There's such a disproportionate, high concentration of county Wealth in West and SouthWest Wake... how did that happen? (Charlotte: section 8, apartment complexes)

[paytonc]

I'll posit a water-pipe history of why new money flowed to north Raleigh into the 1990s, and then into west Cary:

- The first part of RTP to be built was its north end, adjacent to where Durham had water pipes. These offices were closer to US 70 than I-40.
- North Raleigh rapidly filled in up to Strickland by 1990; north of Strickland, Falls Lake water quality regs limit density. (Hence, Raleigh's big growth pushes in the mid-90s were Brier Creek and Wakefield/Falls River, at the NW and NE reaches of the buffer.)
- Cary opened its Jordan Lake water treatment plant in 1993. Before that, it bought water from Raleigh, so its water lines extended from the east. Note that Jordan Lake is west of Cary, which made it possible for...
- Cary extended water service to the west so that Wake's end of RTP could have city water. That enabled RTP to grow towards Cary, and Cary (and Morrisville) to suburbanize next to RTP.

[UserNamesake]

Originally Posted by twingles

Half my subdivision seems to have been settled by IBM transplants in the mid-90s.

Originally Posted by m378

Say what you want about West Cary, but they did a lot of things right. When I was commuting to RTP, I had the choice of three major thoroughfares: Davis Drive, 55, or 540. There are other options too like taking Green Level Church to 55. The conveniences of living in that area can't be found anywhere else in my opinion as far as shopping goes, as well as access to other areas of the Triangle.


...and Holly Springs is one way in one way out even to get to 540. The superstreet or whatever it's called with the u-turn requirement, isn't doing the trick it seems.

Very true... and yeah, HS is gonna have to figure out a way do more than that one way in one way out thoroughfare. It's just not cutting it with the boom its seeing.

Originally Posted by rnc2mbfl

You can easily make a strong argument that IBM was the main catalyst for Raleigh/Wake success since the late 60s. IBM was the reason why that stretch of I-40 was accelerated between Wade Avenue and RTP/Durham Freeway. What is now the Wade Ave Extension was I-40 before it swung around the bottom of Raleigh in early 80s. That's entirely a western Wake story into itself. At the time of IBM's commitment to RTP, it had its initial Triangle presence in Raleigh on Yonkers (as in NY) Rd. The initial stretch of I40 allowed IBMers to go back and forth between their Raleigh office and RTP on freeways.
Raleigh and Wake owe a lot of their success to IBM.

Such good context here.

Originally Posted by paytonc

I'll posit a water-pipe history of why new money flowed to north Raleigh into the 1990s, and then into west Cary:

- The first part of RTP to be built was its north end, adjacent to where Durham had water pipes. These offices were closer to US 70 than I-40.
- North Raleigh rapidly filled in up to Strickland by 1990; north of Strickland, Falls Lake water quality regs limit density. (Hence, Raleigh's big growth pushes in the mid-90s were Brier Creek and Wakefield/Falls River, at the NW and NE reaches of the buffer.)
- Cary opened its Jordan Lake water treatment plant in 1993. Before that, it bought water from Raleigh, so its water lines extended from the east. Note that Jordan Lake is west of Cary, which made it possible for...
- Cary extended water service to the west so that Wake's end of RTP could have city water. That enabled RTP to grow towards Cary, and Cary (and Morrisville) to suburbanize next to RTP.

Originally Posted by paytonc

Every city has a "favored quarter" -- the rich side of town, the right side of the tracks, etc. In most of the US, it's upriver/uphill/upwind of the downtown; because mid-latitude prevailing winds are from the west, the FQ is usually the west side. It's often anchored by the kinds of institutions that rich people favor: obviously country clubs, but also big corporate offices, nicer shopping centers, private hospitals, colleges/universities.



Because the FQ has the political power and institutional weight, it ends up with better infrastructure, which reinforces its privilege.

Raleigh's FQ was always to the northwest: Hayes Barton, Cameron Village (and later Crabtree / North Hills), Carolina Country Club, Rex Hospital, Meredith College, etc. Since Umstead and RDU got in the way of its outward expansion, it forked to the north and west -- the west definitely aided by the establishment of a vast new white-collar job center at RTP.

The income map still shows a definite "wrong side of the tracks" in Raleigh, west vs. east across the Norlina Subdivision railroad -- roughly, Atlantic Ave.

Durham's FQ is also towards RTP, but Wake has long grown much faster than Durham. It certainly seems plausible that Raleigh was more welcoming to the initial 1960s-70s wave of RTPers than Durham, which was still counting its tobacco/Duke money. By the time tobacco collapsed, Durham's softer, deindustrializing economy left it ill-situated to invest in public services to attract commercial development, and besides by then Raleigh was already the more important growth pole.

Really, really good stuff. There's always "more" to it, and you're hitting it on the head.



Good stuff, y'all... just wondering if they're any projections that can be gleaned from this history going forward.

[twingles]

If you get off 540 at Veridea Parkway you can get down a little further on 55 in Holly Springs....but that has now become ridiculously backed up. They need to extend that road down to Avent Ferry. People AREN'T going away, that shopping center is HUGE and draws people from all around. They need to figure out the traffic issue there and quick. Last couple times I came back from HS I actually avoided the Bypass and 540 and made it back in record time. Kind of ironic.

[wizard-xyzzy]

The City didn't extend water and sewer service to much of the Strickland Road vicinity until the early 1990s. Many of the pre-1990 subdivisions between Lynn/Spring Forest and 540 are still on wells (or neighborhood water systems run by Aqua) and septic tanks.

[Sherifftruman]

I think outside the obvious closeness to RTP and surrounding areas, much of why the average is so high is homogeneity. The low end of the western part of the county is closer to the high end than in many other areas of Wake. With far fewer low income households to bring the average down it shows.

[TarHeelNick]

Raleigh (and, as mentioned up-thread, Durham as well) both fit into the "rule" that GENERALLY speaking...the Western side of cities and metro areas is considered the more desirable/higher socioeconomic status "side of the tracks"

This holds true in many if not most major cities/metros in the US. One regional exception being Charlotte.

[HatchChile]

Originally Posted by TarHeelNick

Raleigh (and, as mentioned up-thread, Durham as well) both fit into the "rule" that GENERALLY speaking...the Western side of cities and metro areas is considered the more desirable/higher socioeconomic status "side of the tracks"

This holds true in many if not most major cities/metros in the US. One regional exception being Charlotte.

I remember reading somewhere that the East/West division works for cities that were established before industrialization, and/or the cities/towns that had lots of manufacturing jobs. The wind that blows from the factories would blow east and the rich would be on the west side, away from the stench. It also depends how rivers flow. If the part of your town/city the elevation goes down eastward, all the filth and polluted storm water would flow east too. So poor people's house would be on the east side.

[TarHeelNick]

Originally Posted by HatchChile

I remember reading somewhere that the East/West division works for cities that were established before industrialization, and/or the cities/towns that had lots of manufacturing jobs. The wind that blows from the factories would blow east and the rich would be on the west side, away from the stench. It also depends how rivers flow. If the part of your town/city the elevation goes down eastward, all the filth and polluted storm water would flow east too. So poor people's house would be on the east side.

Yes.

My parents are from the Rochester NY area which does have an industrial past and does "flip" this scenario...but mostly because the eastern side of the city/metro , despite being "downwind"...is also hillier/more scenic. Eastern neighborhoods and easterly suburbs being wealthier/more desirable than those west of the Genesee River.

In the Triangle I think Durham "favors west" because of textile/tobacco industry of the past AND proximity to UNC/Chapel Hill to the west (Duke's current campus being built where it is because of these factors and thus continuing to reinforce them)..... and Raleigh "favors west" initially because of topography and then, in correlational step, because of RTP.

[architect77]

I think the FQ phenomenon applies more to the past formation of cities than the present.

Another factor is that the Triangle used to less thought of as a single region especially in terms of employment and commuting.

In that regard, Raleigh and Wake County are the Eastern node of one consolidated Triangle region, and the continued popularity of Western Wake can be attributed to just being the central-most spot of the Triangle as a whole.

Water service truly does regulate the speed of development.

Franklin County has for years grappled with how to absorb more demand from new neighborhoods being built into its current system since it probably doesn't have the tens of millions to pay for a much larger system to be built.

I think Franklin wrestles with whether to add capacity to its system either by buying more water from Raleigh or even using Kerr Lake as a source..

But water is definitely a factor in how fast new neighborhoods sprout up north of Wake Forest in Youngsville/Frankinton.

[paytonc]

I'd say that the Favored Quarter theory has had even more resonance since the 2009 crisis. That crisis sharpened wealth disparities overall, and disproportionately hurt property values (and fortunes) on the less-favored sides of town. Certainly, closer-in areas have become trendy regardless of their side of town -- but the closer-in favored side is still much trendier.

The creation of a giant new white-collar job center between Raleigh and Durham definitely changed the region's geography. However, I'm not sure it alone would have been enough to "flip" the region; many attempts to create giant job centers on the less-favored sides have failed. Even the ever-rising tide of the Triangle's fast growth didn't lift a lot of Big Plans that were just fundamentally on the wrong side of town: Treyburn and Mini-City come to mind.