I'm going to give one of my typically odd answers. Everywhere described is in the South, therefore it is all southern.
I'm a proud Southern woman entering middle age. I can chat with someone about gallbladders in line at the bank (though why would I ever be there, that is what the internet is for.) I can make biscuits from scratch. And Ma A.'s potato cakes. I can also make Nana's gravy (red sauce) because I married an Italian-American. And that *is* the South too, not just N.C., where transplants have been making inroads for decades.
I don't think the South can be judged by Mayberry. The South is also the moccasin-wearing marijuana-smoking folks I knew in my childhood. It was kids in trailer parks playing Pac-Man and running barefoot over gravel roads. Racism? Sometimes. But also examples of pure Southern graciousness who never knew a stranger, and could have supper on the table for unexpected guests in half an hour.
I've never eaten there, but I bet that Hooters in Morrisville employs some Southern beauties. The moms casing the Cary Targets for red tags include women who can trace their N.C. lineage back hundreds of years. And the folks moving in all over will over time *add* to our Southern character. Is New York just Irish and Dutch? No, all the new communities eventually added to the city's character and identity. Someday North Carolinians may look back at the influx of asians and Indians to Morrisville and other Triangle areas the way people look at the Moravian influence in Old Salem. My grandmother could make a mean sauerkraut, learned at her German grandmother's knee. And she was about as traditionally Southern as you could get.
I'm saddened by the strip malls and the lack of accents but change is part of a culture as well. I like walking through a shopping mall where people don't obviously bat an eye at gay or mixed race couples. There have been a lot of good changes too. I refuse to characterize them as less Southern because they aren't traditional.
Life in the 'burbs has its ups and downs but I don't miss my country neighbor's target practice in the back yard. And that's my $.02 y'all.
p.s. "Roundabout?" Seriously. Traffic circle.
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