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Durham has been undergoing more transition in the past few years than likely any other city in the state, for many reasons. It is an ongoing transition, and gentrification is part of this transition. Regarding crime, the city has not done enough and will have no choice to crack down by increasing the police presence. I am old enough to remember going to NYC back in the late 1970's, and it was truly a dangerous place to visit. The city got tough, and it is now one of the safest large cities in the country. Other cities like Greensboro and Charlotte have also experienced higher crime-shootings-murder rates and all grapple with addressing this. No simple answers, and it will never go away completely. Chicago has never solved this problem.
GDP captures goods and services. Not sure how intellectual capabilities / research is quantified in this measurement. It may be, I don't know.
According to the FBI, the following cities had the most murders per capita in 2019:
1. Wadesboro
2. Rocky Mount
3. Goldsboro
4. Henderson
5. Greensboro
6. Kingston
7. High Point
8. Williamston
9. Whiteville
10. Hickory
The top city for actual murders was Charlotte.
It seems that Durham is not the only city with crime.
According to the FBI, the following cities had the most murders per capita in 2019:
1. Wadesboro
2. Rocky Mount
3. Goldsboro
4. Henderson
5. Greensboro
6. Kingston
7. High Point
8. Williamston
9. Whiteville
10. Hickory
The top city for actual murders was Charlotte.
It seems that Durham is not the only city with crime.
I was going to say ....the whole time everyone was talking about Durham's bad crime I was pretty sure many of the other cities in the state were right there with it if not worse. I personally hear about it a lot lately in Greensboro and HP unfortunately.
I know this isnt overall crime but the murder rate is usually what people are thinking of when they talk about cities being "dangerous."
Regardless, the crime rate of a city is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to discussing the importance of a city to it's state. Just my opinion.
It's more complicated than that. If you reach back to the 1960s, Durham had a thriving legacy tobacco industry while RTP was fledgling.
The spark that ignited RTP was IBM's decision to choose it over NOVA in 1965. At that time, IBM already had a presence and employees in Raleigh and they continued to refer to their operations as IBM Raleigh. By 1971, a very specific section of I40 was opened from Raleigh (Wade Ave.) and RTP (Davis Dr.) that accommodated IBM's Raleigh based employees. It's easy to imagine that as folks continued transferring from NY to Raleigh, they were reaching out to their colleagues in NC and those folks largely lived in Raleigh/Wake. This likely caused the new folks to consider Raleigh/Wake Co. first. Plus, they had a new shiny freeway to get to their jobs. Even when my family moved with IBM to the Triangle in '74, my dad's job was actually in Raleigh and not RTP for at least the first decade. The reality is that IBM had a lot do do with establishing Raleigh as the growth center of the Triangle. Going back to the aforementioned tobacco industry in Durham, there was little need to court the newcomers for economic viability, while Raleigh and Wake were all in on the growth train: riding IBM's coattails because it didn't really have a significant legacy industry. It was just a moderately sized state capital and college town. As Raleigh and Wake rapidly grew with more well heeled residents, money poured into the city and county and expectations rose for better schools, etc. This created a widening gap of experience between Wake and Durham Counties. Both the cores of Raleigh and Durham were hollowed out like what happening nationally, but Raleigh and Wake had the benefit of rapidly growing suburban areas that Durham wasn't enjoying at nearly the same rate. Money buys services and services improves experience, and Wake had much more money. Rinse and repeat that pattern for the remainder of the 20th Century.
Even today, while Durham County's jobs pay more on average (because RTP has an overweighted impact on Durham County than it does Wake County), Wake household incomes remain much higher. This suggests that money made in Durham County is more likely to be spent in Wake than vice versa.
The return of focus to our central cities this Century has a lot to do with the resurgence of Durham City in particular. The city is way less densely populated overall than Raleigh, so it has room to grow. You can still find some pretty significant swaths of undeveloped land within the suburban parts of the city limits. The city also has a collection of legacy buildings with an authenticity that particularly resonates with today's youth. The opportunity is there for Durham to grow at a faster clip because of those things. FWIW, the density numbers back up that narrative. While Raleigh's density is in the 3200 ppl/m2, Durham's is more like 2500 ppl/m2. If Durham could reach Raleigh's current density, it would add 75,000+ more people. This gives Durham more legs to run in the short term. It also doesn't have any real municipal competition for expansion within its county. It's not hard to imagine Durham being 400,000 in the next couple of decades.
Good post. I know about IBM's role in initiating the wave of Northern transplants that continues to this day in the Triangle (and Charlotte as well), but I didn't realize they had a dual presence in both Raleigh and then RTP.
And yeah, Raleigh/Wake not having much in the way of legacy industries compared to the state's other large cities most likely played a very big role in its early embrace of the growth caused by RTP, most notably when it came to infrastructure. I can imagine that Durham, with the tobacco and textile industries firmly in place, was naturally a bit more protectionist and didn't feel much of a need to rock the boat--with some possible influence from those local industry leaders. And as it has been mentioned, Durham had those legacy city issues to contend with once tobacco and textiles were gone so it really had no choice but to embrace RTP which goes to the heart of why the park was created by state leaders to begin with.
Durham has the highest violent crime rate of any of NC's "Big 5" cities. Thats the stat I think of when I consider being "dangerous".
All of them have rates higher than is acceptable, imo.
Also I think the violent crime rate in Durham stands in stark contrast to Raleigh so there's a next door standard of comparison that's often used, and it's easy enough to make a connection between higher violent crime and historically slower growth compared to Raleigh.
Good post. I know about IBM's role in initiating the wave of Northern transplants that continues to this day in the Triangle (and Charlotte as well), but I didn't realize they had a dual presence in both Raleigh and then RTP.
It's actually a really interesting story about how IBM came to be in RTP. If I remember correctly, a college intern working at IBM Raleigh wrote to the CEO of IBM asking him to consider RTP for their upcoming expansion plans. I think that IBM was all in on northern Virginia until that time, and IBM ended up reversing course.
Modern Raleigh truly is the city that IBM built. If it were not for that intern and IBM, who knows what would have happened to RTP and the region?
Durham has the highest violent crime rate of any of NC's "Big 5" cities. Thats the stat I think of when I consider being "dangerous".
All of them have rates higher than is acceptable, imo.
According to a 10/25/19 report by WFMY news in Greensboro, only two North Carolina cities were in the top 65 "deadliest" US cities with a population of 100,000 or more: Greensboro and High Point. The list of deadliest cities was compiled using FBI statistics. Durham was not on that list. As I pointed out before, other NC cities have crime problems as well. Not just Durham.
According to a 10/25/19 report by WFMY news in Greensboro, only two North Carolina cities were in the top 65 "deadliest" US cities with a population of 100,000 or more: Greensboro and High Point. The list of deadliest cities was compiled using FBI statistics. Durham was not on that list. As I pointed out before, other NC cities have crime problems as well. Not just Durham.
Nonetheless, Durham has the highest violent crime rate of the 5 largest cities in NC. Violent crime being murder, rape, assault, etc. "Deadliest" sounds like its based only on murder rate.
Nonetheless, Durham has the highest violent crime rate of the 5 largest cities in NC. Violent crime being murder, rape, assault, etc. "Deadliest" sounds like its based only on murder rate.
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....the whole time everyone was talking about Durham's bad crime I was pretty sure many of the other cities in the state were right there with it if not worse. I personally hear about it a lot lately in Greensboro and HP unfortunately.
