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PROJECT AND CONTEXT DESCRIPTION
The acronym CORE stands for ‘Center of the
Region Enterprise,’ a collaborative planning effort
involving 12 different local governments and quasi-
public authorities covering an area of 60 square miles
approximately in the geographic center of the state of
North Carolina. It is close to, or includes within
its boundaries, several important focal points: the
center of state government – the city of Raleigh
(named after Sir Walter); a center of technological
innovation – the Research Triangle Park (RTP); and
an international transportation center – the Raleigh-
Durham International Airport.
The larger region that surrounds the CORE is gen-
erally known as ‘The Research Triangle,’ so named
because it’s defined by a geographic area whose three
cardinal points comprise the great research universities
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
North Carolina State University, and Duke University.
Within this region, the study area is bisected from east
to west by Interstate 40, the main transportation
artery, and by the anticipated regional rail system
being designed by the Triangle Transit Authority
(TTA) that will travel through it from north to south.
The study area straddles the ridge line between two
of North Carolina’s major, but environmentally fragile
river basins – the Neuse and the Cape Fear – and
is also home to one of the state’s most notable green
spaces, Umstead State Park, a fine wildlife preserve
and environmental resource. Within this context,
the CORE boundaries define a place where the bor-
ders of six municipalities meet: Cary, Durham City,
Morrisville, Raleigh, Durham County and Wake
County (See Plate 14). Although at the center of
the region, the project area is on the edge of most
communities and, because of this multi-jurisdictional
nexus, the area has not received as much care and
study as it deserves. This has led to several serious
planning and environmental problems.
The prevailing themes we were asked to address in
the charrette, in April 2002, were the mismatch
between jobs, homes and services, and the related
challenges to mobility caused by this disparity. The
60 square mile area supports more than 90 000 jobs
but only 8200 homes, most of them in the town of
Cary to the south. Local planners forecast that over
the next 10 to 20 years, 35 percent more jobs and four
times more residents will locate in this area. The day-
time population of the study area swells to a thousand
percent during working hours, resulting in heavy con-
gestion caused by peak hour commuter traffic. This is
comprised largely of employees traveling between
homes outside the study area to jobs in the RTP and
other key employment nodes such as airport.
Because most workers leave the area at the end of
the day, taking their purchasing power elsewhere, res-
idents who do live in the CORE area have few services
available locally, requiring them to drive to other
locations. This lack of convenient restaurants and
shops also means that daytime employees who wish
to run errands or eat lunch somewhere other than
the office cafeteria often must travel long distances by
car, thereby increasing frustration, congestion and
automobile emissions.
Despite these current problems, the RTP has
been an enormous boon to the area, both within
its boundaries and throughout the region. Since its
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