Ruminations on the Research Triangle:
We stayed in a suburb of Raleigh called Cary, one of the growth areas in the Research Triangle. Everything in the vicinity, from shopping centers to office buildings, from the medical facility near our hotel to the housing developments not so far away, was new. There is a peculiar propensity to hide most things in the woods, or at least behind carefully landscaped roadsides, so it was hard to find a gas station, for example, if you were not a local. There is also a lot of speculation going on, I gather, since one of the nearby shopping centers was having a big problem maintaining tenants, although it is a quite lovely and pricey location.
My wife had a meeting with the head of marketing for Dialog, which is a data provider competing with Lexis- Nexis, Westgroup, Dow Jones, and others. They were one of the companies wooed out of Silicon Valley by the business/government alliance that is building up the Triangle. Clearly, from looking over the developments in the area, one of the big advantages is affordable housing without a long commute. The fellow with whom she met mentioned other incentives, without being too specific, but it would not be surprising if they were mainly tax- breaks over a specified period, especially since North Carolina is a relatively low- tax state to begin with. Of course, the main rationale is the presence of so many academic institutions, such as Duke, UNC, North Carolina State, and others, many of which have good or excellent programs in relevant fields, and therefore are fertile with potential recruits.
There is something strange about the Triangle. Although Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh are pretty close together, with suburbs like Cary to fill the gaps, and a metro area somewhere in excess of half a million, the roadways are constructed to obscure the metropolitan character of the place, and one feels as if everything is hidden in the woods. Obviously, some things pop out, and Raleigh, which has almost 300, 000 people, has roads running out to the periphery which are pretty conventional city thoroughfares, but the over- all impression of the area is that it is trying to hide under a semi- rural veneer. Even Duke, which has two campuses, has the larger campus hidden in the woods on the edge of Durham, and although there is a large quadrangle, many of the campus buildings are away from the main area, and located in houses seemingly part of a tony exurb.
Raleigh, although large, resembles nothing so much as Mayberry on steroids. The core of the city is a peculiar combination of newer buildings, including a few high rises, set within an area of shabby gentility that frequently is just shabby. The state capitol is woefully in need of repair, although legislative business has been moved to a modern building. The spanking new NC Historical Museum was a strange combination of political correctness (putting Buddhism and Hinduism on the same footing as Evangelical Christianity in a display on folklife), and North Carolina boosterism, trying to have one's cake (North Carolina was originally against secession) and eating it (but when the time came, it sacrificed the most for the Confederacy).
One wonders how the continual influx of immigrants from around the country, as well as around the world, will affect this place, which seems so quaint, parochial, and bemused by it all..... |
