The Research Triangle. William M. Rohe
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.
CHAPTER 1
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?
THE LAY OF THE LAND
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 Gond-wana 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 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 separated from it by very shallow sounds. Lacking natural deep-water harbors suitable for major ports, and with swampy conditions making road building difficult, the Coastal Plain remained largely rural.
Figure