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40 were all critical to its transition from a collection of separate communities to a metropolitan area.

      THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK

      It is impossible to know exactly how the Research Triangle metropolitan area would have developed without the creation of the Research Triangle Park, but it's safe to say that it would be different in both size and form. RTP filled the hole between the three towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It created a center where none had existed before. The gravitational pull of the RTP has drawn development toward it and distorted what probably would have been a more conventional concentric zone or sector pattern of development around the individual towns.

      As a metropolitan center, however, the form of RTP is radically different than those of other urban areas. Rather than a forest of tightly clustered high-rise buildings, the RTP consists of a collection of low-rise buildings cloaked by stands of pine trees. Rather than a mix of office, retail, and residential land uses, RTP is almost exclusively inhabited by research and development operations and some related production facilities. It's the urban equivalent of a monoculture. The RTP has also provided the area an identity, both nationally and internationally, as an area on the forefront of the new knowledge-based economy: an area rich in human capital and containing a critical mass of new economy businesses such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and high-technology companies.

      The creation of the RTP was critical in knitting together the distinct towns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill and in creating the social ties that define a metropolitan area. But what lead to the creation of the park? What was the thinking behind the low-density development model? What were the obstacles that had to be overcome? What impact has the park had on the region and what challenges is it facing?

      THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

      To understand the impetus for the creation of the RTP one needs to appreciate the economic position of the South in general and North Carolina in particular in the early 1950s. Compared to the rest of the country, the South was “relatively disadvantaged and economically depressed.”² In spite of World War II defense spending in southern industries, the South's economy was still heavily based on agricultural production such as cotton, tobacco, and peanuts. Employment in manufacturing lagged other regions. In 1950, for example, the South accounted for only 16 percent of all manufacturing employment in the nation. Moreover, much of this was concentrated in textile and other low-wage manufacturing. Another telling figure is that in the mid-1950s only eighteen of the Fortune 500 companies were headquartered in the South.³

      Economic conditions in North Carolina were similar to those in the larger region. A large proportion of the state's jobs were in low-skill, low-pay occupations. In 1952 the state's per capita income was about two-thirds of the national figure, the second lowest in the continental United States.⁴ The lack of well-paying jobs contributed to a “brain drain” as many educated young people left the state to find suitable employment. In a speech delivered at a meeting to announce the Research Triangle Park, Governor Luther Hodges observed that “two thirds of these young people trained in science at these three institutions [Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina] are forced to leave North Carolina, and indeed the entire South, to find suitable employment.”⁵ A promotional movie produced by the N.C. Department of Commerce in 1954 showed a set of sad parents seeing their child off at a train station while the announcer says: “Every year many of our best educated young people leave to find a living elsewhere. Of all our state's resources these young people are the most valuable and we're still losing them by the thousands.”⁶

      During the early 1950s the Raleigh-Durham area, although better off than many other areas of the state, still lagged the country in high-technology employment.⁷ Moreover, the area's population was small. The total population of the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan areas in 1950 was 238,000. Among the major towns Durham was the largest at 71,000, followed by Raleigh at 66,000, and Chapel Hill at 9,000. This meant that the area had “few of the agglomeration and urbanization economies that characterized larger metropolitan regions.”⁸ Airline connections to major business centers, for example, were limited to several East Coast cities.

      What the Raleigh-Durham area did have, however, was three major universities and other smaller colleges, and a highly educated workforce. It was these assets that the founders of the RTP seized upon as the basis for the economic transformation of the metropolitan area and the state. The original goals of the RTP were to: (1) “attract industrial research laboratories and facilities” to North Carolina; (2) “increase opportunities of citizens of North Carolina for employment,” and (3) “increase the per capita income of the citizens of the State.”⁹

      By 1954 the idea of capitalizing on the proximity of three major research universities to each other had been discussed but not acted upon.¹⁰ It took a businessman from Greensboro, Romeo Guest, to get the ball rolling. Guest owned a business that catered to the development of new facilities for textile firms moving to the state from New England. As that trend began to wane he sought other development opportunities. He seized on the idea of using the Triangle universities to attract industrial research operations to North Carolina.

      Guest began by developing a marketing brochure to lure research facilities to the area and began a series of meetings to promote the idea with representatives of the three universities and state political leaders. Guest is generally credited with coining the phrase “research triangle” to refer to this area. Among the many meetings Guest held were sessions with Malcolm Campbell, dean of the School of Textiles, and William Newell, director of the Textile Research Center, at North Carolina State University, who supported the idea of an industrial park for research and formed a delegation to present the idea to Governor Hodges. The governor requested reports containing an objective assessment of the potential impacts of the idea, which were prepared by Newell and Campbell and provided to the governor in early 1955. After several follow-up meetings, the governor, although not willing to support the idea financially, was willing to use his position to advocate for its creation. He saw the RTP as “the marriage of North Carolina's ideals for higher education and its hopes for material progress.”¹¹ His hope was that if research and development facilities could be attracted to the Raleigh-Durham area, production facilities would locate in other parts of the state. This is indeed what happened.

      In May 1955 the governor created the Research Triangle Development Council to take the idea to the next level. Robert Hanes, president of Wachovia Bank, was appointed chairman of that committee, which included other prominent business and government leaders. One of the first tasks of this committee was to convince the universities to cooperate in the development effort since it would be their knowledge and staff resources that would be marketed to potential occupants of the RTP. The universities were seen as “providing a wellspring of knowledge and talents for the stimulation and guidance of research by industrial firms.”¹² Some university officials, however, were uncomfortable with the idea of the universities becoming too closely involved in industrial research: “Guest was explaining the Research Triangle idea and how he would sell to companies the talents of the faculty. William Carmichael of the Consolidated University said, ‘Let me see Romeo, if I really understand what it is we're talking about here, you want the professors here and all of us to be the prostitutes and you're going to be the pimp.’”¹³

      One idea to bridge the gap between basic university research and industrial research was suggested by Paul Gross, then vice president of Duke University. Early on he argued that it would be important to have a nonprofit research institute associated with the park. This led to the creation of the Research Triangle Institute, which has played an important role in the park's development.

      The Research Triangle Development Council also conducted an inventory of university resources and expertise that would be used to market the area to corporations. It identified approximately nine hundred individuals at the three universities who could potentially contribute to the mission of the RTP.¹⁴ In September 1956, the council was incorporated as the Research Triangle Committee Incorporated, a “non-profit, benevolent, charitable and educational corporation,” with Governor Hodges, Brandon Hodges, the State Treasurer, and Robert Hanes as the directors.¹⁵

      One

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