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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?

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.

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, GlaxoSmith-Kline, 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 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, high-density 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 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-first-century development pattern. It also offers suggestions on what needs to be done to change this pattern.

The Research Triangle is more immersed in the knowledge-based 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 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 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 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 mixed-use activity centers, downtown revitalization, the development of 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.