Why Are We Afraid of Big Bad Durham?
After spending a considerable amount of time in Durham over the past few years, I'm amazed at how people are treating Bull City, Durham, North Carolina these days....
For chrissakes, from the way that the fear factors have been spread by mainstream media these days, you would think that Durham is the next Flint, Newark, Compton or East St. Louis.
Now, I'm not saying that Durham doesn't have a few rough spots and some buck-ass wild characters running around the city, but what is wild is the amount of fear that many people have about even coming into a great city that is entering a renaissance phase.
Jeff Stern addresses the image of Durham in a great feature article in this past week's Triangle Independent. Check it out here. It's a good article and it addresses a ton of great questions surrounding the image and development of Durham. In particular, I enjoy how he uses the development stories of RTP and RDU as examples to display how Durham has been given unfairly the backseat in the marketing game that has pushed Raleigh off as the big brother city of innovation in the Triangle...By the way, has anyone realized that most of RTP is in Morrisville?
What people haven't realized is that Durham is providing a breeding ground for an incredible creative class rise in the Triangle. The American Tobbacco Historic District development project is nothing less than phenomeonal. The potential of Ninth Street and the new urban pioneers who are moving into Dutrham are ushering a new revitalization era centered around community and more importantly...They're creating safe and stable neighborhoods.
So, here are a few questions:
Why does a city that actually has a 4.4% unemployment rate and one of the few cities and counties in the country that has a AAA bond rating get such a bad rap?
The knee jerk reaction would use the Duke Lacrosse case or a murder case in Few Gardens to use as excuses to say there are racial divisions and gang problems, but that's not true when you look at the reductions in crime and analyze the fiasco surrounding the mainstream case that was blown out across the country through ESPN, Newsweek, and Fox.
What we need to do for Durham now is to ask ourselves. What do we have to do in the Triangle to create a image of Durham that is not based upon fear? Why are we removing the strength of marketing the Triangle region as one in favor of just the 'Raleigh' area or better yet, 'Raleigh'? How can we retain new employees and commuters who are arriving into RTP and the outer core economic development areas?
And one more for you...Why are we marketing Cary, Knightdale, Garner, and Morrisville as up and coming areas while forgetting some incredible re-emerging neighborhoods surrounding the Hillandale and Trinity Park sections of Durham?
We're creating a travesty by not pushing up the image of Durham and not embracing it's beauty. Yet, what this article has made me think about is...What is the future brand image for Durham? Is it the City of Medicine, the Triangle's Center for Creativity, or is it the city that people want to neglect?
It's time for a new brand for Durham...What's it going to be?
From 'The Green Room',
IronDog
For chrissakes, from the way that the fear factors have been spread by mainstream media these days, you would think that Durham is the next Flint, Newark, Compton or East St. Louis.
Now, I'm not saying that Durham doesn't have a few rough spots and some buck-ass wild characters running around the city, but what is wild is the amount of fear that many people have about even coming into a great city that is entering a renaissance phase.
Jeff Stern addresses the image of Durham in a great feature article in this past week's Triangle Independent. Check it out here. It's a good article and it addresses a ton of great questions surrounding the image and development of Durham. In particular, I enjoy how he uses the development stories of RTP and RDU as examples to display how Durham has been given unfairly the backseat in the marketing game that has pushed Raleigh off as the big brother city of innovation in the Triangle...By the way, has anyone realized that most of RTP is in Morrisville?
What people haven't realized is that Durham is providing a breeding ground for an incredible creative class rise in the Triangle. The American Tobbacco Historic District development project is nothing less than phenomeonal. The potential of Ninth Street and the new urban pioneers who are moving into Dutrham are ushering a new revitalization era centered around community and more importantly...They're creating safe and stable neighborhoods.
So, here are a few questions:
Why does a city that actually has a 4.4% unemployment rate and one of the few cities and counties in the country that has a AAA bond rating get such a bad rap?
The knee jerk reaction would use the Duke Lacrosse case or a murder case in Few Gardens to use as excuses to say there are racial divisions and gang problems, but that's not true when you look at the reductions in crime and analyze the fiasco surrounding the mainstream case that was blown out across the country through ESPN, Newsweek, and Fox.
What we need to do for Durham now is to ask ourselves. What do we have to do in the Triangle to create a image of Durham that is not based upon fear? Why are we removing the strength of marketing the Triangle region as one in favor of just the 'Raleigh' area or better yet, 'Raleigh'? How can we retain new employees and commuters who are arriving into RTP and the outer core economic development areas?
And one more for you...Why are we marketing Cary, Knightdale, Garner, and Morrisville as up and coming areas while forgetting some incredible re-emerging neighborhoods surrounding the Hillandale and Trinity Park sections of Durham?
We're creating a travesty by not pushing up the image of Durham and not embracing it's beauty. Yet, what this article has made me think about is...What is the future brand image for Durham? Is it the City of Medicine, the Triangle's Center for Creativity, or is it the city that people want to neglect?
It's time for a new brand for Durham...What's it going to be?
From 'The Green Room',
IronDog
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