Raleigh’s Decline Is Durham’s Big Chance

The Capital City

Like Athens and Sparta, Raleigh and Durham have been in a war despite their proximity to each other across a geographical vale: Raleigh east, and Durham west with a DMZ that follows the “fall line” between the coastal plain and the rising topography of the Piedmont. While Durham is a city right out of the sociology textbooks — tobacco and textile manufacturing, extreme wealth, a true blue collar working class, a large and proud black community, Raleigh is a political creation, plopped down in the middle of the state to assuage the regional warfare dominant after Independence. Durham was more brawn and Raleigh more brains, a working city versus the redoubt of politicians, lawyers and merchants.

The latest drawn out clash between the two city-states began in the 1950s over the creation of Research Triangle Park. Durham, always on

Durham skyline

their toes for business opportunities, ran water and sewer lines to the half of the Park in their county. The white collar denizens of Raleigh played their lutes and hoped no one new would move to their idyllic town and upset the status quo. But the first big wave of new arrivals to work in the Park chose Raleigh over Durham in greater numbers. Durham, like Sparta and its jealousy of Athens, felt snubbed and prepared for war. In the latest battle, Durham sent a clear message by lobbying to be removed from the Raleigh-Durham Metro­politan Statistical Area designation — the modern version of the ancient Greek city leagues, leaving Raleigh joined with Cary and the Bull City the brightest planet in a constellation featuring Chapel Hill and Roxboro.