Impressions after my first visit to Raleigh/Duraham. (Greensboro, Durham: townhouses, neighborhood)

[daveraleigh]

Originally Posted by sliverbox

Again- I have different things that I like. If your goal is to move to "a house", have "X" number of children, stick them in schools and live in safe, but bland neighborhoods, then perhaps places like Raleigh are great and I'm not going to be critical of that decision. The reason I posted this was because I figured there are others like me where they look at a place to live less as a commodity and more as a place with a soul. That's all.

I guess this is the kind of thing I have a problem with...quite a bit of generalization with only a 3 day soul searching trip to back it up.
Every city has bland neighborhoods. Did you visit Cameron Village, Cameron Park, Five Points, Moredecai, Oakwood?

You've pointed out what you found...but not what you were looking for.

[sliverbox]

Ok,
So here's the deal. I grew up in a pretty rural area 30 minutes from Knoxville. We had a large yard and a modest house. We heated in winter with firewood. The neighbors had model airplanes made out of beer cans hanging from the porch. People would drag race up and down the streets at night. Not exactly the "ideal" situation by many people's minds, but definitely not without character. I also lived in a small former coal mining town an hour from Chatanooga. There wasn't much to do there but you could walk to town and go shopping. Pretty laid back. Now I live in a small town outside of Oakland. Kind of the same thing except people here pay out the nose to have the privelage. Living "quaint" is expensive here versus back home where it meant cheap because you didn't live close to Wal-Mart.

So when I come and visit my family now, a lot of what used to be nothing is now stuffed full of housing developments. I despise these things because at least to me represents destroying what I knew. Call it selfish. But that's how I feel.

Bottom line- I'm looking to get away from that kind of development. I didn't see much of it in Raleigh. Then again, I guess a lot of you all are right and I wasn't there long enough.

[mdp_az]

That kind of development is quite present in north Raleigh and is bleeding into Wake Forest, Franklinton, etc... You also see it on the south side of Chapel Hill and into Chatham County. Its also very prevelant in southwest Durham. I'd say your challenged to find a city in the southeast without that kind of development.

That said, there are pockets of the character, charm, walkability, etc... that you're looking for throughout the Triangle, but it would take a lot of up-front research and/or more than 3 days to find it.

While I said earlier that I agree with much of your post, I can also say that I've found a true sense of place in Durham. It does have suburban sprawl, but less than some neighboring towns. It's a unique town with a storied history, a lot of diversity, great restaurants, & tremendous cultural offerings. Durham also has some of the Triangle region's best historic home neighborhoods from which you can walk to town.

[adlnc07]

Originally Posted by sliverbox

Bottom line- I'm looking to get away from that kind of development. I didn't see much of it in Raleigh. Then again, I guess a lot of you all are right and I wasn't there long enough.

It doesn't sound like you got far enough from the city. I mean, Cary is a suburb - why look there if you want rural? Maybe you should have gone towards Fuquay or Sanford. And frankly, if you want to get away from transplants, the Triangle is definitely NOT the place for you. All that positive press you read was also read by millions of other people! I think you'll have to search a little harder to find something "off the beaten path" that no one knows about!

[theS5]

Originally Posted by sliverbox

I've been throwing around the idea of visiting Raleigh for a few years to see what the situation was there. I'm originally from the Knoxville, TN area and now live in California. So I'm pretty well-aware of Southern culture and the region it exists in.

My Wife and I spent three days driving around and looking at various neighborhoods and cities. To be frank, I was not exactly impressed with the area at all. My overall gut reaction is that the entire area is over-built with generic cookie-cutter Mcmansions, housing developments, strip malls, and trendy shopping districts. My least favorite area was Cary. This area was probably the grossest offender in the Mcmansion category. The houses we saw there were ENORMOUS. Think "The houswives of Orange County" and apply that image to the area. That's about what it looked like. That and the traffic was about as bad as it is out here in the Bay Area. There were lots of bimmers, Mercedes, Land Rovers, and Saabs driving around. Its obvious to me that Cary has basically become an extended bedroom community to New Jersy or Boston because half the people we met there were from those places. I almost got the impression that Cary was for those people up North who couldn't afford the wealthy lifestyle they wanted so they just moved down to NC where they could buy some vanilla Mcmansion for "only" 450k.

Raleigh was maybe a little better. There were rural and semi-suburban areas with older houses and less cookie cutter developments. But the downtown wasn't horribly impressive. While the burbs were shiny and new, the city itself was just so-so. We went to the NC history museum, which honestly was kind of hodge-podge and thrown together.

Chapel Hill was probably my favorite of the three major cities. But the problem with it was that the housing prices trended towards being overprices and definitely out of reach for our realistic budget. Perhaps we wern't looking in the right places, but it seemed that you couldn't touch much of anything for under 300k- save for condos and townhouses. Not sure how I would feel about living what is basically a giant college town with partying college students 24/7.

Durham was the least generic and most ethnically interesting of the cities. That said, I got the impression from visiting these cities that racial relations aren't exactly fantastic. Ethnic groups seemed really segregated. That and whenever we went to places that had other ethnic groups, we did not feel welcome there. I recall holding doors open for a African Americans on several occasions and it was as if I wasn't even there. Didn't even look at me period. You definitely got this feeling that there was some sort of racial tension in the air.

Out of all the cities, I liked the smaller towns inbetween. Unfortunately what I also found was that any small, quaint town with any character had also been "discovered" by people and in many cases any house that was the least bit interesting had a high price tag. Several small towns we went to had farmer's markets, nice resturaunts, and so on. But again, they tended to be pricey. As in 400-500k for a decent house.

About the only town that felt just about right for me was a small one outside the Triangle called Greensboro. It wasn't horribly exciting, large, or near anything geographically signifigant. But it seemed to have character and less generic homes were more reasonable.

So in summary, I kind of felt that the reasons that so many people that I read on here, from places like MA, NJ, NY and so on list as being reasons they want to move to Raleigh/Duraham have more or less evaporated. The area is not what I would call exactly a steal price wise nor culturally interesting. I'm sensitive to Southern culture since I am a Southerner, and to me much of what was a Southern city is long-gone. If you are a Northerner looking to escape the North, I don't believe you'll find the area to be all that different from where you're moving from simply because so many of you have moved down and brought the North with you, with all of its expense, problems, and so on. Give Raleigh another 5-10 years and it'll be very similiar to anywhere up North, along with all of its problems, expense, and enivitable corrupt government.

I appologize for sounding so incredibly nasty. But I tried to visit the area with an open mind and a degree of objective reasoning. But what I saw was sort of a disappointment.

Your generalizations about the North and reasons why Northerners moved here show your ignorance. I am pretty sure that there are some fantastic trailer parks that might be more to your liking.

[saturnfan]

Originally Posted by theS5

Your generalizations about the North and reasons why Northerners moved here show your ignorance. I am pretty sure that there are some fantastic trailer parks that might be more to your liking.

I lived in an NYC middle income project for 10 years and the "gentry" looked at us as if we were piles of dog waste.

The OP is dead on and definitely has seen the effect of a bunch of overpaid status seekers lured to a nice area by greedy developers and politicians.

If they only stayed where they were and fought the high taxes, the Triangle might have stayed a great lower/middle income community.

[sls76]

Originally Posted by saturnfan

The OP is dead on and definitely has seen the effect of a bunch of overpaid status seekers lured to a nice area by greedy developers and politicians.

Um, seems slightly judgmental. By whose definition are they overpaid? How do you know they're status seekers? BTW, I'm shocked you have yet to mention Cary and HOAs or Brier Creek and yuppies. This thread seems ripe for those generalizations.

[eloyfan]

sliverbox seems to speak of us Northerners as if we're invading Taliban fighters. That much I resent. My wife and kids and I moved here from Boston in 2005 strictly to escape dreadful winters. We didn't come to Cary to sit in traffic and deal with tailgaters and speeders and the like as we would have preferred to have left that back home, but many folks obviously thought this area was a great place to settle to escape the same crowded conditions and foul weather of the north. I seriously would not trade my 45 years of solid, well-paying employment and warm, wonderful friends and neighbors in the north lightly, but a need for climate improvement made it necessary. I grew up in a pretty sorry 1880 house outside Boston, and moved my current family unit to Cary from a 1500 sq. ft. ranch to a 3200 sq. ft. dream house and pocketed over $300k in the process. That doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

I make no apologies for people of my kind moving where it suits them and spending money they have. I am NOT a big fan of the triangle area and we are already planning our next move, but it won't be to another crowded community; hopefully it will be to a place where tolerant and fair-minded people will welcome us. America belongs to all of us and your antisocial comments are somewhat offensive.

[MikeJaquish]

Originally Posted by sls76

Um, seems slightly judgmental. By whose definition are they overpaid? How do you know they're status seekers? BTW, I'm shocked you have yet to mention Cary and HOAs or Brier Creek and yuppies. This thread seems ripe for those generalizations.

"No generalization is worth a damn."

Well, that is, unless I make it...

[sliverbox]

I'll admit I am not totally crazy about "Northerners". I use the term generically to describe carpetbaggers. Another term would be "equity locusts", or people who sold some POS elsewhere and moved somewhere cheaper. You have to realize that this ultimately displaces the original inhabitants. Lots of people did this, and continue to do it. I know because I see what's happening where my parents live. They are finding where they live to be more and more expensive, precisely about the time that they are thinking or retirement.

But to be fair, I lived in Boston for several years. Whay on earth people want to live there is beyond me. The cost of living is attrocious as are the winters and the summers, which get unbelievably hot. The government is corrupt. The infrastructure is aged and crumbling. So ya, just to play devil's advocate, if I owned some POS house in Boston and sold it for a handy 4-500k, sure- I'd probably also move on down. I suppose that makes me a senic.

Still- it bugs me. All these people swarming in to "get away" from wherever, only to turn their chosen home into the same thing they left, all the while creating the same gentrification that ultimately forever changes the local and regional dialect, culture, and so forth.

I realize I'm being an ass and own up to it fully. That's just the wawy I feel. I suppose my own reasons for wanting to move are in some ways no different than others here with the one exception that I have an aging family that lives in that region and thus I must eventually take care of them. Thus I have no choice but to make the move someday. I just hope that by the time I do, I can actually afford to do it before all those "carpetbaggers" price me out just like I was in Cali.