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The Triangle refers to the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area and all the places in between and nearby in Wake, Durham, and Orange Counties — also northern parts of Chatham (Pittsboro) and Johnston (Clayton).
The Research Triangle is a business park in between the three (mostly in Durham Co) with an emphasis on tech, biotech, and pharma, but also home to other businesses, especially research-oriented. The EPA has an office there, for example.
Like others have said...Raleigh (NC State), Durham (Duke University) and Chapel Hill (UNC) are the historical vertices of the Triangle. Many also now include suburban Cary with its rapid growth and population of 160k (more than Chapel Hill but less than Durham, no university). Research Triangle Park is a large area in between Raleigh and Durham that has a lot of biotech, health tech, info tech, etc businesses. IBM, Cisco, Toshiba, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, BioGen, LabCorp, NetApp, etc. Don't confuse it with the Triad, which is the smaller metro directly to the west of the Triangle...the Triad is smaller and includes Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point. The Triangle has roughly 2 million residents and the Triad has rughly 1.5 million.
Last edited by LordHelmit; 08-13-2016 at 09:15 PM..
the triangle grew out of 'research triangle park' which was name for being in the center of the 'research triangle' of UNC Duke and State
People just grew to apply it to the cities
Actually no--"The Triangle" came first from the cities. That was one of the reasons Research TRIANGLE Park was named (the cities were here first).
OP: Ironically, Cary now surpasses Chapel Hill in population and thus some with no knowledge of the area may wonder why Cary isn't a point on the--"quadrangle". The answer, of course, is that Cary was a fairly "insignificant town" just a few decades ago and only in the last couple of decades (which is recent, despite those who think 5 years ago was a "long time ago" LOL) has it become a population center. Some places--such as this very forum, list "Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary" as 4 cities in the metro area (technically two cities and two Towns), so for someone new to the area, it might indeed sound odd that a metro with 4 large municipalities is called the "Triangle".
But historically, it was Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and the fact that each has a well-respected university (while Cary and the other booming towns does not) will always keep tham the "anchor points" of this metro area.
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