Raleigh is a real town. Kind of. The downtown is bigger than Durham and has a fair amount going on, considering it's a state capital. There are tall office buildings (both existing and being constructed) and government office buildings and local restaurants and stores, and a surprisingly large number of architecture firms. It's a growing Southern city, and it's pretty exciting to see this region expand. Chicago is cool, but there are few new challenges there. Population density is still low here, and there's lots of open space awaiting construction. And that construction is often green--I have seen lots of ads in the independent paper about green homes and apartments. The campus buses run on biodiesel. The energy companies are very visible, and people are working had to preserve the open spaces in the region. The city planning department holds charrettes to give residents a chance to participate in neighborhood development.
Maybe these things happen in other places too, they're just more visible here because there's less of everything. The history museum in Raleigh was closed, so there is probably a lot of interesting here. But for a region that once thrived on the tobacco industry, then crashed when smoking became a bad word, there's a lot of potential yet.
