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Its important to remember that the South already has its own cities with their own urban dynamic. Its not like Northerners are inventing them from scratch. And btw, its people from the North moving down South, including people from the Midwest also.
As long as the population influx does not overwhealm the local population in sheer numbers (like in parts of Florida and Virginia), the newcomers will adapt at least somewhat to the existing cultural surroundings. For example, I don't think newcomers are going to change old cities like Charleston, Savannah or New Orleans that much. Its less populated or newer areas that are more affected.
Some Northeners are stupid and yes they will try to change the South into the very same thing they just fled from! But not everyone is like that, some people actually like the South for what it is.
Alright I'll give you that. Agriculture is probably more of a "real" industry than hookers and gambling, but that doesn't change the fact that South (from Carolinas to Texas) is the most backwards region in the country. You wanna keep it that way - be my guest.
Satire, right?
Since I'm one of those likely-inbred twits the trailer parks, generic 'burbs and sundry hills 'n hollers the ex-Confederate states insist upon flinging unto this great wide world, I'm far too simple minded to comprehend such esoteric irony. Hell, I laugh at dirty jokes, and fail to comprehend the necessity of complaining about humidity, which as we all know, is merely God's subtle way of telling us to sit down and have yourself a good stiff drink, well-chilled preferably.
I'm also quite an admirer of Japanese cinema (postwar, through roughly 1970), French nouvelle vague, Bengali parallel cinema, classical Chinese literature, 20th century Latin American fiction, some of the Russians (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Checkhov, and the emigre Nabokov), some of the Japanese (Abe, Kawabata, and Tanizaki in particular), 20th century philosophy (including structuralism, which I actually enjoy and find deeply interesting), music of a wide variety of styles (soul, bluegrass, punk, postpunk, postrock, krautrock, new wave, funk, blues, jazz of many varieties, Southern rock, indie rock, gamelan, psychedelia, J-rock, psychedelia and post punk from the non-English speaking world, 20th century classical, et. al.). Performance art?: seen it. Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Meat Puppets - saw 'em in dingy rock clubs before 90% of the hipsters in my town had even been conceived. All great, by the way. Kurosawa and Jean-Luc Godard films on the big screen, in new prints, with newly translated subtitles? Yep. Howzabout the largest documentary film festival in the world, or the 3rd largest gay and lesbian film fest in the South (one of the ten largest in the US)?: yup, yet again, and yet again, without leaving the boundaries of the Tar Heel State. And in my singlehood, I've dated - at some point - natives of France, Mexico, India, Japan, and China. Not only am I a nice guy - an extraordinary human in fact - I'm also equal opportunity, and as this is a cosmopolitan state, whether anyone knows it or not (which is entirely their problem), one should immerse oneself in that cosmopolitanism. To do otherwise would be a slow death, a dry-heat death before some sunblasted expanse of slot machines and statues of ex-mafiosi who built a ludicrous city in a state previously famous for silver mines, being jettisoned by Mormons, and the last pre-cannibalism stand of the Donner party. Apologies for a long, eloquent paragraph filled with $1.50 multi-syllabic lingustics, but as a well-read man, I ain't scared of reading, and no one else who's perusing this thread should be either.
I was turned on to all of the above in North Carolina, which I've called home for all of my years. I've been to about 1/3 of the states, and a few other countries. I didn't have to travel to any of those places to learn the things I've learned. That's because my bass-ackwards home state (Smoke up, junior. Whatyoo think that there tobacco is growin' out there for anyway?) bestowed upon me a nice edumacation. I am, of course, showing off, and making a serious jerk out of myself. But that's why we have the internet, and it's ok anyway, because I am in fact extremely smart (Pretentious, pompous even, like any good blowzy Southerner - ever sat through some endless, endless episode of a holy roller doing his thing? Pomp and circumstance are in the blood down here.), and life's way too short to play stupid so someone else can luxuriate in the comfort of not having their stereotypes shown up for the slop-worthy synapse failure that stereotypes very often turn out to be.
Thus, I am, in fact Southern. A genuwine Negro to boot, nothing but miscegenation and tangled ancestries and a family history that would certainly be fun to discuss with Faulkner. I love grits, and The Allman Brothers, and though I don't love chitterlings, pokesalad, David Allen Coe, or NASCAR, I like the fact that I know what they are. I'd take 'em over scrapple, lutefisk, or the majority of Billy Joel's melodramatic posturing any day of the week.
The great French thinker Jacques Derrida once theorized [paraphrasing and over-simplifying here, not that it really matters] that personal identity is fundamentally mutable and is therefore entirely the battle between personal theatrics and ill-informed outside perceptions anyhoo. So it all really comes down to regional snobbery, and how threatened you are by someone else's success, relative to your own. Intellectually, I'm highly prepared to defend the places I love. We yahoos and rednecks and octaroons down here are a fierce and territorial posse.
Granted, alot has changed in the past 10yrs in Wake County. I stayed in Franklin County. I know things that you may not be privy to. Raleigh was abandoned by the White population in the early 70s after the desegregation of the schools. So you cant base any conclusions on Raleigh, Cary, or Apex. By and large those areas where long ago deserted by Whites. Cary is known as Containment.Area.for.Relocated.Yankees lol But I guess Im thinking of the outlying areas. Once you leave the I540 corridor it is mostly Southerners. My about Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point is that the Yankees are not centralized as they are in Wake County. In the triad they are evenly dispursed, which in my opinion, dilutes the Southern feel even more. I was in a Wal-Mart in Greensboro. There were very few Southerners in that Wal-Mart. By the way, did the you know Greensboro was the last capitol of the Confederacy?
That is the most incorrect thing that I think I have ever read about Raleigh and Wake County on City Data. Congtratulations. That's no small feat.
As a native New Yorker, this thread has been a real eye-opener for me. In my city a main cause of tension is how few "native" New Yorkers are left and how the culture of the city and what made it so great is dead. My friends complain about the hipsters and transplants from all over the US buying into the hype about NYC, and how they've spearheaded the gentrification that's making it impossible for the born and bred NYer to afford to live here anymore. It's true that NYers are leaving in droves and a big reason is that we're being priced out. Having a literal billionaire for a mayor has only accelerated the process.
I foolishly thought it was just a New York problem, but reading about how the south is being "northeasternized" has made me realize that everyone everywhere is going to complain about everyone else no matter what. I am looking to leave NY but always feared I'd be seen as an idiotic hipster or transplant for doing so. Now I realize there's nothing that can really be done about that, I'll probably always be seen as a transplant so my only advice to anyone looking to move from where they are to anywhere else is this: Do your research. Make sure it's a place that supports your cultural, social, environmental and economic needs. Don't try to turn it into a cheaper version of where you came from. Appreciate the culture of other places for what it is.
It'll be a loooooonnng time before the South becomes anything remotely close to the Northeast. I'm originally from TN and live in California. Whenever I go home I'm re-amazed at just how tiny all of the cities are here. That and they abruptly end into rural areas. For example, Nashville-despite its notoriety as being the music capital of the US- is quite small. Its only about 600,000 people. Compared to NYC, Chicago, SF, LA, and so on that's really small. With the exception of the cities in TX and then of course Atlanta, most Southern cities are smaller. At least in my home state you have to drive literally hours through sparsely settled rural countryside to get from one major city to the next.
That said... I have noticed some recent changes. Most of the major cities here- Knoxville, Nashville, and Chattanooga- have all experienced massive improvements. There's now a whole slew of hoity-toity restaurants,microbreweries, art galleries, and even Sushi restaurants whereas when I was a kid downtown was dead. Lots of old buildings got turned into lofts.I think part of this revival could be attributed to newcomers relocating to these cities. These are the people that fixed up the downtown area. For the most part the original charm of the city has been retained.
Its a different story when you go to the suburbs. Its filled with mostly cookie-cutter mcmansions, strip malls, big box stores, and so on. Read just about any post on these sites and its the same exact post: Someone wants to move to NC,TN, SC, TX, and so on AND they want a large 3-4 bedroom house in a safe neighborhood with perfect schools, shopping, and so on and so on- basically they want that Mcmansion in the subdivision and they want it cheap. Thus here they come to the South to snatch up that house.
Anyway- I guess the way I look at it is that we're a country of movers. We move to one region and once that region "dries up" we're off to the better, greater, cheaper place until that one too gets overrun and overpriced. Hopefully I'll be able to move back home before that happens.
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