Twenty Reasons to Build and Live In Durham

Durham is a culturally diverse community. On a scorecard derived from Dr. Richard Florida’s 2002 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class, Durham ranked 1st among 274 similar-sized counties nationwide on the Creativity Index, which measures the talent, technology, and tolerance within the community—key, research-proven factors in attracting the creative class and predicting economic success.
Durham encompasses Research Triangle Park and is also home to Duke and North Carolina Central universities and Durham Technical Community College.
Durham offers neighborhoods from the most upscale in the Triangle like Treyburn and Hope Valley, to historic neighborhoods like Trinity Park and Forest Hills, to planned communities like Woodcroft and Woodlake, to the horse farms and rural neighborhoods of North Durham, to golf course communities like Croasdaile and Willowhaven, to Downtown lofts like West Village. Newcomers and visitors can easily find Durham’s neighborhood organization websites through DCVB’s relocation and neighborhoods portal.
Durham hit fast-forward without saying good-bye to yesterday… the Downtown arts and entertainment district was the first commercial historic district named in North Carolina. Durham has 3 N.C. historic sites (more than any other community) and 60 properties on the National Register of Historic Places.
More than 20 Durham restaurants and chefs have received national or regional recognition. Most of what Money magazine counted was in Durham when it rated the former six-county Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA as one of the best places in the nation to live.
Durham is home to more than 45 major annual festivals and events, at least a dozen of which are either highly recognized—nationally or regionally—or have significant out-of-state and in-state visitor appeal, including the American Dance Festival, Bull Durham Blues Festival, CenterFest Arts Festival, and Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
Durham offers more than 60 parks, four major river ways/greenways, a state park, a state recreation area, several major lakes, and a series of walking/hiking/ biking trails, including the American Tobacco Trail.
While Durham Public Schools is the seventh largest school district in the state, most are neighborhood schools, nearly all new or recently renovated, and feature a range of magnet schools, laboratory schools, and specialization centers. Annual comparisons show that Durham students perform equally (if not better than) their state peers. The best Durham schools compete toe-to-toe with the best schools in Cary, Chapel Hill, or Raleigh.
Durham has residents who are artists, authors, playwrights, award-winning scientists and researchers, and people nationally and internationally renowned in their fields.
Durham is the City of Medicine, USA, where one in four people are employed in a health-related field, with 300 major medical and health-related companies and medical practices, with a combined payroll that exceeds $1.5 billion annually.
Durham is a compact, single-city county at the convenient apex of the vast Triangle region, midway between Cary, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.
More than half of the U.S. population lives within a day’s drive or an hour’s flight from Durham. Durham is located on both a major north/south interstate and a major east/west interstate and co-owns a major international airport that serves upward of eight million passengers annually.
Durham offers some of the state’s most renowned visitor features and leisure activities including the Durham Bulls, Duke University Chapel, Sarah P. Duke Gardens, three State Historic Sites (including the site of the largest surrender of the Civil War), the regional interactive Museum of Life and Science, four major art centers/museums, a major Civic Center complex, the Carolina Theatre, Hayti Heritage Center, and much more.
Durham is a center for national championship basketball… North Carolina Central University in 1989 and Duke adding the 2001 championship to their back-to-back championships in 1991 and ’92. Duke has been one of the best NCAA Division-I Tournament teams in the history of college basketball; the Blue Devils' .769 winning percentage (83-25) in NCAA Tournament play is best all-time.
Durham has been the home selected by the majority of new business relocations to the Triangle over the past several years, and Durham is home to four of the region’s 10 largest employers.
Durham residents have a strong sense of community pride with more than 77% of residents surveyed proud of Durham. Durham’s single-city county crime per 100,000 residents has remained relatively flat the last three years while neighboring communities have risen seven times as fast. Its crime is near the bottom relative to other midsize cities in North Carolina and surrounding states. Downtown Durham crime is among the very lowest in the area.
Durham offers a splendid array of unique shopping. The full-size Americana Carousel and more than 165 stores at Northgate have been as staple in Durham for decades. Since joining Durham’s shopping scene, The Streets at Southpoint, a 1.3-million-square-foot super-regional mall with the state’s first Nordstrom, has made national headlines for its décor, small-town feel, and upscale items at great values. If you’re looking for something different, Durham’s unique commercial districts—Brightleaf and Ninth Street—provide shopping opportunities to please every taste and budget.
Durham is a tolerant community. Residents are involved and vocal in community issues, often making for colorful press and media coverage of Durham’s vitality and tolerance of differing opinions—characteristics which are often misunderstood or mis-represented by of neighboring communities.
Durham local government has the highest bond rating available, and this is in part because the community reinvests in schools, parks, roads, affordable housing, and other infrastructure. The tax rate can appear higher than other communities because two of Durham’s major employers are tax-advantaged and because the community wraps all services into one tax rate rather than separating parks, etc.
Durham has fewer traffic problems than surrounding communities. Since RTP, Duke, and NCCU are all located in Durham County, it is a short, easy trip from all of these locations to Downtown. RTP is only 4 miles, Duke 2 miles, and NCCU one mile from Downtown.

Last updated 7/11/05

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