'Cause I’m moving there soon. In particular, I’d like to hear what the differences are between the three towns, what’s the general consensus on each (“great place to live,” “great place to visit,” “total shithole,” whatever) and I’d like to know what there is to do in each.
Thanks!
I’m in the process of moving back here, after 6 years of living in NH. From what I’ve gathered, the triangle is broken down like this:
Raleigh is the up-n-coming happening city.
Durham is generally considered the ghetto of the three. Whether that’s fair or not, I don’t know - I haven’t had much reason to actually go there.
Chapel Hill is the college town.
If you’re looking to buy a house, my money’s on Wake Forest (slightly north of Raleigh). Most of the Raleigh-Durham-RTP traffic travells along the south side of Raleigh, I’ve found driving around the north side is much more relaxing.
As far as what there is to actually do in each city - I admit, I don’t get out much. What do you like? There’s a couple of really big state parks, tons of shopping, the beach is about 2 hours east while the mountains are about 2 hours west. And there’s even the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday at midnight at the Rialto. If you like that sort of thing 
I hope you like basketball. I mean really, really, like basketball. Because you will hear a lot of it.
My parents live in North Raleigh and for all their complaints of traffic, they know it’s still easier to drive in than DC. I find Raleigh to be a pleasant place, nice and green compared to south Florida. The change of seasons is very nice. In fact, the climate in general is pleasant to me. There’s plenty of shopping at big-ass malls and a pretty good variety of dining out.
Since I’ve only been there to visit my folks that’s about it for my experience.
Oh, and the mountains are more than 2 hours west. 2 hours only gets you somewhere between Greensboro and Winston-Salem. After that, you have another 1.5-2 hours to hit the Appalachians.
I grew up in Cary, which is definitley the borgeois capital of NC. It is a suburb town on the fringe of Raleigh smack in the middle of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle.
Clean, pretty buildings and well-maintened hedges, grocery and drug stores on every corner (I kid you not, the volume of these establishments rivals even the number of liquor stores, bail bonds offices, and Spanish mini-mercados here in my current residence of L.A.), nice restaurants and copious police presence. It’s the poster-child of suburbia, USA and has frequently been rated the “#1 place to live” by whatever magazine does such ratings.
However, my experience as a teenager there was less than stellar. Everyone in Cary verges on the upper crust of the middle-class range. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, I acknowledge, now that I have grown a little wiser. But as a teenager, it was an incredibly unstimulating environment for me. And like many of the spoiled rich kids in Cary, I eventually turned to illegal drugs as a way to cope with my own feelings of insignificance.
This might be more than you asked for in your OP but I just wanted to share - in case you have kids, and you move to this area, so you can be aware it’s a big issue among teens there, because my case was by no means unusual. I hope you treat them right.
If you don’t have kids and have no intention of having them, well I still might be able to answer some other questions about the Triangle. 
The sad thing, is I remember when Cary (Now the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees ) was in the country.
Before you choose where in the Triangle to live, it would behoove you to try to drive to where you’ll work from there in the morning rush. Like a lot of areas in the south, public transit in the Triangle is practically non-existent, and I-40 can rival Atlanta for traffic frustration.
As for what there is to do in the Triangle: what do you like to do? Do you like theater? There is a top-notch community theater, um, community. Do you like sports? There’s the hockey team in Raleigh, AAA baseball in Durham, AA Baseball in Zebulon (A better show for the money, IMHO), and world class NCAA basketball and football in all three main cities.
I just know you’re gonna get some current residents responding pretty soon, but I’m willing to give you the historical context of my life there.
I started UNC-Chapel Hill graduate school in the Fall of 1966. It was a glorious time and a glorious small college town. Well, not that small. But alive. Liberal, active, intellectual, and BBQ.
When I decided that graduate school wasn’t for me, I moved to Durham in the Winter to live near my friends at Duke who were smarter and still in graduate school. Durham was the operative end of an enema tube. Small Southern tobacco town, and the divide between the school(Duke) and the town was greater than any gulf you could imagine. I taught school north of there, but lived in Durham for four years while my wife got a PhD. from Duke. Raleigh at that time was the bigger city, more progressive than Durham, but still the middle South. Conservative. Jesse Helms was the nightly news commentator on the local radio/tv station, spouting racist bullshit. So they elected him to congress sometime later. The KMart couldn’t open on Sunday until 1:00 pm. Blue laws.
Did I mention BBQ? It’s to die for. I’ll send you a link to all the BBQ joints in Carolina, and tell you where to get the best.
The Research Triangle Park between Durham and Raleigh started back in that time frame, and I worked there for the NIH for a year or so. So the area started to attract some pretty good people from outside the area.
I too fondly remember the Cary of country days.
ACC basketball and BBQ. What more could anyone need?
I’ll chime in with my impressions of Chapel Hill. I actually “vacationed” there a lot in the early 2000’s.
I found there was tons to do - dozens of concerts every night, a bunch of “art house” movie theaters (I’ve seen more indie flicks there in a few summers than my whole life in Cleveland), lots of cool places to eat and have coffee, neat little shops and more than your fair share of gossip. There was never a dull moment during my days spent out there.
I had friends in Pittsboro, Carborro and Hillsboro and those towns all have their own little charms (Carborro kind of melded in to Chapel Hill, to me) and most of my friends spent most of their time in Chapel Hill.
The only time I spent in Raleigh or Durham was sort of in the crappity areas of town. Durahm actually the crappiest part of town. But I liked them because they were close enough to Chapel Hill
Ok that doesn’t really give you any idea about LIVING there, but hanging out in Chapel Hill is way fun.
My family and I are moving to Raleigh at the end of this year. I lived there for a few years after college and my husband and I met there. The reasons we’re choosing to return to that area are 1) a fairly inexpensive housing market 2) universities…I like a university town 3) four seasons without an intimidating winter 4) proximity to my family and 5) good schools (for the younger crowd in my household). I can’t really give you specifics on stuff to do (I haven’t lived in Raleigh for over a decade), but since there seems to be a few of us moving there, maybe you’d all like to get together for a drink sometime?
I lived all over the country before we landed in North Carolina—East Coast (DC, MD and VA), West Coast (Monterey, CA) and the Deep South (LA and GA). We moved to Durham in 1990 and then we moved just south of Chapel Hill in 1997. So here’s the straight dope on this area.
Raleigh is a city. It has no great character, and the cultural offerings are still slim. But it IS an up and coming place so there’s hope. Wake County schools are stuffed to bursting and there is an annual convulsion when everyone is reassigned to make room for the thousands of new students who arrive yearly. You can find reasonable housing in town in the new condos going up, or in the out lying counties. But there are many developments that are overpriced and hideous. Think Stepford wives.
Cary is, indeed, the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. The shopping is pretty good though. I like the fact that they have all the traffic and high costs in one place.
Durham has some really lovely places—no kidding. The city gets a bad rap but it has some vibrancy that Raleigh and Cary do not. The schools aren’t great but they are improving. It’s a middle class town with reasonable housing costs and it’s not far from anything.
Chapel Hill is still a liberal bastion in a sea of conservatism. It’s a terrific little town but unbelievably expensive to live in. The best schools in the area, Franklin Street is always hopping, and the people are friendly. Of course, the people are friendly pretty much everywhere here.
If you need any other information, let me know. I’d love to help make your move to my adopted state a little easier.
First of all, welcome to NC, jodi! It’s a wonderful place to live.
I lived in Raleigh for a couple of years, and my husband grew up in Chapel Hill and worked in Durham for a while. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’d urge to put aside any stereotypical ideas about the South. The Triangle is very racially and culturally diverse. There are, of course, whites and African-Americans, but also a booming Latino population and lots and lots of folks from Asia and the Middle East. There are active gay and lesbian communities in each city. The area has three public universities, one big private university, and several smaller private colleges. There is great theater and a good music scene. Politically, I found it an interesting mix of conservative and liberal. (Wouldn’t it be boring to live in a completely red or completely blue town?) I remember going out with a group of friends one Election Day–one of us had voted for the Democrat, one for the Republican, one for the Libertarian, and one didn’t vote.
If I had to move back to the Triangle, I’d live in Durham. They’re getting horrible publicity on account of the Duke rape case, but it really does seem like a good place to live. It’s diverse and affordable with a lot of interesting things going on there. The city has two universities: North Carolina Central (one of the UNC system’s historically black colleges) and Duke, but unlike Chapel Hill, the city doesn’t depend on the universities for its existence. While maybe not as liberal as Chapel Hill, Durham does have its share of progressive organizations and politics. (It also, according to rumor, has the most lesbians per capita of any NC city outside of Asheville. Not sure why.)
Chapel Hill is a lovely town, but expensive. The public schools in Chapel Hill are probably the best in the state. (The schools in surrounding Orange county aren’t quite as good–not as much money and not as many parents with PhDs. ) Chapel Hill is very much a college town, with all that it implies–lots of bars, good nightlife, people setting cars on fire on account of a basketball game. I like it best in the summer when there aren’t as many students around. Probably the most LGBT-friendly city of the three.
Raleigh’s not a bad place to live, but it doesn’t have as much personality as Durham or Chapel Hill. In some ways, it seems like it could be anywhere in the U.S. It also feels like the most conservative of the three–not in a fundamentalist way, but in a country club, banker way. There are some great restaurants and museums. It seems like a very family-friendly city.
As for Cary…you couldn’t pay me enough to live there. I spent a year living on the outskirts. Nothing but strip malls, subdivisions, and SUVs.
burundi summed it up well.
I’ll add that Carrboro is a unique enclave. Extremely liberal, but all kinds of liberal. Hardcore middle-aged hippies, oodles of soccer moms, a large 20s/30s single contingent (myself incl).
One of the few places in the US where you can actually, seriously, WALK everywhere. Plenty of downtown apartments, as well as houses for sale. (On the pricey side to buy a house, but not obscene IMO.)
It also has an adorable sense of community. (Which, if that’s not your thing, will really get on your nerves.)
My wife and I met when we were both in grad school at Chapel Hill in the 90’s. When we had our first child we bought a house in Cary. Big mistake.
God, we learned to loathe that town! Miles after mile of farmland converted to instant suburbs. No decent restaurants. No decent shops. Crazy neighborhood covenants. Insane traffic jams. Our neighbors had exactly two topics of interest: sports and lawncare. We fled as soon as we could.
Chapel Hill is very nice in a small-town way but kind of pricy. Carrboro is great too – we probably should have tried to buy there, but as I was working in Raleigh at the time the commute would have been too long.
But avoid Cary like the plague!
Stay out of Garner. There are no good schools in Garner. If you are looking for a good school, DO NOT move to Garner.
That is all.
Ah yes, Carrboro. Typo Knig and I lived there for 4+ years before moving to the DC metro area. Lots of walkable stuff. There is (or at least was, we’ve been gone for a while) a wonderful Farmer’s Market there. Also a hippie-style food co-op called IIRC the Weaver Street Market.
All in all, we loved the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area - between college, and my husband’s grad school, we lived there for about 11 years. Would move back in a minute but we’re too entrenched now in the DC area.
Housing prices: may be more expensive there than in Raleigh or Durham, but depending on where you’re coming from, there may not be too much sticker shock. For example, if we sold our house here, the equity would let us pay cash for something in Chapel Hill.
Adding a few comments to burundi’s:
UNC-Chapel Hill has an astonishing library system. 22 libraries in all, I think, including a law library, art library, medical library, NC History library, etc. The flagship, Davis, is eight stories tall; several of the others are two to four stories tall. You can get lost in there for weeks.
Chapel Hill is also a very walkable town, if you’re happy to walk through the woods. I lived in several places in town from which I could walk to work within half an hour or less. The bus system in Chapel Hill sucks, but fortunately, you don’t really need it.
Places to visit there:
-Gim Ghoul Castle. Find a local who’s cool, and they can direct you to this castle. You’re not supposed to go right up to it–it’s private property, owned by a fraternity–but I’ve done so many, many times, and nobody’s ever bothered me.
-The UNC Arboretum. Small but beautiful.
-The Planetarium. It’s pretty cool. Just make sure before you buy tickets that you ask the following question: “Um, this show doesn’t have an incredibly annoying high-pitched narrator, does it?” Whoever designs their shows for kids has a very unfortunate aesthetic.
-Mama Dip’s Country Kitchen. One of the best soul food restaurants in the world, I think. Most soul food I don’t much like, but hot damn!
-Queen of Sheba. Excellent Ethiopian food, and my vote for the best restaurant in town (although I’ve not lived there for awhile, so there could well be other contenders).
-Moviewise, check out the Chelsea and the Carolina theater. (There’s also a Carolina theater in Durham, also showing indie movies, but owned by a different person). These two theaters are owned by a wonderfully crotchety ex-highschool-English teacher, and they’re lots of fun.
-I’ll plug Downtown Comics, since it’s owned by a friend of mine. It’s the best-organized comics store I’ve been to, with a fairly wide selection; and the workers are friendly and non-creepy.
Carrboro is, as has been mentioned, a very cool town. Weaver Street Market has huge crowds hanging out on the grass outside it every weekend morning: parents and their kids, folks and their dogs, young couples in love, students reading books, musicians jamming, etc. Check it out sometime.
The farmer’s market in Carrboro is also great. They do special events sometimes–last time I was there, they had a tomato tasting, where you could go around a set of tables and sample two or three dozen different varieties of tomatoes. All the goods are locally grown or crafted, and it’s a pretty big market.
Durham is the ghetto? Well, it’s the blackest town in the Triangle; I think a majority of the population is African American. I had a lot of people warn me away from Durham when I talked about moving there, but I don’t think their reasons were very good. There’s tons of great stuff happening there, from African dance festivals to storytelling to all sorts of other Afrocentric arts events. When I lived there in 1999, downtown was kinda dingy, and a coworker had his car broken into twice, but I never experienced any problems, despite working and parking downtown. (okay, one problem was that I hated my job, but that’s not Durham’s fault).
I’m not as familiar with Durham as I am with Chapel Hill and Carrboro, having lived there a total of a little less than two years, on two separate occasions. Duke is a gorgeous campus (West campus–East isn’t nearly so impressive). Go to the Duke Gardens sometime: they’re the essence of Southern natural beauty.
Let’s see, Raleigh. Never lived there, and I confess I don’t much like it. It may have the Triangle’s best restaurants (Dalat has, or at least used to have, superb Vietnamese food), and NC State is a pretty good school. The Rialto is a great theater–try to see something there just for the pleasure of the theater’s interior.
Daniel
this from an admitted outsider who only ever travelled there on business…
I am in the R-D are fairly frequently for business (and Alamance, and Sanford), and the one thing that struck me about the “triangle” was the extreme poverty once you got outside of the city areas. Once you’re on the interstate (40, I think…could be wrong), there’s nothing but trailer parks and abandoned houses. To be honest, it looks prety depressing.
Having said that, I enjoyed the small-city atmosphere of Raleigh, and even Durham had it’s nice parts. Coming from a very flat area, I liked the ridges and hills a lot, too.
The stores are chain-heavy, fromwhat I could tell, but it looked like a vibrant area.
-Cem
Huh? Sure, there’s some; but I’ve lived in the surrounding areas, and there’s plenty of rural wealth there. Check out, for example, the neighborhoods on the New Hope Exit from I-40: beautiful rolling countryside with homes ranging from modest to grandiose. (I choose this example because it’s a drive I often end up taking). I see no more poverty in the surrounding areas than I do in other places.
Daniel
Actually, it’s gotten better - for one thing, it’s free! So if you just need to get around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, it’s pretty nice. I use it when I’m on campus and need to go elsewhere about town (I work at UNC) because it’s much less hassle than hiking out to get my car out of the parking garage. It is the Chapel Hill transit system though, so if you are in Chapel Hill and need to go somewhere outside Chapel Hill/Carrboro, you’ll need a car. We do have the TTA (Triangle Transit Authority), which will take you from Chapel Hill to certain places in Durham and Raleigh, but destinations and times are limited.
Out of Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham, Chapel Hill is the most expensive to live in. Durham is the most reasonable, but personally the politics there have really turned me off to the idea of ever living there. They tend to break down along racial lines and the school board has been an embarrassing circus over the last couple years - the recent election has seen some new members voted on the board, though, so hopefully that will improve things.
On the good side, Durham has been doing some revitalization of their downtown area with the American Tobacco Historic District, near where the Durham Bulls stadium is. There are shops, restaurants, arts events, office space and condos there, and it is ideally centrally located.
Raleigh is the largest city in the area and therefore boasts the most and widest range of things to do, but Chapel Hill/Carrboro and Durham tend to have more character. Raleigh is undergoing some severe growing pains, too, and the schools at this point are very overcrowded. One possible solution being considered is year-round schools, which may or may not happen - if you have kids (or want kids at some point), that may be a consideration for you.
As far as traffic goes, I-40 can be bad, even on weekends, so you will definitely want to balance where you live with where you work, commuting-wise (to give you an idea, Chapel Hill and Raleigh are roughly 40 miles apart, with Durham in between). Cary’s traffic is horrendous. There has been mention of Carrboro being a walkable town, which is mostly true, and it’s a good thing because the bizarrely laid out, narrow streets make me want to grind my teeth when I have to drive over there. I live about 5 miles east of Hillsborough, which is the county seat about 12 miles north of Chapel Hill. It’s quiet, cheaper to live in than Chapel Hill, but it’s semi-rural so there’s not a whole lot of stuff near by. We do happen to have the Blue Bayou and Allen and Son BBQ, though, so what more do you really need?
Funny you should mention this - Chapel Hill is really quite chain-averse. There is no Wal-Mart in Chapel Hill. There is no K-Mart in Chapel Hill. There is no Target in Chapel Hill. They let Durham host all those things. 
On Franklin Street, the only chain businesses I can think of that are down there are a few restaurants - Qdoba, Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee and Starbucks. There are many, many more that are unique to the area. My town, Hillsborough, has an area in which they quarantine the chains and the historic downtown is all little restaurants, shops and lawyer’s offices (being the county seat and all). I think it would be very pleasant to work down there.
Also, I don’t think I’ve seen this poverty of which you speak - you’d have to tell me exactly where you’ve seen this. One funny thing I find about this area, is that you can be on a street where there are lots of businesses, etc. and then in the next block - poof - you are out in the country!