drink from Neuse,’’ WRAL .com, February 19, 2008, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2455613/, accessed February 16, 2009.

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82. Samuel Spies, ‘‘Talks Begin on New Water-Sharing Deal,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, August 15, 2007, News section. 83. Miller interview. 84. Triangle J Council of Governments, ‘‘Regional Conservation Work Group Recommendations for Year-Round Water Conservation Measures,’’ report issued by Triangle J Council of Governments, October 23, 2008. 85. Miller interview. 86. Moreau interview. 87. Miller, ‘‘Future Water Supplies.’’ 88. John D. Kasarda and James H. Johnson, Jr., The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: Frank Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, 2006). 89. Paul Quadros, A Home on the Field: How One Championship Soccer Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town American (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). Kasarda and Johnson (Economic Impact) found that Hispanics were responsible for adding $9.2 billion a year to the North Carolina economy. 90. Pew Center for the People and the Press, ‘‘America’s Immigration Quandary,’’ March 30, 2006, http://people-press.org/report/274/Americas-immigrationquandary, accessed December 27, 2010. 91.

Pew Center for the People and the Press, ‘‘Attitudes Toward Immigration: In Black and White,’’ April 2006, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/21/Attitudestoward-immigration-in-black-and-white, accessed December 27, 2010.

92. Ned Glascock and David Raynor, ‘‘Diversity Moves In,’’ Raleigh News and Observer April 8, 2001, News section. 93. Pew Center, ‘‘Attitudes Toward Immigration.’’ 94. Paula McClain et al., ‘‘Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Latino Immigrant Views of Black Americans,’’ Journal of Politics, August 2006, 571–584. 95. Mai Nguyen and Hannah Gill, ‘‘The 287(g) Program: The Costs and Consequences of Local Immigration Enforcement in North Carolina Communities,’’ UNC Center for Global Initiatives: The Latino Migration Project, www.isa .unc.edu/migration/resources.asp., accessed December 27, 2010. By contrast the city of Durham has ‘‘focused on identifying and punishing serious crimes rather than using the program as an anti- immigration tool.’’ Between February

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2008 and April 2009 only eighty-two people were subject to immigration checks, sixty-four of whom were processed for deportation. 96. Hannah Gill et al., ‘‘Legal and Social Perspectives on Local Enforcement of Immigration under the 287(g) Program,’’ Popular Government (Spring/Summer 2009), 12–21. 97. Hannah Gill et al., ‘‘Legal and Social.’’ 98. Edmond Caldwell Jr. ‘‘The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association’s Perspective on the 287(g) Jail Enforcement Model,’’ Popular Government (Spring/Summer 2009), 2–11. 99. ‘‘Latinos Feel a Tug on the Welcome Mat,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 8, 2008, News section. 100. N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, ‘‘Population Estimates and Projections,’’

http://www.osbm.state.nc.us/ncosbm/facts-and-figures/socioeco

nomicdata/population-estimates.shtm, accessed December 27, 2010.

Chapter 4. The Evolving Research Triangle Economy

1.

Michael L. Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age: Challenges and Opportunities in a Globalizing Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xiv.

2.

Ibid.

3.

Ibid., 22.

4.

Wake County Economic Development Program, Research Triangle Regional Databook 2006–2007 (Raleigh: Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, 2008).

5.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ‘‘Full and Part Time Employees by Major Industry,’’ http://bls.gov/iag/home.htm, accessed December 27, 2010. The 2006 data were recategorized to account for changes in industry codes.

6.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ‘‘Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages,’’ ftp://ftp.bis.gov/publspecial.requests/cew/ accessed December 27, 2010.

7. 8.

Ted Abernathy, personal interview, April 16, 2009. Peter K. Eisinger, The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State: State and Local Economic Development Policy in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

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9.

Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

10.

Jesse White, Director, Office of Economic and Business Development, UNC– Chapel Hill, introduced me to the notion of intentional economic development infrastructure.

11.

Link, From Seed to Harvest, 91.

12.

Ibid., 93.

13.

Ibid.

14.

John Wilson Productions, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park: An Investment in the Future, 2008.

15.

North Carolina Biotechnology Center, ‘‘About Us: Historical Perspective,’’ http://www.ncbiotech.org/about_us/history/index.html, accessed July 24, 2009.

16.

North Carolina Biotechnology Center, ‘‘About Us: FAQ,’’ http://www.ncbiotech .org/about_us/faq/index.html, accessed July 24, 2009.

17.

Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age, 121.

18.

Charles Hayes, personal interview, June 14, 2009.

19.

Research Triangle Regional Partnership, ‘‘About Us,’’ Research Triangle Region, http:// www.researchtriangle.org, accessed April 20, 2009.

20. Hayes interview. 21.

Triangle Community Foundation, How the Triangle Gives Back: A Report to the Region (Research Triangle Park: Triangle Community Foundation, 2008), 24.

22. Ibid. 23. Abernathy interview. 24. David L. Birch, The Job Generation Process (Cambridge: M.I.T. Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change, 1979). 25. SAS Institute Inc., ‘‘About SAS: Corporate Statistics,’’ http://www.sas.com/ company/about/statistics.html, accessed May 29, 2009. 26. Four years later Dennis Gillings and a group of investors bought the company back, and by 2008 Quintiles had offices in fifty countries, a worldwide staff of twenty-three thousand, seventeen hundred employees at its RTP facility, and

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$3 billion in revenues. In 2007 Gillings and his wife Joan provided the UNC School of Public Health with a $50 million gift. 27. Council for Entrepreneurial Development, ‘‘History: Timeline,’’ http://www .cednc.org/content/history/167, accessed July 26, 2009. 28. Council for Entrepreneurial Development, ‘‘About CED,’’ http://www.cednc.rog/ content/about/160, accessed July 26 2009. 29. Ibid. 30. First Flight Venture Center, ‘‘About FFVC,’’ http://www.ffvcnc.org/center _information.cfm, accessed July 13, 2007. 31.

Ibid.

32. ‘‘NC IDEA Gives $225,000 in Grants to Boost Seven N.C. Startups,’’ WRAL .com, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1056147/, July 3, 2006, accessed April 17, 2009. 33. Localtechwire, ‘‘NC IDEA Helps Kick-Start Five Startups with $200,000 in Grants,’’ localtechwire.com, http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_ wire/venture/story/5303050/ accessed April 17, 2009. 34. Paul Smaglik, ‘‘North Carolina: Building the Triangle,’’ Nature 416, 4–5 (2002), http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v416/n6876/full/nj6876-04a.html. 35. Council for Entrepreneurial Development, ‘‘2005 North Carolina Venture Report,’’ http://www.cednc.org/resources/reports_and_surveys/vc_report/2005 .pdf., accessed July 26, 2009. 36. Abernathy interview. 37.

Tony Waldrop, personal interview, April 29, 2009.

38. Adam Linker, ‘‘Duke Leads Local Universities in Licensing Revenue; NCSU First in Patents,’’ Triangle Business Journal, December 7, 2007, http://triangle.biz journals.com/triangle/stories/2007/12/10/story 7.html. 39. Ibid. 40. Association of University Technology Managers, AUTM U.S. Licensing Activity Survey: FY2007 (Deerfield, Ill.: AUTM, 2007), 44, 45, 47. 41.

Tim Simmons, ‘‘University Inventions’ Cash Value Unrealized,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, May 14, 2009, News section.

42. Association of University Technology Managers, AUTM U.S. Licensing Activity Survey, 44, 45, 47.

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43. ‘‘Viamet Pharmaceuticals Raises $18M,’’ Triangle Business Journal, July 7, 2009,

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2009/07/06/daily20

.html?fet85&jste_cn_lk&ianae_du_pap&sdu&ed2009-07-07. 44. Paige Meszaros, ‘‘The History of North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus,’’ Centennial Campus Documentation Project, 2004, http://www.lib .ncsu.edu/specialcollections/centennialcampus/, accessed August 4, 2009. 45. North Carolina State University Centennial Campus, ‘‘Overview: Vision of the Future,’’ http://centennial.ncsu.edu/overview/index.html, accessed August 4, 2009. 46. Meszaros, ‘‘History of NCSU’s Centennial Campus.’’ 47. North Carolina State University Centennial Campus, ‘‘Overview: What Is Centennial Campus?’’ http://centennial.ncse.edu/overview/whatiscc.html, accessed August 4, 2009. 48. Meszaros, ‘‘History of NCSU’s Centennial Campus.’’ 49. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ‘‘What Is Carolina North?’’ http:// research.unc.edu/carolina-north/what-is-carolina-north/index.htm, accessed August 4, 2009. 50. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ‘‘The Innovation Center,’’ http://re search.unc.edu/carolina-north/innovation-center/index.htm, accessed August 4, 2009. 51.

Hayes interview.

52. Joyce Betty Nash, ‘‘The Loan Rangers,’’ Business North Carolina, December 1, 1993. 53. Lynn Adler and Jim Mayer, ‘‘Martin Eakes: Self Help,’’ Faith, Hope, and Capital, Public Broadcasting Service, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/capital/stories/mar tin-eakes-print.html. 54. Jim Nesbitt, ‘‘Martin Eakes—Part 1,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 18, 2005, News section. 55.

Roberto G. Quercia, Michael A. Stegman, Walter R. Davis, and Eric Stein, ‘‘Performance of Community Reinvestment Loans: Implications for Secondary Market Purchases,’’ in Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal, ed. Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press and Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2002), 348–374.

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56. Self-Help, ‘‘About Us: Impact,’’ http://www.selfhelp.org/about-us/impact-1, accessed September 6, 2009. 57.

Chris Quinn, ‘‘Weaver Street Market: The Making of a New Cooperative Store,’’ Cooperative Grocer, February–March 1989, 15. http://www.cooperativegrocer .coop/articles/index.php?id80.

58. Weaver Street Market, Annual Report 2008 (Carrboro: Weaver Street Market, 2009),

http://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/images/pdf/annualreport2008

low res.pdf. 59. Weaver Street Market, Annual Report 2007 (Carrboro: Weaver Street Market, 2008), http://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/index.php?optioncom_content &taskview&id283&Itemid366. 60. Weaver Street Market, Annual Report 2008. 61.

Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age, 122.

62. Hoover’s Company Records, ‘‘Nortel Networks Corporation,’’ Hoover’s Company Records—In-Depth Records, July 7, 2009, 4, retrieved from LexisNexis Academic. 63. Richard Gillies, ‘‘Nortel Will Sell Itself Off in Pieces,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, June 21, 2009, News section. 64. John Murawski, ‘‘Anxious Times for Nortel Workers,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, June 24, 2009, News section. 65. David Bracken, ‘‘RTP’s Vacancy Rate Hits 27%,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, November 26, 2009, News section. 66. See note 57 in Chapter 2. 67. Ted Abernathy and Peter M. Pellerito, Innovations @ Emerging Intersections: A Strategy to Maintain the Research Triangle Region’s Competitiveness in Life Sciences (Research Triangle Park: Research Triangle Regional Partnership, 2006), 2. 68. Hayes interview. 69. Pam Wall, personal interview, April 14, 2008. 70. Jesse White, personal interview, April 18, 2009. 71.

Liz Rooks, personal interview, August 15, 2007.

72. Hayes interview. 73.

Wall interview.

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74. Ibid. 75.

Hayes interview.

76. Research Triangle Regional Partnership, The Shape of Things to Come: The Economic Development Strategy for the Research Triangle Region, North Carolina (Research Triangle Park: RTRP, 2009), 14. 77.

Rick Weddle, personal interview, October 29, 2007.

78. Peter M. Pellerito, A Blueprint for Life Sciences Industry Growth in the Research Triangle Region (Research Triangle Park: RTRP, 2003), 16–19. 79. Research Triangle Regional Partnership, The Shape of Things to Come, 4. 80. Michael E. Porter, Clusters of Innovation: Regional Foundations of U.S. Competitiveness (Washington, D.C.: Council on Competitiveness, 2001). 81.

For example, a study by Michael Luger and Leslie Stewart (2003) built on the Porter report by assessing the clusters that were best suited to the Triangle’s sub-regions.

82. Research Triangle Regional Partnership, Staying on Top: Winning the Job Wars of the Future (Research Triangle Park: RTRP, 2004), 8. 83. Ibid. 84. Research Triangle Regional Partnership, The Shape of Things to Come, 8. 85. The Research Triangle Foundation has also been a steward of the Triangle area’s economy. It has commissioned two reports, one from IBM and one from the Research Triangle Institute, that assess the conditions for regional economic development and how the RTP needs to respond to those conditions. (See IBM Business Consulting Services, ‘‘Triangle Innovation Project Practices and Possibilities for Regional Innovation,’’ Research Triangle Park: Research Triangle Foundation, 2005 and RTI International, ‘‘Baseline Inventory: Innovation Systems in the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina,’’ Research Triangle Park, 2007.) 86. Wall interview. 87. Ibid. 88. Triangle Tomorrow, ‘‘About Triangle Tomorrow,’’ http://www.triangletomorrow .org/about/aboutUs.html, accessed December 27, 2010.

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89. Triangle Community Foundation, ‘‘About Us: Our Mission, Vision and Values,’’ http://www.trianglecf.org/about_us/Our_Mission_Vision_and_Values/, accessed December 27, 2010. 90. Hayes interview.

Chapter 5. Urban Development and Planning

1.

The exact definition of an urbanized area changed somewhat from census to census. For the 2000 census an urbanized area was defined as ‘‘contiguous, densely settled census block groups and census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements, along with adjacent densely settled census blocks that together encompass a population of at least 2,500 people, but fewer than 50,000 people’’ (see www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua_2k.html).

2.

Weddle interview.

3.

This analysis was conducted before the Raleigh-Durham MSA was broken into the Raleigh–Cary and the Durham–Chapel Hill MSA. Reid Ewing, Rolf Pendall and Don Chen ‘‘Measuring Sprawl and Its Impacts,’’ Washington, D.C.: Smart Growth America, 2002.

4.

Mitchell Silver, Kenneth Bowers, and Jason Reyes, ‘‘Designing a 21st Century City: The 2030 Comprehensive Plan After an Era of Sprawl,’’ PowerPoint presentation at the North Carolina chapter of the American Planning Association conference, October 2, 2009.

5.

Michelle Ernst and Lilly Shoup, Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making Great Neighborhoods) (Washington, D.C.: Transportation for America, 2009), 9.

6.

U.S. Census Bureau, Manufacturing, Mining and Construction Statistics, Building Permits, Table 3-Metropolitan Areas.

7.

Multifamily building permits are defined as buildings with five or more units.

8.

For further analysis, see Robert W. Burchell, ‘‘The Costs of Sprawl—2000’’ (Washington, D.C.: Transportation Research Board, 2002); Harold Frumkin et al., Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004); and David C.

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Soule, Urban Sprawl: A Comprehensive Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006). 9.

Soule, Urban Sprawl, 261.

10.

Silver, Bowers, and Reyes, ‘‘Designing a 21st Century City.’’

11.

City of Durham, ‘‘Transit Planning in Durham,’’ PowerPoint presentation given to the TJCOG Smart Growth Committee, October 23, 2009, www.durhamnc.gov.

12.

Town of Cary, ‘‘Transit-Supportive Plans, Policies, Activities,’’ PowerPoint presentation to the TJCOG Smart Growth Committee, October 23, 2009.

13.

See William M. Rohe, ‘‘From Local to Global: One Hundred Years of Neighborhood Planning,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 75, 2 (2009): 209–230, for a more complete description of neotraditional developments.

14.

I was a member of this task force.

15.

Joseph MacDonald and Michael Holmes, Case Study of Southern Village, NC: Comprehensive Report on the Impact of Urban Design on Water Resources (Chapel Hill: Water Resources Research Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004), http://newurbanismwatershed.unc.edu/PDF/Southern _village.pdf.

16.

Triangle Land Conservancy, ‘‘Our Work,’’ http://www.triangleland.org/lands/ our_work.shtml, accessed November 10, 2009.

17.

Triangle J Council of Governments, Triangle Land Conservancy, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Triangle GreenPrint Progress Report: Tracking Progress Toward Creating a Linked Regional Green Space Network in the Triangle (Research Triangle Park: TJCOG, 2005), iii.

18.

Triangle Land Conservancy, ‘‘Our Work.’’

19.

Triangle GreenPrint Project, ‘‘Project Overview,’’ http://www.trianglegreenprint .org/overview.htm, accessed December 27, 2010.

20. Triangle J Council of Governments et al., Triangle GreenPrint Progress Report. 21.

Jane Hall, ‘‘Slums, Housing Durham Targets,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, April 16, 1966, News section, 1.

22. Architect George Pyne quoted in Jim Wise, Durham: A Bull City Story (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002): 124. 23. Wise, Durham, 137.

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24. Andy Widmark quoted in Scott Huler, ‘‘The Bull City’s 5 Big Blunders,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, June 15, 1993, Day section, E1. 25. Andre´ Vann, Durham’s Hayti (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 1999). 26. Wise, Durham, 143. 27. The city agreed to finance a new $11 million parking garage to encourage this project. 28. Development Concepts Inc., Downtown Durham Master Plan (Durham: City of Durham, 1999). 29. Downtown Durham Inc., ‘‘About DDI,’’ http://www.downtowndurham.com/ index.php?optioncom_content&taskview&id15&Itemid31,

accessed

February 6, 2010. 30. Durham Bulls, ‘‘Bulls History,’’ http://www.dbulls.com/team/history.htm, accessed December 27, 2010. 31.

Wise, Durham, 153.

32. Ned Glascock, ‘‘Glaxo Pulls Out of Plan—Durham Loses a Centerpiece,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 15, 1991, News section, B1. 33. Daniel Levine, ‘‘Revitalizing Downtown Durham: Building on the Past, Forging the Future,’’ unpublished manuscript, 2006. 34. Two earlier attempts had been made to redevelop this property. In both instances sufficient financing could not be obtained and the facility remained vacant. 35. Personal communication, April 25, 2010. 36. On opening night B. B. King played to a sold-out crowd. 37.

David Menconi, ‘‘Durham Grabs Raleigh’s Musicals,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 18, 2010, News section, 1A.

38. Downtown Durham Inc., Downtown City Center District: Creating an Environment for Retail (Durham: Downtown Durham Inc., 2009), 14. 39. Other proposals that were not acted upon included building a stadium downtown and building a north-south freeway through downtown. 40. Guy Munger, ‘‘Letting Grass Grow on the Town’s Main Street,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 29, 1991, News section, K62. 41.

Ibid.

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42. City of Raleigh, Livable Streets: Raleigh Downtown Plan (Raleigh: City of Raleigh, 2003), 1. 43. The hotel occupancy tax is 6 percent, while the prepared food tax is 1 percent. 44. Jack Hagel, ‘‘It Was RBC Plaza Day in Raleigh,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, October 3, 2008, Business section, B10. 45. Ibid. 46. Ellen Sung and Josh Shaffer, ‘‘Raleigh Disconnects on Public Art,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 13, 2006, News section, A1. 47. WRAL News, ‘‘Plensa Withdraws from Raleigh Art Project,’’ WRAL.com, September 12, 2006, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1058023/, accessed July 29, 2009. 48. Josh Shaffer, ‘‘Raleigh Kisses Goodbye $2.5 Million Gift of Art,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 13, 2006, News section. 49. New Raleigh, ‘‘Striving for Sustainability: The Green Square Complex,’’ March 10,

2008,

http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/striving-for-sustain

ability-the-green-square-complex/, accessed July 29, 2009; David Menconi, ‘‘Competition Ramps Up Concerts,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 3, 2010, Arts and Living section. 50. Today five major transit providers serve the Triangle area. As of 2006, the largest provider was the Chapel Hill Transit System, which accommodated over 5.8 million trips. The Durham Transportation Authority accommodated over 4.4 million trips, the Capital Area Transportation Authority 3.9 million trips, and the Cary C-Tran 62 thousand trips. The main reason for the high ridership figures in Chapel Hill is that bus rides throughout the system are free, thanks to a substantial subsidy provided by UNC–Chapel Hill. 51.

Several of those interviewed credited the mayors of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, Avery Upchurch, Wib Gully, and Jonathan Howes, respectively, for their support for creating the TTA.

52. Triangle Transit Authority, ‘‘General Information,’’ Triangle Transit: Inside TTA, http://www.ridetta.org/Inside_TTA/General_Information/ GeneralInformation.html, accessed January 11, 2008. 53. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Light Rail—Can It Guide Growth and Fight Sprawl in the Triangle?’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 20, 1991, Perspective section, J1.

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54. Ibid. 55.

Ibid.

56. Ibid. 57.

Commuter rail stations would be farther apart and service would be less frequent than with light rail. The use of existing tracks would also limit the areas served.

58. Stephen Hoar, ‘‘Transit Options Debated—Consultants Describe Bus Lanes, Rail Lines,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, August 7, 1994, News section, C1. 59. Vicki Hyman, ‘‘Regional Rail Pact Hailed as Big Step,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 18, 2001, News section, B1. 60. Jean P. Fisher, ‘‘Rail System Planners Reconsider Duke Stop,’’ Durham HeraldSun, April 22, 1999, News section, C1. 61.

Ibid.

62. Stuart Leavenworth, ‘‘All Aboard, Ready or Not,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 22, 1998, News section, B1. 63. Lynn Bonner and Jay Price, ‘‘Transit Tax Gets Nod in Wake,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, November 4, 1997, News section, A1. 64. Rob Christensen, ‘‘Transit Is a Great Idea—But Not Here,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, March 9, 1998, News section, A3. 65. Lynn Bonner, ‘‘Transit Officials Examine Rail’s Costs, Benefits,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 9, 2003, News section, B3. 66. Bonnie Rochman, ‘‘Study: Rail Not the Best Solution,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, August 1, 2004, News section, B1. 67. Ibid. 68. ‘‘Los Angeles Think Tank Says Triangle Rail Doomed,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, June 22, 2004, News section, B4. 69. Vicki Hyman, ‘‘TTA Gets Green Light,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 11, 2003, News section, A1. 70. Sarah Lindenfeld Hall, ‘‘Planners Want Bustle at Rail Stops,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 12, 2003, News section, B3; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Business Forced to Yield to Rail Stations,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 31, 2004, News section, A1.

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71.

Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Building Rail System Nothing New for Transit Chief,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, August 1, 2004, News section, B1; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘TTA Plan Seeks Bigger Federal Share,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, September 11, 2004, News section, B1.

72. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Feds Hit Brakes on Rail Money,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 12, 2005, News section, A1. 73.

Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Gridlock Forecasts Disagree,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 24, 2005, News section, A1.

74. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Rail Plan Will Stay on Track,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 31, 2005, News section, A1. 75.

Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘TTA Leaders Still Feel Optimistic About Federal Funding,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, October 14, 2005, News section, A1; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Triangle Gets Bad News on Rail,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 15, 2005, News section, A1.

76. Rocky Rosen, ‘‘TTA Officials Not Giving Up on Rail Project—Federal Support Will Be Sought,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, December 16, 2005, News section, A1; Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Feds Demand Reality of Rail,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, February 7, 2006, News section, A1. 77.

Ray Gronberg, ‘‘TTA: Rail Funding to Come from Elsewhere—Officials to Hold Off on Seeking Federal Subsidies for a Year,’’ Durham Herald-Sun, August 19, 2006, News section, A1.

78. Ibid. 79. Special Transit Advisory Commission, Regional Transit Vision Plan: Recommendations for North Carolina’s Research Triangle Region (Raleigh: Special Transit Advisory Commission, 2008). 80. Ibid., 5. 81.

David King, personal interview, January 5, 2010.

82. Ibid. 83. Capitol Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and Durham-Chapel HillCarrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan (Research Triangle Park 2009), 11-c. 84. Bruce Siceloff, ‘‘Senate Vote Could Spark Mass Transit,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, August 6, 2009, News section, B3; Ray Gronberg, ‘‘Perdue Signs Transit Tax Power into Law,’’ Durham Herald-Sun, August 27, 2009, News section.

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85. King interview. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. The figures on planning and growth-management sites in the next six paragraphs come from a survey of local planning agencies I conducted. The respondents were asked about the comprehensive and other plans approved by their jurisdictions; the types of growth-management policies adopted; and the policies, regulations, and incentives their jurisdiction used to protect open space. The categories of growth management and open-space protection policies were based on those defined by David Bengston, Jennifer Fletcher and Kristen Nelson, ‘‘Public Policies for Managing Urban Growth and Protecting Open Space,’’ Landscape and Urban Planning 69 (2004): 271–286. 90. An analysis of the ordinance conducted by the Cary planning department in 2004 raised a variety of reservations about the effectiveness of the ordinance including the legal basis for it, the difficulty of assessing whether school capacity is adequate given the ability to shift students among schools, that other neighboring communities were not regulating their residential development in an effort to address school adequacy, and that ‘‘the public is given a false impression that the ordinance really does make a difference.’’ (Town of Cary Staff Report, Amendment to the Land Development Ordinance—Schools Adequate Public Facilities [APF] Ordinance, September 9, 2004.) 91.

Bengston, Fletcher, and Nelson, ‘‘Public Policies for Managing Urban Growth.’’

92. The survey results indicated that five of the twenty-three jurisdictions surveyed did have rate-of-growth controls but those respondents defined rate-of-growth controls differently than was intended. A thorough review of their planning ordinances suggests than none has placed limits on the number of units permitted in one or more years. 93. There are also three rural planning organizations (RPOs) that serve portions of the seven Triangle counties. The Karr-Tar RPO covers Person County and a portion of Person County, the Upper Coastal Plain RPO covers portions of Johnston County, and the Triangle RPO covers parts of Chatham and Orange Counties. 94. Research Triangle Region, 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan, 11-A.

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95. David Bonk, personal interview, December 31, 2009. 96. Link, From Seed to Harvest, 18. 97. This report was prepared with the assistance of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-CH and the Urban Studies Program (now the Center for Urban and Regional Studies) at UNC-CH. 98. Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission, Guides for the Research Triangle of North Carolina (Raleigh: Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission, 1960), 22. 99. Wade Rawlins, ‘‘Wake Board Makes Major Policy Shifts,’’ Raleigh News and Observer, January 19, 1995, News section, A1. 100. Triangle J Council of Governments, ‘‘History of Triangle J,’’ in Triangle J Council of Governments Orientation Handbook 2008 (Research Triangle Park: Triangle J Council of Governments, 2008), ftp://ftp.tjcog.org/pub/tjcog/orient08.pdf. 101. I am indebted to Marla Dorrel, TJCOG project consultant, who provided much of the information on the three World Class Region conferences. 102. Project 2000 Steering Committee, Focus on Tomorrow: Project 2000 to Maintain Quality of Life Project (Research Triangle Park: Triangle J Council of Governments, 1982), 4. 103. Ibid. 104. The committee developed a list containing seventeen possible action items, on topics including physical development, economic development, human resources, and the environment. Prior to the actual conference, Triangle residents were asked by means of a survey published in local newspapers to prioritize those action items. 105. Author and journalist Neil Peirce was the keynote speaker at the conference. Peirce went on to conduct an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Triangle area, which was published in the New and Observer in September 1993. 106. Triangle J Council of Governments, ‘‘Research Triangle Regional Development Choices; Project Summary,’’ Research Triangle, N.C, n.d. 107. Triangle Tomorrow, Research Triangle Regional Reality Check Participants Guidebook, (Research Triangle Park: Triangle Tomorrow, 2009), 1.

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Chapter 6. Where Are We Headed?

1.

Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, State of Metropolitan America (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2010), 40–42.

2.

Kathryn A. Foster, Regionalism on Purpose (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Land Institute, 2001), 38.

3.

Benjamin G. Hitchings, ‘‘A Typology of Regional Growth Management Systems,’’ The Regionalist 3 (Fall 1998), 1–14.

4.

Peter Dreier et al., Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). Hitchings, in his typology of regional growth, offers a different taxonomy that runs from weak to strong levels of influence: ad hoc, advisory, supervisory, and authoritative. He classifies the Research Triangle as ad hoc, or the weakest category of regional growth management.

5.

Smedes York, personal interview, April 20, 2010.

6.

Participants at the presentation of results from the Reality Check meeting were asked if they supported a regional government and only a very small number indicated that they did. There was widespread support, however, for more regional cooperation.

7.

Foster, Regionalism on Purpose, 26.

8.

Ibid., 33.

9.

Denver Regional Council of Governments, Metro Vision 2035 Plan (Denver: Denver Regional Council of Governments, 2007).

10.

Denver Regional Council of Governments, Mile High Compact (Denver: Denver Regional Council of Governments, 2000), 1.

11.

Ibid.

12.

Denver Regional Council of Governments, Metro Vision 2035 Plan, 5–6.

13.

Ibid., 15.

14.

Kirby Bowers, personal interview, May 13, 2010.

15.

This survey was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. and involved 625 registered voters in Wake, Durham, Orange, and Johnston Counties. The margin for error is plus or minus 4 percent.

16.

RDU Airport Authority, ‘‘RDU History: 1940s,’’ Raleigh-Durham International Airport, http://www.rdu.com/aboutrdu/history.htm, accessed December 27, 2010.

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17.

N.C. General Assembly, ‘‘Legislative Study Commission on Urban Growth and Infrastructure Issues,’’ Report to the 2010 Session of the 2009 General Assembly (May 2010), 5.

18.

See Sections 13.5.(a–e) Article 7, Part 31, Chapter 143B, of the N.C. General Statutes.

19.

There was a movement to consolidate the Orange County and Chapel Hill– Carrboro school districts in 2003 but the racial differences between the two systems was not large and both public and political support was weak.

20. The importance of providing quality primary and secondary education should not be overlooked as it is essential to equipping the local population with the skills needed to attract and retain competitive businesses and industries.

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i n d e x

Abele, Julian F., 49

basketball, 103–4, 259n.19

Ackland Art Museum (UNC-Chapel Hill),

Bassett, John Spencer, 47–48

101

Battle Park, 100

adequate-facilities ordinances, 221–22

Bayh-Dole Act, 150, 153

agriculture, 16, 63

BD BioVenture Center, 151

air pollution, 182

Bedford at Falls River (Raleigh), 186

Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., 160

Biogen Idec, 75

American Airlines, 86

Biomanufacturing and Pharmaceutical

American Dance Festival, 101 American Revolution, 20–23 American Tobacco Company, 42, 51, 191 American Tobacco complex (Durham),

Training Consortium, 146–47 Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center, 147 biotechnology industry, 143–47, 166, 170

196–98 Anderson, J. Bradley, 39

black population, 106, 107; attitudes

Anderson, Robert, 78

toward immigration in, 134–35; as en-

Apex, 128

trepreneurs in Durham, 44–46; fol-

Apex Department of Public Works, 127

lowing Civil War, 52–53; median

art museums, 101, 208

income for, 108, 109; poverty rate for,

Arts and Business Coalition of Downtown (Durham), 197 arts programs, 101–2 Asian population, 106–7, 110

111 Blackwell, William T., 39–40 BlueCross and BlueShield of North Carolina, 148

Atkins, Rhoddam, 25

Blythe, Will, 103, 104

Aurora Funds, 152

Board of Science and Technology, 143

Ayers Saint Gross, 158

Bonsack, James A., 42 Bowers, Kirby, 239

Baise, Vance, 89

Boyd, Kenneth, 46

Baptist Female Seminary, 46–47

Bragg, Fort, 54

baseball, 103, 194–96

brain drain, in mid-1900s, 63

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brand, of RTP, 79

Campbell, Malcolm, 64, 65

Bryan, D. R., 187

CAMPO (North Carolina Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization),

Bryan, R. A., 57

224–25

building permits, 182 Bull City Drug Company, 46

Cane Creek Reservoir, 128

Bull Durham (movie), 195

Capital Airlines, 86

Bull Durham tobacco, 38, 40, 41

Capital Area Transportation Authority, 274n.50

Burns, Del, 120 Burr, Richard, 215

Capital South Partners, 152

Burroughs Wellcome, 73, 74, 144, 145,

Capitol building, 25, 27 Carmichael, William, 65

149 business and industry. See also entre-

Carolina Hurricanes, 102

preneurship; specific industries or

Carolina Innovation Center, 158, 160

businesses: in Chapel Hill, 59–60; de-

Carolina Mudcats, 103

cline in traditional industries,

Carolina Railhawks, 102

139–40; downtown commercial cores,

Carpenter Village (Cary), 186

5; downtown revitalization, 190–208;

car pools, 209

in early and mid-1900s, 53–54;

Carr, Julian Shakespeare, 40, 41, 43–

emerging industries, 84, 172; employ-

44, 47, 254n.98

ment declines in, 141; environments

Carrboro, 107, 221, 254n.98

for knowledge-based businesses, 83;

Cary, 4; adequate-facilities ordinance

fastest-growing subsectors, 141;

of, 221–22; high-density, mixed-use

focus on entrepreneurship, 149–52;

development for, 186; multi-family

in Hillsborough, 57; increased em-

residential development in, 220; pop-

ployment in, 96; new-economy indus-

ulation diversity in, 107; population

tries, 140, 165–66; new-line

growth in, 95; water demand in, 128;

industries, 80; nontraditional busi-

water supply for, 128; withdrawal

nesses, 160–65; in Piedmont region,

from TJCOG, 227

14; in Raleigh, 56; recruitment vs. in-

Cary C-Tran, 274n.50

cubation of businesses, 142–49; in

Cary Department of Public Works and

the 1960s, 139; small-business devel-

Utilities, 127 CED (Council for Entrepreneurial Devel-

opment, 149–52

opment), 150, 152

bus service, 208, 209, 213, 216 Butner, Camp, 41, 54

Center for Community Self-Help (CCSH),

Caldwell, Joseph, 23

Center for Responsible Lending, 162

Cameron Village, 57

Central Park (Durham), 199

Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation,

Chapel Hill, 4; adequate-facilities ordi-

160–63

71

nance of, 221; cost of living in, 97; in

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early 1800s, 33, 34; founding of, 32;

transformation, 64, 65; black educa-

growth controls in, 223; housing

tional institutions, 55–56; changing

prices in, 97; inclusionary housing

role of, 152–60; performing and fine-

policy of, 222, 244; in late 1800s and

arts programs at, 102

early 1900s, 57–60; mid-1950s popu-

combined statistical areas (CSAs), 7

lation of, 64; original lot sizes in, 181;

commercialization of research discover-

paved streets in, 254n.100; popula-

ies, 152–54

tion growth in, 96; service boundary

commercial services, in RTP, 79

for, 221; Southern Village neighbor-

commercial space, developed around

hood in, 186–87 Chapel Hill–Carrboro school district, 280n.19

RTP, 179 communities: diversity of, 100–101; RTP firms’ and employees’ contributions

Chapel Hill Transit System, 187, 274n.50 Chase, Harry W., 58–59 Chatham County: employment increase

to, 81–82 Community Fund (Weaver Street Market), 165

in, 140; growth controls in, 223; me-

constitutional conventions, 23

dian income in, 110; population diver-

constitution of North Carolina, 28, 52

sity in, 106, 107; population growth

Constitution of the United States, 23

in, 94; property taxes in, 258n.3; pub-

cooperation, 247. See also regional co-

lic school enrollment in, 115; in Raleigh–Durham–Cary CSA, 7; in Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 7; in TJCOG, 226; water supply for, 128, 132

operation Corning Biopro, 75 Cornwallis, Lord Charles, 22 corporate giving, 148–49 corruption, 17, 19

Chemstrand, 71–72 Christenson, Rob, 213 Christmas, William, 25 Churton, William, 17 Cipritz Bridge, 29 Cisco Systems, 3, 75, 147 City Plaza (Raleigh), 204–6 civic leadership, 168–69, 241 Civil War, 38–39, 52

cost of living, 97 cotton industry, 43 Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), 150, 152 Cox, Gertrude, 70 crime, 136 CSAs (combined statistical areas), 7 CSX, 211–12 cultural amenities, 101–2

Claflin, John, 213

culture clashes, 134

climate, 105, 127 Coastal Plain, 12, 13 colleges and universities, 5. See also re-

Data General, 143

search universities; specific institu-

Davie, William Richardson, 28, 29, 32

tions; as basis for economic

Davis, Archie, 68–70, 92

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Davison, Wilber, 51

DRCOG (Denver Regional Council of Gov-

Day, James R., 40

ernments), 238–39

DDI (Downtown Durham Inc.), 194, 196

Dreyfus, Camille, 71

Democratic Party, 52, 53, 112, 113

droughts, 129–33

Denver Mile High Compact, 237–39, 242

Duke, Benjamin, 43–44

Denver Regional Council of Govern-

Duke, Brody, 41, 43, 46

ments (DRCOG), 238–39

Duke, James B., 41–42, 48, 49, 51

development: economic (See economic

Duke, Washington, 40–41, 47

development); urban (See urban de-

Duke Blue Devils, 104

velopment and planning)

Duke Forest, 49, 99–100

development projects, 61–92; Interstate 40, 88–91; Raleigh-Durham Interna-

Duke Medical School, 51 Duke University, 4, 5, 48–52; basketball

tional Airport, 84–88; Research Trian-

at, 104; employment for graduates of,

gle Park, 61–84

81; licensing revenue for, 153–54; as

Dillardsville, 35

major employer, 140; in Natural Heri-

dissimilarity index, 107

tage Area, 259n.13; and rail transit

diversification of population. See also

system, 212

ethnic diversity; racial diversity: chal-

DuPont Electronics, 75

lenges related to, 260n.33; impact on

Durham, 3–4; black entrepreneurship

social relations, 133–36; and nonna-

in, 44–46; cost of living in, 97; down-

tive migrants, 105–6; and population

town revitalization in, 190–200; early

growth, 106–8

entrepreneurship in, 34–36; during

diversity of communities, 100–101, 240

the Great Depression, 51; high-den-

diversity policy, of schools, 117–21

sity, mixed-use development for, 183,

Dobbs, Richard, 27

186; housing prices in, 97; integrated

Dole, Elizabeth, 215

schools in, 243–44; mid-1950s popu-

downtown commercial cores, 5

lation of, 64; multi-family residential

Downtown Durham Inc. (DDI), 194, 196

development in, 220; population di-

Downtown Durham Master Plan, 196

versity in, 107; population growth in,

Downtown Durham Revitalization Plan,

41, 96; reputation of, 34, 35, 46; so-

194

cial geography of, 44; tobacco indus-

Downtown Raleigh Alliance, 203, 206, 207

try in, 36–44; urbanization pattern of, 179; water supply for, 128–31, 133

downtown revitalization, 190–208; in

Durham, Bartlett, 36

Carrboro, 165; in Durham, 190–200;

Durham Athletic Park, 199, 259n.18

in Hillsborough, 165; in Raleigh,

Durham Blues Festival, 102

200–208

Durham Bulls Athletic Park, 196–98

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Durham Bulls baseball team, 194–96

Eastern Air Transport, 85

Durham–Chapel Hill–Carrboro Metro-

economic development, 139–75; ad-

politan Planning Organization,

dressing challenges in, 169–73; and

224–25

competition in recruiting businesses,

Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 1, 7, 94

166–67; and creation of Research Tri-

Durham County: in Durham MSA, 7; edu-

angle Park, 62–63; decline in new-

cational attainment in, 112; employ-

economy industries, 166–67; focus

ment increase in, 140; growth

on entrepreneurship, 149–52; inten-

controls in, 223; integrated schools

tional infrastructure for, 266n.10; in-

in, 243–44; median income in, 109,

tentionality in, 2; major development

110; multi-family residential develop-

projects (See development projects);

ment in, 220; political party affilia-

and metropolitan leadership,

tions in, 113; population diversity in,

168–69; and nontraditional busi-

106, 107; population growth in, 94; poverty rate in, 110–11; and public rail transit, 218; public school enrollment in, 114–15; in Raleigh–Durham–Cary CSA, 7; water supply for, 132 Durham County MSA, 60 Durham Department of Water Manage-

nesses, 160–65; and quality of life, 167; recruitment vs. incubation of businesses for, 142–49; RTP as catalyst for, 2; universities’ roles in, 5–6, 152–60 economic development organizations, 6 economy, 6; of Chapel Hill, 57, 58; and educational challenges, 167–68; em-

ment, 127 Durham Freeway, 192 Durham Manufacturing Company, 43–44

ployment, 139–41; following the Civil War, 52; of Hillsborough, 57; impact of RTP on, 80; knowledge-based, 5–6, 62; of Raleigh, 54, 57; of the South in

Durham MSA, 7

mid-1900s, 63; trends affecting Re-

Durham Performing Arts Center, 101–2, 197, 199

search Triangle area, 139 educational institutions. See colleges

Durham Police Department, 135 Durham Train Station, 199 Durham Transportation Authority, 274n.50

and universities; schools educational level, 5; dropout rates in Triangle area, 167–68; population growth and changes in, 111–12

Durham Transportation Center, 199

El Fiesta Del Pueblo, 134

Durham Triassic Basin, 12

Elion, Gertrude, 74 emerging industries, 84, 172

Eakes, Martin, 160–61

employers in the Triangle, 140–41. See

Earnhardt, Jim, 187

also specific companies or organiza-

Eastern Airlines, 86

tions

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employment: increase in, 140; of local

impact fees in, 220; in Kerr-Tar Coun-

graduates, 81; private-sector, 140,

cil of Government, 227; median in-

141; public-sector, 140–41; in Re-

come in, 108, 110; population growth

search Triangle metro area, 96; re-

in, 94; poverty rate in, 110; in Ra-

sulting from RTP, 75–76, 80; in the

leigh–Durham–Cary CSA, 7; in Ra-

1960s, 139

leigh–Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 7;

Eno River Festival, 102

water supply for, 132

Eno River State Park, 98, 258n.9

Franklinton, 223

Eno tribe, 14, 15

Friday, Bill, 68

entrepreneurship: in early Durham, 34–

Friends of Wake County, 116–17

36, 44–46; and economic development, 149–52; recruitment of

FTA (Federal Transit Administration), 212–15

established companies vs., 142

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Environmental Health Sciences Center, 73

(Durham), 102 furniture industry, 139

Ericsson, 75, 147

Fusion coalition, 53

ethnic diversity: of Durham, 44; of early

future growth, 6. See also prospects

settlers, 16; and median income, 108; and population growth, 106–8,

General Assembly: agricultural experi-

133–34; and poverty rates, 111

ment station created by, 54; corruption of early representatives to, 17,

Falls Lake, 98–99, 128, 130, 236,

19; expansion of Raleigh’s bound-

258n.10

aries by, 56; and Legislative Study

Fanning, Edward, 19

Commission on Urban Growth and In-

farming, by early settlers, 16

frastructure Issues, 243; and North

Fayetteville, 23, 33

Carolina Biotechnology Center, 146;

Federal Transit Administration (FTA),

and North Carolina College for Ne-

212–15

gros, 46; and North Carolina College

Few, William P., 48

of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, 54;

fine-arts programs, 101, 102

and partitioning of Orange County,

First Flight Venture Center, 75, 151

20; state bank established by, 33;

Fitzgerald, Richard, 45

state capital established by, 23–24;

Focus on Tomorrow initiative, 227–28

state-supported schools authorized

Food House, 164

by, 28; tax approvals for transit de-

Foster, Kathryn, 236

velopment by, 217; TTA funding ap-

Franklin County: adequate-facilities or-

proved by, 209; University of North

dinance of, 221; educational attainment in, 112; growth controls in, 223;

Carolina established by, 29 General Electric, 75, 144

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geographic center of Research Triangle

Haw tribe, 14 Hayes, Charles, 160, 167

area, 4 geological characteristics, 11–14

Hayti business district (Durham), 193

Gillings, Dennis, 150, 266n.26, 267n.26

health care, 105

Glaxo, 75, 81, 145, 149

health problems, 182

GlaxoSmithKline, 3, 75, 140, 145, 148

Herbert, George, 70, 255n.29

Gondwana, 11

high-density mixed-use activity centers,

Goodmon, Jim, 168, 195–97, 204 government. See also General Assembly: in early counties, 17, 19, 20; fol-

183–87, 218, 244–45 high-technology firms, 79–80, 165–66. See also specific firms and industries

lowing Civil War, 52; as major

Hill, George Watts, 70, 72

employer, 140–41; regional, 237; dur-

Hillsborough, 250n.15; adequate-facili-

ing Revolutionary War, 21

ties ordinance of, 221; creation of, 17,

graduate degrees, 5

18; in early 1800s, 33–34; in late

Graham, Edward K., 59

1800s and early 1900s, 57; Regulator

Granville, Lord, 16, 17

Rebellion in, 19, 20; during Revolu-

Greater Triangle Regional Council

tionary War, 21–22; and site for Uni-

(GTRC), 172–73, 228 Great Trading Path, 13, 15, 16

versity of North Carolina, 29; as state capital, 21–23

Great Wagon Road, 16

Hillsborough Military Academy, 33

Green, John Ruffin, 38, 39

Hispanic population, 106, 107, 109; in

Green at Scotts Mill (Apex), 186

area public schools, 115; cultural im-

Greene, Nathanael, 22

pact of, 134–35; and illegal immigra-

GreenPrint Project, 188–89, 245

tion policies, 135–36, 244; increase

green space, 98–100, 188–89. See also

in, 134; median income for, 109–10; poverty rate for, 110

open space Green Square complex (Raleigh), 208 Gross, Paul, 65–66, 70 growth management, 167, 219–23, 241– 43, 248, 277n.89 GTRC (Greater Triangle Regional Council), 172–73, 228

Historic Preservation Society of Durham, 193 history of Research Triangle, 11–60; black entrepreneurship in Durham, 44–46; creation of Orange County and Hillsborough, 16–18; Duke Uni-

Guest, Romeo, 64, 67

versity, 48–52; early Native American

Guides for the Research Triangle of

inhabitants, 14–15; in early 1800s,

North Carolina (RTRPC), 225–26 Guilford Court House, Battle of, 22

32–36; European invasion, 15–16; founding of Raleigh, 23–25; geological characteristics, 11–14; in late

Hanes, Robert, 65, 66, 68, 70

1800s and early 1900s, 52–60; Or-

Harper, Walter, 66, 67

ange County during Revolutionary

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PAGE 287

history of Research Triangle (continued )

industry. See business and industry

War, 21–23; planning of Raleigh,

infill development, 221

25–27; Regulator Rebellion, 17,

information technology (IT) industry,

19–20; rise of tobacco industry,

143, 144, 165

36–44; Trinity College, 47–48; Uni-

infrastructure. See also specific types of

versity of North Carolina founded,

infrastructure: for biotechnology and

27–32

pharmaceutical industries, 145–46;

Hitchings, Benjamin, 236–37

of Durham in late 1800s, 44; institu-

hockey, 102

tional, 248; for intentional economic

Hodges, Brandon, 66, 70

development, 266n.10; Interstate 40,

Hodges, Luther, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69

88–91; Interstate 85, 13–14; invest-

Hogg, James, 30

ments in, 33, 246–48; newness of,

Holly Springs, 95, 227

105; of Raleigh in late 1800s, 56; to

Hooker, Michael, 158

support entrepreneurial efforts, 150;

housing prices, 97, 222, 244. See also residential development

surrounding RTP, 82 Inspire Pharmaceuticals, 150

Hunt, Jim, 143, 155, 228

Institute for Transportation Research

IBM, 3, 73–75, 82–84, 140, 143, 148,

institutional infrastructure, 248

and Education (ITRE), 216

intentional economic development in-

149 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforce-

frastructure, 266n.10 intentionality, in development, 2

ment), 135–36 identity, 79, 240–41

Intersil, 97

illiteracy, 52

InterSouth Partners, 152

immigration, 134–36, 244. See also mi-

Interstate 40, 88–91, 124 Interstate 85, 13–14

grants Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Interstate 540 Outer Loop, 123–26 investors for RTP, 67–69

(ICE), 135–36 impact fees, 220

IT. See information technology industry

inclusionary housing policies/ordi-

ITRE (Institute for Transportation Research and Education), 216

nances, 222, 244 income: impact of RTP on, 80–81; as measure of diversity within schools,

James, Hinton, 27

117; in mid-1900s North Carolina, 63;

JJR (Johnson, Johnson and Roy), 158

and population growth, 107–10

jobs. See also employment: growth rate

incubators, small-business, 151

in, 96; in Research Triangle metropol-

independent voters, 112

itan area, 96; resulting from RTP, 75–

industrial research, 64–66

76, 80

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John Locke Foundation, 213, 215

leadership, 168–69, 241

Johnson, Johnson and Roy (JJR), 158

Lederer, John, 14, 15

Johnston, Joseph, 38–39

Lee, Robert E., 39

Johnston County: educational attain-

Lee County, 226

ment in, 112; employment increase in,

Legislative Study Commission on Urban

140; growth controls in, 223; median

Growth and Infrastructure Issues, 243

income in, 108–10; political party affiliations in, 113; population diversity in, 106; population growth in, 94; poverty rate in, 110; public school en-

licensing revenue, for universities, 153–54 Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, 51, 191

rollment in, 114–15; in Raleigh–

Link, A. N., 68

Durham–Cary CSA, 7; in

Little, William, 72

Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 7;

Little River reservoir, 128, 131, 132

in TJCOG, 226; water demand in, 127

Livable Streets Plan (Raleigh), 203

Johnston County Public Utilities, 127

Loop (Durham), 192, 196

Jordan Lake, 99, 128, 132, 258–59n.11

low-density development, 4–5; and de-

Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, 99

pendence on automobiles, 121, 182; and green space, 100; historical and

Kalkoff, Bill, 197

geological factors in, 179, 181; and

Karr-Tar RPO, 277n.93 Kerr-Tar Council of Government, 227 Knightdale, 220

land prices, 182–83; likelihood of changes to, 178–79 Lower Haw State Natural Area, 189

knowledge-based businesses, 83 knowledge-based economy, 5–6, 62 Koopman, Rodger, 130 Krzyzewski, Mike, 104

Manning, Howard, 118 manufacturing, 63, 139, 149 marketing of RTP, 66–67

Ku Klux Klan, 53

Martin, Jim, 144 land acquisition, for RTP, 67, 68, 72, 75,

Mason Farm Biological Reserve, 100 Maughan, William, 67

76 land preservation, 187–90

McGuire, Frank, 103

land use: alteration of, 244–45; and

MCNC (Microelectronic Center of North

public transportation, 210; Reality

Carolina), 143, 144

Check exercise for, 173, 218; in RTO,

Meadowmont (Chapel Hill), 186

78; and transportation planning,

Mebane, Alexander, 30

223–25

Mechanics and Farmers Bank, 45 Memorial Auditorium (Raleigh), 57,

Lane, Joel, 24 Latino population, 134–36. See also Hispanic population

101–2 Meredith College, 47

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289 }

PAGE 289

Merrick, John, 44, 45

Nasher Museum of Art (Duke Univer-

metropolitan area(s), 6–7; airports for,

sity), 101

84–85; defined, 61; factors in growth

Nash Kollock School, 33

of, 249n.1; Research Triangle area

National Center for Health Statistics,

lessons for, 246–48

145

metropolitan leadership, 168–69

National Humanities Center, 75

metropolitan planning organizations

National Institute of Environmental

(MPOs), 215, 216, 223–25

Health Sciences (NIEHS), 3, 76, 145,

metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), 7. See also specific MSAs

151 National Institute of Statistical Sci-

Metro Vision plan (Denver), 238–39

ences, 75

Microelectronic Center of North Carolina (MCNC), 143, 144

National Religious Training School and Chautauqua, 46

migrants. See also immigration: in early

National Weather Service, 156

1800s, 32–33; to North Carolina,

Native Americans, 13–15

105–6; and unemployment rates, 96

NC IDEA (North Carolina Innovative De-

Mile High Compact (Denver), 237–39, 242

velopment for Economic Advancement), 151–52

military bases, 41, 54

neotraditional communities, 186–87

mining, 68

Newell, William, 64, 65

mixed-use development, 245. See also

New Hope Chapel Hill, 30

high-density mixed-use activity centers

NIEHS. See National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Morehead Planetarium (UNC-Chapel

nonnative migrants, 105–6 nonprofit organizations, 140–41. See

Hill), 101

also specific organizations

Morrill Act of 1862, 253n.90 Morris, Robert, 38

nontraditional businesses, 160–65

Morris, Thomas, 38

Nortel Networks, 75, 147, 166

Morrisville, 95, 107, 223

North Carolina Ballet, 102

MPOs. See metropolitan planning orga-

North Carolina Biotechnology Center,

nizations

75, 145–47, 170

MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas), 7. See also specific MSAs

North Carolina Botanical Garden, 100, 259n.15

multifamily housing, 5, 220

North Carolina Capital Area Metropoli-

Municipal Auditorium (Raleigh), 56

tan Planning Organization (CAMPO),

Museum of Life and Science (Durham), 101

224–25 North Carolina Central University, 46

museums, 101, 202, 208

North Carolina College for Negros, 46

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North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, 54, 55 North Carolina Innovative Development

North Carolina Theatre, 102 North Carolina Turnpike Authority, 126 Northern Telecom, 147

for Economic Advancement (NC IDEA),

Northern Wake Expressway, 124

151–52

Novartis, 149

North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh), 101, 202

Occaneechi Path, 15. See also Great

North Carolina Museum of History (Raleigh), 101, 202 North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh), 101, 202 North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, 45

Trading Path Occaneechi tribe, 14, 15 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 7 Olden and Associates, 201 open space. See also green space: loss

North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, 45

of, 182; preservation of, 187–90, 245 open-space protection policies, 189–90,

North Carolina Railroad, 13, 35–36, 68, 211

245, 277n.89 Orange County: creation of, 16–17; in

North Carolina Registry of Natural Heritage Areas, 259n.13 North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, 143 North Carolina Small Business and Technology Development Center, 171 North Carolina State University, 5, 55;

Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 7; employment increase in, 140; growth controls in, 223; impact fees in, 220; median income in, 109, 110; partitioning of, 20, 33; political party affiliations in, 113; population diversity in, 107; population growth in, 94; pov-

basketball rivalry with UNC, 103–4;

erty rate in, 110; property taxes in,

Centennial Campus of, 155–57; em-

258n.3; and public rail transit, 218; in

ployment of graduates of, 81; licens-

Raleigh–Durham–Cary CSA, 7; Regu-

ing revenue for, 153, 154

lator Rebellion in, 17, 19–20; during

North Carolina State Wolfpack, 103 North Carolina Supercomputing Center,

Revolutionary War, 21–23; water supply for, 128, 132 Orange County school district, 280n.19

75 North Carolina Sustainable Communities Grant Fund, 243

Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWSA), 127, 128, 133, 221

North Carolina Sustainable Communities Task Force, 243

Page, Walter H., 54

North Carolina Symphony, 101–2

Pangaea, 11, 12

North Carolina Technology Association,

Panzanella, 164

152

Park Research Center, 151

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partnerships, 247

and ethnic diversity, 106–8; reasons

performing arts programs, 101–2, 197,

for, 96–105; and schools, 113–21; and

199

social relations, 133–36; and transportation, 121–25; and water de-

Perry, Rodger, 168 Person County: in Durham–Chapel Hill

mand, 127–33

MSA, 7; educational attainment in,

Populist Party, 53

112; in Kerr-Tar Council of Govern-

Porter, Michael, 170

ment, 227; median income in, 108;

Poulton, Bruce, 155

political party affiliations in, 113; pov-

poverty rate, 110–11

erty rate in, 110; in Raleigh–Durham–

Pratt, William, 36

Cary CSA, 7

Prattsburg, 35

pharmaceutical industry, 143–47

private planning, 2

Piedmont Airlines, 86

Progress Energy, 148, 202, 203

Piedmont region, 12–14, 20, 53

property redevelopment, 221

Pinelands Incorporated, 67, 68

property taxes, 258n.3

Pin Hook, 35

prospects, 235–46; and infrastructure

planning. See also urban development

development, 246; for public transit,

and planning: of Chapel Hill, 60; of

245; for quality of life protection,

Duke University, 48–51; of Durham,

244–45; for regional cooperation,

37, 191–92; fragmented decision

236–44; for Research Triangle Park, 82–84; short-term, 235

making in, 219–23; public, 2; regional, 224–29; of University of North

public planning, 2

Carolina, 30–32

public school enrollment, 114–15 public transit, 4–5, 122; bus service,

planning ordinances, 277nn.90, 92 Playmakers Repertory Company, 102

208, 209, 213, 216; in Chapel Hill,

Plensa, Jaume, 204

187; in Durham, 199, 200; funding

political party affiliation, 112–13

for, 122, 246; major transit providers,

Polk, Leonidas L., 54

274n.50; prospects for, 245; rail sys-

population growth, 1, 93–137. See also

tem, 209–18; in Raleigh, 183, 207; re-

diversification of population; chal-

gional planning for, 208–18

lenges related to, 260n.33; costs of,

public water suppliers, 127

241; of Durham during World War II,

Pullen, R. Stanhope, 56

41; in early Durham, 42, 43; and educational attainment, 111–12; fore-

Quadros, Paul, 134

casted, 235; and income diversity,

quality of life, 1, 93, 96–105; and cost of

107–10; nonnative migrants, 105–6;

living, 97; and cultural amenities,

and political party affiliation, 112–13;

101–2; and diversity of communities,

and poverty rate, 110–11; and racial

100–101; and economic development,

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167, 172; and green space, 98–100; protection of, 236, 244–45; and public transit system, 245; rankings for, 97–98; in Research Triangle area, 1; RTP firms’ and employees’ contribu-

Raleigh-Durham Aeronautical Authority, 85 Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, 85–87 Raleigh-Durham area: during early

tions to, 81–82; and sports, 102–4;

1950s, 63–64; MSAs in, 7; traffic con-

Triangle Community Foundation role

gestion in, 122; urban sprawl in, 181;

in, 173; and unemployment, 96 Quintiles, 150, 266–67n.26

venture capital investment in, 152 Raleigh-Durham Army Air Field, 86 Raleigh-Durham Association, 147–48

R. J. Reynolds, 42

Raleigh–Durham–Cary CSA, 7

racial diversity: and median income, 108; and population growth, 106–8; and poverty rates, 111 rail transit system, 209–18 Raleigh, 3; black educational institutions in, 55–56; and construction of I540 Outer Loop, 124–25; cost of living in, 97; downtown revitalization, 200– 208; economy of, 54; founding of, 23–25; and the Great Depression, 57; greenway system of, 100; growth in early 1800s, 33; high-density, mixed use planning for, 183–85; housing prices in, 97; Memorial Auditorium, 57; mid-1950s population of, 64; multi-family residential development

Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill MSA, 7 Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), 84–88, 178 Raleigh-Durham Mets, 194 Raleigh MSA, 7, 94 rate-of-growth control, 222 RBC Center, 202, 204 RDU (Raleigh-Durham International Airport), 84–88, 178 Reality Check, 173, 218, 229–32, 239, 241 Reason Foundation, 213 Reconstruction period, 52 recreation land, 190 recruitment of companies: in early de-

in, 220; Municipal Auditorium, 56;

velopment of RTP, 71–75, 142–43;

original lot sizes in, 181; planning of,

high-technology firms, 79–80; incu-

25–27; population growth in, 96;

bation of businesses vs., 142–49

Sherman’s troops in, 252n.67; and

Red Hat, 150, 156

site for University of North Carolina,

Reedy Creek State Park, 258n.8

29; urbanization pattern of, 179;

regional cooperation, 6, 247; chal-

water supply for, 128–33, 258n.10

lenges to, 240–41; in creating airport,

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 24

85; on cross-border problems,

Raleigh–Cary MSA, 1, 5, 7, 181, 235

236–37; for economic development,

Raleigh Convention Center, 206–7

147–48; leadership for, 168–69; pos-

Raleigh Department of Public Utilities,

sible organization of, 237–39; proac-

127

tive, 239–40; and social divisions,

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regional cooperation (continued )

Research Triangle Institute International

243–44; State of the Research Triangle Region meetings for, 171; state’s

(RTI), 3, 66, 69–72 Research Triangle Park (RTP), 61–84;

role in, 242–43; Staying on Top report

anchors for, 69–72; creation of, 3; in

recommendations, 170–71; Triangle J

early 1960s, 72–73; economic and so-

Council of Governments for, 172, 173;

cial context for, 62–69; as economic

in water resource management,

development catalyst, 142; future of,

132–33; World Class Region confer-

82–84; green space in, 100; impact

ences for, 172

of, 79–82; local importance of, 3; as

Regional Development Choices Project, 228–29

a metropolitan center, 62; original goals of, 64; physical location and

regional government, 237

form of, 76–79; possible redevelop-

regional identity, 240–41

ment of, 245; turning point for, 73–76

regional planning: history of, 225–29; by MPOs, 224–25

Research Triangle Regional Partnership (RTRP), 147–48, 169–73

regional stewardship models, 237–39 Regulator Rebellion, 17, 19–20

Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission (RTRPC), 225–26

religious diversity, 16

Research Triangle Regional Quality

Republican Party, 52, 53, 112, 113

Growth Initiative, 232

research campuses, 155–60

research universities, 5–6, 54; changing

research parks, 76

role of, 152–60; early attitude toward

Research Triangle (metro) area, 6–7.

commercialization at, 152–53; na-

See also specific topics; as best place

tional prominence of, 141; research

to live and do business, 1; birth of

campuses of, 155–60; and success of

(See development projects); defined,

RTP, 81; and technology transfer,

1; development pattern of, 178–83; distinctive characteristics of, 2–6;

153–54; value of, 246–47 residential development, 4–5; around

population growth in, 94; spatial

RTP, 179; in development plans, 220;

structure of, 4–5, 82, 177–79

diversity of, 100–101; in Durham revi-

Research Triangle Committee Incorporated, 66, 68, 70

talization, 193; in early Chapel Hill, 60; high-density, 183; inclusionary

Research Triangle Development Council, 65

housing policies/ordinances for, 222; in neotraditional neighborhoods, 187;

Research Triangle Foundation (RTF), 68,

in Raleigh, 207–8; recreation land re-

70, 270n.85; land acquisition and

quirement for, 190; and RTP land use,

sales by, 72, 73, 75; New York City of-

78; segregation in, 244; and urban

fice of, 72–73; small-business promotion by, 151

sprawl, 182 Revolutionary War, 20–23

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Rickenbacker, Eddie, 85, 241

114–15; racial differences and consol-

ride-sharing services, 209

idation of districts, 280n.19; redis-

Ritchey, Jim, 212

tricting of, 114, 117; in Wake County,

roads. See also transportation: respon-

117–21, 246

sibility for, 223; spending on con-

Scientific Properties, 200

struction of, 122, 126

Sciquest, 150

Robbins, Karl, 67, 68

Scott, Bob, 226

Robert M. Hanes Memorial Building, 70

segregation, 107, 244

Rolesville, 131–32 Rooks, Liz, 79, 81, 84, 167

Self-Help Community Development Corporation, 162 Self-Help Credit Union (SHCU), 161

Roxboro, 223 RPOs (rural planning organizations),

Self-Help Ventures Fund, 161–62 Semiconductor Research Corporation,

277n.93 RTF. See Research Triangle Foundation RTI. See Research Triangle Institute International

75 septic systems, 12 sewer systems, 179, 181, 220–21 The Shape of Things to Come, 171–72

RTP. See Research Triangle Park RTRP (Research Triangle Regional Partnership), 147–48, 169–73 RTRPC (Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission), 225–26 rural planning organizations (RPOs), 277n.93

Shaw University, 56 SHCU (Self-Help Credit Union), 161 Shepard, James, 45–46 Sherman, William T., 38, 39 Siler City, 107, 134 Simpson, George, 66–67, 225 single-family homes, 4–5 Slater, Ruffin, 162

St. Augustine’s Junior College, 56 St. Augustine’s Normal and Collegiate

Sloan, Norm, 103 small businesses, 149–52 Smith, Dean, 104

Institute, 56 Sanford, Terry, 73, 143 Sarah P. Duke Gardens, 100 SAS, 150

Smithfield, 223 Smithies, Oliver, 146 soccer, 102, 104 social divisions: as challenge in plan-

schools. See also colleges and universities: diversity in, 244; dropout rates,

ning, 243–44; in Durham, 44 social relations: and diversity of early

167–68; following Civil War, 52; fund-

settlers, 16; impact of population di-

ing for, 113–17; integrated, 243–44;

versification on, 133–36; and increas-

and population growth, 113–21; pro-

ing ethnic diversity, 134; and

posed year-round schedule for,

Piedmont vs. eastern region competi-

116–19; public school enrollment,

tion, 20

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soils, 12

TLC (Triangle Land Conservancy), 100, 188

Sony Ericsson, 166

tobacco industry, 36–44, 191; and Civil

Southeast TechInventures, 152 Southern Growth Policies Board, 171

War, 38–39; decline in, 140; during

Southern Small Area Plan, 186

the Great Depression, 51; origin of

Southern Village (Chapel Hill), 186–87

bright leaf tobacco, 37–38; and popu-

spatial structure: of Research Triangle

lation growth, 42, 43; prerolled ciga-

area, 4–5, 82, 178–79; of Research

rettes, 41–42; and textile industry,

Triangle Park, 76–79

43–44

Special Transit Advisory Commission

traffic congestion, 90–91, 167; and autocentric workers, 121–22; in Dur-

(STAC), 215–17 sports, 102–4, 194–96, 259n.19

ham, 191–92; I-540 Outer Loop,

sprawl. See urban sprawl

123–26; and low-density develop-

STAC (Special Transit Advisory Commis-

ment, 182; and population growth, 121

sion), 102–4, 224

transportation. See also public transit:

State Bank of North Carolina, 33 State of the Research Triangle Region

and Durham revitalization, 192; in early history, 13–16; impact of popu-

meetings, 171

lation growth on, 121–26; Interstate

state parks, 98 Staying on Top (RTRP report), 170–71

85, 13–14; Interstate 40 development, 88–91; and land-use planning,

Stewart, Pearson, 76, 78, 225, 226

223–25; in late 1800s, early 1900s,

Stop Mandatory Year-Round, 116

60; North Carolina Railroad, 13, 35–

suburban development, 190

36, 68; public transit, 4–5, 274n.50;

sustainable development, 5

2035 Long Range Transportation Plan,

Swain, David, 57–59

224; in urban development and planning, 208–18 Tally, Randy, 162

transportation demand management,

taxes: in early Orange County, 19; for

209

new schools, 115; property, 258n.3;

Triangle Community Foundation, 173

for public transit development, 216,

Triangle Development and Infrastructure

217

Partnership, 229

technology transfer, 153–54

Triangle Expressway, 126

telecommunications industry, 143, 147,

Triangle GreenPrint Project, 188–89,

165, 166

245

textile industry, 43–44, 53, 68, 139, 191 Thorp, Holden, 154

Triangle J Council of Governments (TJCOG), 172, 173, 215, 219, 226–29

TJCOG. See Triangle J Council of Governments

Triangle Land Conservancy (TLC), 100, 188

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Triangle Parkway, 126 Triangle RPO, 277n.93

University of North Carolina Tar Heels, 103

Triangle Tomorrow, 173, 232

Upper Coastal Plain RPO, 277n.93

Triangle Transit, 209, 216

upzoning areas, 221

Triangle Transit Authority (TTA), 208–18

urban development and planning, 177–

Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies Inc. (TUCASI), 75, 81 Triangle Universities Computation Center, 143

233. See also economic development; coordination of land use and transportation planning, 223–25; development pattern of Triangle, 178–83;

Trinity College, 47–48

downtown revitalization, 190–208; in

Triple A Durham Bulls, 103

early Hillsborough, 17, 18; in early Ra-

Trumbauer, Horace, 49

leigh, 25–27; fragmented decision

Tryon, William, 20

making in, 219–23; high-density

TTA (Triangle Transit Authority), 208–18

mixed-use activity centers, 183–87;

TUCASI (Triangle Universities Center for

land preservation, 187–90; and pub-

Advanced Studies Inc.), 75, 81 Tupper, H. M., 56

lic transportation, 208–18; Reality Check, 229–32; regional planning,

2035 Long Range Transportation Plan, 224

225–29 urban-growth boundaries, 238–39 urbanized area, definitions of, 271

ULI. See Urban Land Institute

Urban Land Institute (ULI), 83, 84, 245

UNC. See University of North Carolina

urban services boundaries, 220–21

UNC–Chapel Hill. See University of

urban sprawl: along Interstate 40, 89;

North Carolina at Chapel Hill

challenges to containing, 218–32;

UNC Tar Heels, 103

and downtown revitalization, 190;

unemployment rates, 96

historical and geological factors in,

University of North Carolina (UNC): bas-

179, 181; and land prices, 182–83;

ketball rivalry with N.C. State, 103–4;

problems associated with, 182

early lack of funding for, 23; following

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 130

the Civil War, 57–59; founding of,

U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Plant Health Science and Technol-

27–32 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC–Chapel Hill), 5; agriculture experimental station at, 54; Carolina North research campus, 156, 158–60;

ogy, 156 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 3, 74–76 U.S. Forest Service, 72

employment of graduates of, 81; licensing revenue for, 153, 154; as

Valvano, Jim, 104

major employer, 140

Venable, Francis P., 58

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venture capital funds, 151–52

water pollution, 182

Viamet Pharmaceuticals, 154

water quality, 128 water supplies: adequacy of, 128–29;

W. Duke, Sons and Company, 40–42, 252n72

development of new supplies, 128; interconnected effects on, 236; for

W. T. Blackwell Company, 39–40, 42 WakeCARES, 116, 118–19 Wake County: educational attainment in, 112; employment increase in, 140; growth controls in, 223; median income in, 108–10; political party affiliations in, 113; population diversity in, 106, 107; population growth in, 94,

Raleigh, 258n.10; sources of, 127; and urbanization around RTP, 179; urban service boundaries for, 220–21 Weaver Street Market, 162–65 Weddle, Rick, 83, 169 West Village II, 199–200 White, Jesse, 167, 266n.10 white population, 106, 107; attitudes

95; poverty rate in, 110; property taxes in, 258n.3; and public rail transit, 217–18; public schools in, 114,

toward immigration, 134, 135; median income for, 109, 110; poverty rate for, 111

115, 117–21, 244; in Raleigh– Durham–Cary CSA, 7; school con-

William B. Umstead State Park, 98, 178

struction needed in, 246; water

Williams, Horace, 158

supply for, 128; withdrawal from

Wise, Jim, 192, 193

TJCOG, 227

Wolff, Miles, 194, 195

Wake County MSA, 60

women’s sports, 104

Wake County School Board, 221–22

workforce, in knowledge-based occupa-

Wake County Sheriff’s Department,

tions, 5

135–36

World Class Region Conferences, 172,

Wake Education Partnership, 117

228

Wake Forest, 227

World War II, 41, 60, 85–86

Wall, Pam, 167–69, 173

Wright, Bonnie, 160, 161

Walnut Creek Pavilion, 101–2

Wright, Wesley, 38

Warner, Sam Bass, Jr., 11 Washington, Booker T., 47, 48 York, J. W., 57

Watauga Club, 54 water demand: and droughts, 129–33;

York, Smedes, 168, 237

impact of population growth on, 127–33; increase in, 127

zoning for RTP, 78

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