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I would say the architecture of the buildings in Durham make it feel more urban than Raleigh. Raleigh just feels like a huge suburb with a small downtown core.
In the case for Durham; the overwhelming majority of the population of Durham county is within the city limits of Durham (284k of 325k).
To be fair, Durham (the city) has annexed almost off of Durham (the county), so even when you are "in the middle of nowhere", you may technically still be within the city limits.
To be fair, Durham (the city) has annexed almost off of Durham (the county), so even when you are "in the middle of nowhere", you may technically still be within the city limits.
Not true. The northern part of Durham county which is mostly rural and protected by watershed protections is not in the city limits. You have Bahama and Rougemont in the the northern part and these two areas are not in city limits. A good size of the southern part consists of RTP which is also not in the city limits. Durham County land wise is one of the smaller counties in the state. Durham County is only 298 square miles while Wake County is a whopping 857 square miles.
In 1950, Wake County had 136K residents, only half of whom lived in Raleigh. Durham County had 101K residents, 70% of whom lived in the city of Durham. The development patterns go way back.
I would say the architecture of the buildings in Durham make it feel more urban than Raleigh. Raleigh just feels like a huge suburb with a small downtown core.
I believe the 1990 census indicates that Raleigh was one of the 5 least densely populated state capitol cities.
Don't ask me to back that up. I read it years ago and it stuck with me.
Basically NC started as small communities evenly spread across all 100 counties.
It still to this day has the nation's 2nd largest rural population, Pennsylvania is No. 1.
So imagine seeds being thrown or scattered across a large plot of land.
Up until the 80's or 90's each grew on its own, probably mostly farming communities, each more or less independent and not really relying or clustering around a central city.
Each grew on its own to varying sizes, from large, Charlotte, to medium and small cities and towns of all sizes.
North Carolina is a powerhouse state as a whole, but its DNA is truly small towns.
Charlotte's edge towns actually were/are independent towns. None really rose up recently as true suburbs of the booming central city.
Wake is a large county, and in the last 30-40 years its population grew from ~400,000 people to 1.1 million today. Holly Springs, Morrisville, Wake Forest, really morphed from small towns, even just crossroads, to completely different large towns today, closer to true suburbs.
Chapel Hill is an anti-growth, special place, solidly an expensive college town. Durham is its own unique place also.
From Charlotte to Raleigh, along I-85, is the continuous string of towns and cities, known as the "urban crescent". This arrangement formed from the state's 1st East-West railroad, built from the Western Piedmont towns like Salisbury to get their goods/agriculture to the ports at Wilmington and Morehead City in the late 1800s.
The central Piedmont's Uwharrie mountains reach an elevation of 1800 ft. above sea level, too difficult for a railroad to traverse. So the railroad formed an arc above and around them, peaking at ~900 ft. above sea level, giving the city of High Point its name.
I-85 through central NC is a unique-looking interstate today. Its 8 lanes and heavy traffic must confuse out-of-staters as it resembles being in a large city for literally hours, though in actuality it's very rural by definition. I think it's really impressive from Salisbury to Charlotte, and somewhat through Burlington as well.
Durham
Feels much more like a real city, an urb, than Raleigh.
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Don't ask me to back that up. I read it years ago and it stuck with me.
