6/3/2006 4:09:03 PM

Yes my whole family is from NYC. I was half-joking. The point being the car is optional so no one really expects to make time driving.

I live in Philadelphia and most of my neighbors don't even own cars. Maybe because they are so poor, but still.

6/3/2006 4:11:31 PM

ha poor people just drive shitty cars.

and honestly, driving in NYC was completely ridiculous.

6/3/2006 4:14:01 PM

Can't wait until 2010, when Raleigh will actually sort of look like a city. This is about the size the skyline should be now, for a population of 340,000. When it gets here, the city will be well past 400,000.

I thought this deserved posting, even though some of the stuff is in the wrong place, because some of the new projects will be too far west to be seen from the South Saunders angle.

While nothing is really getting taller, at least we're getting quantity.

[Edited on June 8, 2006 at 7:50 PM. Reason : not finished]

6/8/2006 7:46:41 PM

6/8/2006 7:51:59 PM

^
not a real city!!!1

6/9/2006 1:30:08 AM

Quote :

"the sad thing is it's harder to get around downtown raleigh than NYC since you're car-bound. these buildings are just going to stress things with the parking and traffic, even if they are way out there next to the mall have you ever tried to exit 440 and make a left to get into Crabtree Mall at 5pm? I'd rather drive across Manhattan, at least there you're not expecting to move quickly."

While I agree that Glenwood/Crabtree traffic is pretty bad, and locating the tallest building in Raleigh there makes for a questionable land use/infrastructure decision, did you just roll Crabree into downtown Raleigh?

6/9/2006 1:54:55 AM

no

6/9/2006 9:27:17 AM

urban design tips: shorter blocks and narrower streets (<28ft) with parking and/or medians (preferably planted) = more pedestrian friendly = more livable downtown

drivers slow down when the street narrows... the only trick is to make sure that there is clearance for fire trucks (although the shorter blocks actually help ff's reach fires)

6/9/2006 9:29:49 AM

All I want is to be able to get on a train or bus and arrive at the airport in a reasonable amount of time.

6/9/2006 9:51:53 AM

tearing up the mall makes downtown less pedestrian friendly

6/9/2006 10:06:03 AM

we can all agree Fayetteville Street Mall did not work out as was hoped in the 70's when it was paved over - a really sad story

Glenwood South is a pleasant surprise, though

6/9/2006 11:05:00 AM

does anyone have a link to that new highrise thats' going p on glenwood south

i drove past it yesterday but didn't see the sign that used to be up there

6/9/2006 11:07:45 AM

Fayetteville St. should be a nice destination once it is completed. Tearing it up for redesign with through traffic, parking, and sidewalks definitely didn't ruin anything...

6/9/2006 11:15:14 AM

Quote :

"Sometimes an article comes out that is so wrong headed, even delusional, that someone has to respond. In a recent piece posted on the Planetizen website, software guru Paul Graham addressed the issue of "How to be Silicon Valley,” which alleged that to become a high-tech hotbed “you only need two kinds of people… rich people and nerds.” This reflects the conceit of a small, but influential group of elite techies and their supporting claque of pundits. According to these worthies, the “right people” only congregate in certain places with “well preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains”. Unlike the rest of us, the chosen will cluster in places “with personality.” Places, in other words, like Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Graham got his Ph.d, as well as San Francisco, Palo Alto, and other favored burgs. Towns where, he asserts, “people are walking around smiling”. In many ways this is a retread of Richard Florida’s "creative class" theory. But at least Richard attempts to apply some social science to his construct, albeit using questionable barometers like numbers of gay people, artists, and overall ethnic diversity to prop up his theory. Graham’s insight is instead pure assertion and, from my point of view, it only gets the present, the past, and likely the future wrong... continued: http://blog.inc.com/archives/2006/05/30/the_next_silicon_valley_part_1.html "

6/9/2006 2:10:05 PM

Silicon Valley is what it is not because of the number of shiny happy people there, but because of Stanford and Berkeley. The Boston area is what it is because of all the universities there. In the late 90s there was more venture capital & private equity money in the Boston area than all of Europe. We are what we are because of the universities in and around the triangle. I'm sure the happy factor is a legitimate metric, but the largest ingredient in being the next Silicon Valley is access to universities.

6/9/2006 2:42:10 PM

^

6/9/2006 2:49:17 PM

^ and the same can be said about the RTP but thats already been said im sure several times in this thread. Also with the Paris picture, tall buildings isnt really what makes a city its the density that does it. We could have all the tall buildings in the world and Raleigh would still suck if there was no density.

6/9/2006 2:53:33 PM

^^^ I agree completely but it raises the question of why Pittsburgh has almost no tech startups when CMU and UPitt are right there. Is it because the town is/was too conservative or just too ghetto?

6/9/2006 3:11:01 PM

although that is true its only one example. And its a steel town and its shitty.

6/9/2006 3:29:35 PM

Well, it goes without saying that the city needs to be an attractive place to live. You can put great schools in a crappy city but it doesn't mean people will want to live there after they graduate.

6/9/2006 3:31:26 PM

i don't get it - why is Pittsburgh shitty again?

Men's Journal magazine just released its "50 Best Places to Live" 2005 Annual Report, ranking Pittsburgh 34th in the "sexiest, healthiest, most fun towns in the U.S.A."

6/9/2006 3:47:45 PM

Whoever decided to put NC State so far away from downtown: great going, idiot.

If we had better transit connections to downtown, such as the TTA stations connecting us, I know I would go there more often, and I think a lot of other people would too.

6/9/2006 3:49:24 PM

Quote :

"does anyone have a link to that new highrise thats' going p on glenwood south"

http://www.glenwoodsfinest.com/
http://www.712tucker.com/
http://www.boylanflats.com/
http://www.westatnorth.com/

Then theres Boylan Estates on the other side of Hillsborough. All of the new buildings going up are trying to sell presale prices of >$350/sq. ft.

6/9/2006 3:52:48 PM

CMU and Pitt do not attract as many research dollars and do not generate as many patents as schools here and otehr places that harbor research centers.

6/9/2006 4:03:48 PM

I would like to see numbers, ssjamind

6/9/2006 4:05:06 PM

Quote :

"CMU and Pitt do not attract as many research dollars and do not generate as many patents as schools here and otehr places that harbor research centers."

i'll have to call bullshit too

6/9/2006 4:06:53 PM

do any of you guys have access to Nature magazine? there's an article there i would like to cite.

6/9/2006 4:22:10 PM

the journal Nature, yes of course

6/9/2006 4:24:53 PM

you do realize software engineering was practically invented at CMU
they do a shitload of robotics there, way more than NCSU

UPitt brings in more NIH money than Duke or UNC.
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/rnk04all1to500.htm

that's a fact, jack

6/9/2006 4:30:05 PM

Quote :

"Whoever decided to put NC State so far away from downtown: great going, idiot. If we had better transit connections to downtown, such as the TTA stations connecting us, I know I would go there more often, and I think a lot of other people would too."

in the early 1900s a hillsborough street trolley line would take students and faculty to downtown raleigh

i'm sure an intrepid internet explorer could even find some pics online if so inclined

6/9/2006 4:33:55 PM

tne trolley system was pretty nice. it ran all the way down glenwood hillsborough and six forks and all through downtown. there is still an old stop for it intact near five points.

6/9/2006 4:39:18 PM

If we were downtown, we could be like Georgia Tech.

Now there's a shitty campus.

6/9/2006 4:39:20 PM

^^ where?

6/9/2006 4:41:29 PM

"raleigh's first transit trip, taken on Christmas day 1886 was in a trolley

Years of electric streetcar operation: 1891-1934
Maximum miles of track: 11
Maximum number of trolley cars: 26
Passengers in 1920: 2.4 million

Figures based primarily on North Carolina Corporation Commission reports"

6/9/2006 4:46:03 PM

Quote :

"If we were downtown, we could be like Georgia Tech. Now there's a shitty campus."

haha!
NCSU is ranked 18th ugliest, GATECH is 15th ugliest
http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?categoryID=6&topicID=50

6/9/2006 4:47:50 PM

right on glenwood

Quote :

" History: This stone shelter was constructed by the Raleigh Electric Company, the second company to operate electric streetcars in the Capital City. The Raleigh Street Railway Company began scheduled runs on September 1, 1891. It was reorganized in 1894 as the Raleigh Electric Company and later incorporated into Carolina Power & Light Company. By 1915, the system had 12 miles of track. The last electric trolley ceased operation in 1932."

at one point the ancestor company of cp&l(progress energy) had electric 26 trolley cars operating at a time and 2.4 million passengers in 1920

http://www.cmhpf.org/development%20of%20streetcar%20systems.htm

6/9/2006 4:49:22 PM

According to one writer, "Raleigh was stung by the report that Charlotte had beat it to electric car service."[26] Dr. S. J. Jacobs of Iowa purchased the existing streetcar charter and announced ambitious plans. Arrangements were made for Edison General Electric Company to furnish electrification and four elegant trolley cars to be purchased from Philadelphia. Disputes developed between the owners and construction company, and some electric wires were removed. To resolve matters, Baltimore bondholders became involved, and Raleigh residents bought $50,000 in bonds to finance construction of the streetcar system. When he became unable to pay a bill for machinery, Dr. Jacobs quietly left Raleigh and never returned.

The Raleigh Street Railway Company, however, began scheduled runs on September 1, 1891. The system covered the same general route as the mule-drawn system. From downtown, the tracks ran west along Hillsboro Street (now Hillsborough) as far as St. Mary's College, north on Blount Street to Brookside Park near Oakwood Cemetery, and down Fayetteville and Cabarrus streets to the depot southwest of downtown. When the company failed in 1894, James H. Cutler of Boston, who already had streetcar interests in Asheville and other southern cities, acquired more investors and reorganized the company as the Raleigh Electric Company.

By 1915 the system boasted twelve miles of trackage. It served the state technical college (now N.C. State University) and reached the State Fairgrounds, ran along New Bern Avenue to the east, and in (1912) arrived at the new 100-acre Bloomsbury Park out Glenwood Avenue to the north. As a student at N.C. State in the early 1930s, Willie York (developer of Cameron Village Shopping Center and other properties) recalled riding streetcars downtown to the California Fruit Store to meet girls from Meredith College.

6/9/2006 4:49:23 PM

monorail plz

6/9/2006 4:55:09 PM

http://www.legeros.com/hidden-raleigh/

i found this site. alot of neat old buildings, and sites in raleigh many people dont know about. funny thing is, 90% of the stuff on there isnt used anymore but harrelson is on there. lmao

6/9/2006 4:57:43 PM

Quote :

"If we had better transit connections to downtown, such as the TTA stations connecting us, I know I would go there more often, and I think a lot of other people would too."

if only the #4 bus ran to and from downtown on hillsborough

if only the #11 bus ran to and from downtown on western and avent ferry

if only ncsu students could ride the bus free with their student id

if only it wasn't less than a 3 mile bicycle ride from the hillsborough and gorman intersection to the capitol

6/9/2006 5:00:53 PM

^^^^^ oh, that thing.

The ancestor company of CP&L also built the building that now houses Napper Tandy's on West street. it was built at the turn of the century to house the service cars that they used and was the first car park in the city.

Does anyone know when Glenwood Ave was built? I looked at a map of the city from 1872 and it wasn't there.

Incidentally, Boylan Ave existed only on the south side of Hillsborough (the Glenwood South area was an empty field at this point) and served as the driveway to the home of the Boylan family. They were a wealthy publishing family from NJ and were actually the richest family in the state for a time. The house still stands (its the old red one with the wrought iron fence on your right when you cross over the train tracks). The narrative of Lunsford Lane, a Raleigh slave who bought the freedom of his family and himself, was published in 1842 and makes mention of a Mr. Boylan whipping a slave to death. (I live on Boylan and did some research on a rainy day)

[Edited on June 9, 2006 at 5:04 PM. Reason : .]

6/9/2006 5:03:52 PM

I think it used to be called Slavewhipping Ave.

6/9/2006 5:21:37 PM

Quote :

"you do realize software engineering was practically invented at CMU they do a shitload of robotics there, way more than NCSU UPitt brings in more NIH money than Duke or UNC. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/rnk04all1to500.htm that's a fact, jack"

ok point taken.

as to why we have an edge in attracting hi tech companies, i guess one could point to the public policy that led to the creation of RTP.

that and we have a larger and cheaper workforce.

6/9/2006 5:21:45 PM

Quote :

"Whoever decided to put NC State so far away from downtown: great going, idiot. If we had better transit connections to downtown, such as the TTA stations connecting us, I know I would go there more often, and I think a lot of other people would too."

It's not even 2 miles from the brickyard to glenwood south.

It's 2 miles to the capital building.

What kind of lazy ass are you that 2 miles makes downtown inaccessible from campus?

6/9/2006 5:33:19 PM

and theres shitloads of parking downtown

6/9/2006 7:31:56 PM

The Glenwood Brooklyn area was built primarily from the 1900's to the 1920's, if I remember correctly.

[Edited on June 9, 2006 at 8:06 PM. Reason : And at one time, it was a sprawling, wasteful suburb. ]

6/9/2006 8:05:39 PM

There are mounds of misconceptions in this thread.

As for Pittsburgh, there is one steel mill left there. The steel industry collapsed in the 1970's. Within Pittsburgh's 55 square miles of city defined land area, there used to be over 600,000 residents at its peak. Today there are 320,000. However, Pittsburgh's metro population, which is a better representation of city cize, is over 2.3 million (down from 2.6 million in 1970).

As for startups, Pittsburgh has them, but not to the tune that Raleigh does. Regional population growth and loss have a lot to do with it. Obviously, Raleigh's population has exploded within the last 20 years.

[Edited on June 10, 2006 at 7:57 PM. Reason : .]

6/10/2006 7:56:21 PM

is that adjusted for mexicanization?

6/10/2006 8:01:24 PM

Quote :

"Whoever decided to put NC State so far away from downtown: great going, idiot."

you must be one lazy motherfucker

downtown is like a mile from State's campus

6/10/2006 8:11:58 PM