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  • From: Nathaniel Florin <npflorin AT yahoo.com>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: On Durham and identity
  • Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 11:47:04 -0700 (PDT)


--- Duncan Murrell <dvmurrell AT nc.rr.com> wrote:

> but I _did_ think you'd pick up on the population
> density differences

I wonder how real the density differences are. From
the late 80s to the late 90s Durham annexed a huge
amount of land towards Chapel Hill along 40, the
15-501 corridor, up Farrington Rd, and so forth. It
might have done the same in other directions; I don't
know. This was a pure land grab of a lot of space with
nothing in it. There still isn't anything in most of
it (though it's coming; what in the hell is that gated
community/disaster area near Ephesus Church?), or
things like Wal-Mart that contribute nothing to
population density. This drives down overall density,
but doesn't mean anything in this discussion, because
the areas that are not dense are areas with no one
living in them (this is not quite tautological). When
you're considering the scene in Durham and Chapel Hill
you're not talking about the box stores on 15-501,
Hope Valley, Briarcliff, or the houses along the golf
course at the Chapel Hill Country Club. Those areas
don't count; their density is irrelevant (obviously
this is not true at all of many many larger regional
issues like transit, etc.).

Density *from an "effect-on-the-scene" viewpont*
speaks to a built-up core with mixed
residential/commercial space; the place where the
events are and where the people who go to those events
would want to live. Carrboro is at least half core, so
of course it's dense. Chapel Hill's proportion is
lower, Durham's lower still, but the dense area in
Durham has to be as large as that in Carrboro.

Put in other words, I think that Carrboro is likely
functionally denser than Durham and Chapel Hill, but
not by the huge margin indicated in the raw numbers,
and the difference is accounted for at least in part
by empty commercial and residential space in Durham.
This is Durham's advantage; you can do infill simply
by renting or selling available space, without tearing
things down or filling in parking lots or whatever.

> -- Chapel Hill and Carrboro are smaller but more
> dense than Durham.
> Carrboro is the most dense, and has been for at
> least the last seven
> years. At the same time, Carrboro has enjoyed a
> renaissance.

I wonder how circular much of this is -- did people
moving to Carrboro cause its density as much as result
from it? I don't know, but I remember Carrboro ~1990
feeling pretty empty.

OTOH, I have a *really* hard time thinking of Carrboro
or downtown Durham as dense in any real sense. Dense
for the South, sure, but 3700, even 5000 people per
square mile really what I'd think of as "dense", and
when I'm back I notice the infinite pine trees I'm
always driving by, even well inside town limits.

Nate





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