Overlooking Duke University's West Campus

If you're new to the area and are flying into Raleigh-Durham airport, your first impression from an aerial view may be that it is rather hard to find the cities and towns. Instead, you'll see a lot of trees and a few large lakes — Jordan Lake to the south and Falls Lake and Kerr Lake to the north. The municipalities of the Research Triangle area have been carved out of the native pine and hardwood forests, and trees still have the upper hand. They grow quickly here and are a distinctive feature of the landscape. Nearly everywhere you go, you have a sense of being in or near the woods.

Money magazine recently rated the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area as the best place to live in the south. 

The Durham Arts Council Building

The three points of the Triangle are Durham (home of Duke University), Chapel Hill (home of the University of North Carolina), and Raleigh (home of North Carolina State University), all within less than 20 miles of each other. In the center is Research Triangle Park, the nation's largest research park. Originally founded in 1959, it is now home to more than 130 organizations, including major computer, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies and environmental agencies. Raleigh, the state capital, is the largest city in the area, with a population of around 275,000. Durham is a smaller city, with a population of around 185,000 and Chapel Hill is large town with a population of around 49,000. There are many other communities, suburbs, and residential enclaves scattered throughout the region. The overall population of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan area is around 1 million and rapidly growing due to the influx of high-tech industry and immigrants from less hospitable parts of the country.

The Magat Academic Center at The Fuqua School of Business

The area enjoys a mild four-season climate that is perhaps the most benign in the Eastern United States. The sun shines most of the time in all seasons of the year. Spring and Fall are especially beautiful, and they linger for months with impressive shows of foliage. It does occasionally snow here in the Winter — we had a record 20-inch snowfall in January 2000 — but the average high temperature in January is 50 degrees, and a 65-degree Winter day is about as likely as a 35-degree day. Summers tend to be hot and humid, but not nearly as relentless as you would find in the deep south — e.g., Houston or Atlanta. On most summer days you will find faculty members eating lunch outdoors in the new courtyard of the Magat Academic Center.

The Durham Symphony

With three major universities in the area, there is a full range of cultural activities — theater, music, dance, etc. Many new plays have made pre-Broadway appearances here, and each summer Duke plays host to the American Dance festival. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are famous for their music scene, and many nationally-known and up-and-coming artists perform in venues such as the ArtsCenter and the Cat's Cradle nightclub. There are two 20,000+ seat arenas in the Triangle (the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill and the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Raleigh) as well as an outdoor amphitheater (ALLTEL Pavilion in the Raleigh suburb of Walnut Creek) which regularly host large concerts by major recording artists. The Raleigh Convention and Conference Center Complex, located in downtown Raleigh, has recently been refurbished and expanded into the Triangle area's premier convention, trade show, and theater facility. Venues include the Conference Center, a 130,000 square foot multi-purpose convention center and meeting facility; Memorial Auditorium, a 2,277 seat theater featuring music, dance, comedy, and Broadway touring productions; and the BTI Center for the Performing Arts, a theater and music hall complex.There are many fine museums nearby, including the North Carolina Museums of Art, History, and Natural Sciences in Raleigh, the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, the Duke University Museum of Art, and the Ackland Art Museum and Morehead Planetarium at UNC.

The Duke Blue Devils win the 2001 NCAA Basketball Championship

Most local sports fans are rabid about college basketball — nearby rivals UNC and NC State have each won the national championship in men's basketball twice in the last 30 years, and Duke has made nine appearances in the Final Four under coach Mike Krzyzewski. In 2001 the Duke men's team won the NCAA championship for the third time since 1991. North Carolina won the women's basketball championship in 1993 and Duke was the women's runner-up in 1999. Collegiate soccer is another local tradition of excellence — the Duke men's soccer team won the NCAA tournament in 1986 and has reached #1 in the national rankings in each of the last two years, while North Carolina is the perennial women's national champion and preseason #1 team again this year. Durham is also home to the Durham Bulls AAA baseball club, featured in the movie "Bull Durham." Their modern stadium (designed by the architects of the Baltimore Orioles' Camden Yards) is a pleasant place for a family or group outing on a spring or summer evening. The area's only major-league sports franchise is the Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team, which plays at the new Entertainment and Sports Arena in Raleigh.

Durham is home to a fine dining spots, such as Nana's (pictured)

There are plenty of options for outdoor recreation. Large tracts of forest have been set aside as parks or preservation areas. Duke Forest, adjacent to the University, has many jogging and hiking trails. Nearby Jordan Lake, Falls Lake, and Kerr Lake are popular with boaters, anglers, and campers. The beaches are as close as a three or four hour drive to the East, and the mountains are about an equal distance to the West. North Carolina has more miles of sandy beach than any state other than Florida, and it also has the highest mountains in the Eastern U.S.. Mt. Mitchell, near Asheville, is 6,680 feet in altitude. Golf courses are abundant in the Carolinas, and Duke's own championship course is right next to the Fuqua School, in the woods below the Washington Duke Inn.

If you like to dine out out, the Triangle offers plenty of choices. The chefs and owners of Durham's Magnolia Grill have won many national awards for their nouvelle-Southern cuisine. Durham's Pops, Four Square, and Nana's are also favorites with their innovative menus. Among the Chapel Hill standouts are the very southern Crooks Corner and Dip's Country Kitchen ("Mama Dip" has appeared on national TV cooking shows), La Residence, and the popular West End Wine Bar. Both Durham and Chapel hill are home to several brew pubs. "Top of the Hill" in Chapel Hill was recently rated as one of the 12 best breweries in the country. Raleigh sports one of the nation's largest wine stores. The area has a growing number of ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Ethiopian, Cuban) and of course many establishments where one can indulge in the regional gustatory specialty: Barbecue.

Real estate is a relative bargain compared to large metropolitan areas in the Northeast or the West Coast. Much new residental construction has occurred in the last decade, and there are plenty of housing choices in both new and old neighborhoods. Chapel-Hill/Carrboro schools are among the finest public schools in the nation (East Chapel Hill High made one national top-ten list last year), and Durham and Wake County schools are among the best in the state. There are also numerous private schooling options, including Durham Academy, Duke School, Friends School, and various Montessori schools.

All in all, it's nice to live in the Triangle. The pace of life is slower here than in larger metropolitan areas but the quality of life is high. It's a great place to go to school, raise a family, start a company, or get back to nature.