DURHAM, N.C. -- Pulling out of the driveway of the woodside home where he enjoys photographing the birds that feed on his back porch, Michael E. Murphy grimaced as he pointed out the rows of attractive new homes across the road.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Jennifer Piddington, formerly of Castle Shannon, and her husband, Scott, worship together at Immaculate Conception Church in Durham, N.C., to which the family relocated in 1989. Click photo for larger image. Graphic: Raleigh, North Carolina

"That used to be a tobacco farm," he said, before passing another housing development just a few hundred yards toward his workplace in Research Triangle Park.

"That used to be all woods," the former North Hills resident grumbled.

To hear him, you'd have thought Murphy was surrounded by the ugly highway interchanges, gas stations, shopping plazas and fast-food restaurants that dominate so many fast-growing suburban corridors.

In fact, there's not a traffic light or commercial venture close to Murphy's home in Durham, which hosts Duke University as part of the prosperous, popular Raleigh-Chapel Hill metropolitan area. It's just that everything's relative, and for a place that seemed quaintly quiet when Pittsburghers started arriving here in the 1980s, the signs of growth make some of them uneasy.

It's not hard to understand why people are still moving here, expanding the metropolitan area from about 665,000 in 1980 to 1.2 million by 2000. Southern graciousness mingles with attractive terrain, moderate climate, plenty of jobs that pay well and proximity to mountains to the west and the ocean to the east.

Some transplants, like Denise Contrael, 53, a 1996 arrival from South Park, say they're just sorry they didn't migrate to North Carolina sooner.

Others, who once imagined retiring to this area, like Jennifer Piddington of Castle Shannon, are now happy they had reason to bump up their timetable. She and husband Scott and their three daughters moved to North Carolina in 1989 because of an employment offer he received as an engineer. They've never looked back.

"It's a different climate, a slower pace of life. The winter isn't as harsh, but you have the seasons. People are very friendly. We really like the atmosphere here," said Piddington, 56. "This area has grown in the 15 years we've been here, and traffic has increased, but it's still nothing like traffic in Pittsburgh."

The trade-off for that leisurely pace is the lack of any inspiring urban amenities like the view of the Golden Triangle or the pulsating feel of the Downtown Cultural District and North Shore during major events.

People spread out during the day in locations 10 to 30 miles apart: downtown Raleigh, with its state government offices and North Carolina State University; Chapel Hill, a liberal college town hosting the University of North Carolina; and Durham, which has Duke and its nationally prestigious health center, but also has more social problems than its neighbors.

In the evening, many people return home to Cary, a town that might best be described as Mt. Lebanon on steroids. Its quality schools, attractive neighborhoods, low crime and welcoming committees for newcomers make it perfect for families, so much so that it has grown from a population of 21,763 in 1980 to more than 100,000 today.

A local joke is that Cary stands for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees, although the ex-Pittsburghers living here would be willing to substitute "Comfortable" or "Contented" for "Containment."

"Pittsburgh is a nice place to visit, but when you go there now, everything looks old," said Mark Lang, 39, formerly of Penn Hills, a cabinet maker who has been in Cary since 1986. "Everything here looks brand new."

Much of the new blood and development stems from the Research Triangle Park, a tranquil 8-mile-by-2-mile cluster of campuses for IBM, DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline and other corporate powerhouses. The state of North Carolina nestled the sprawling tech center among the woods as a place for private industry to retain the thousands of annual graduates of local universities.

"This region has a reputation, and justly deserved, of business, government and academia working closely together ... . I think that's what has driven the economy," said Charles Hayes, president of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, a 13-county group.

Murphy, 53, president of the Raleigh-Durham Pitt Club for University of Pittsburgh alumni, is one of the park's laboratory workers.

He loves Pittsburgh, but even with some of that undesirable growth he sees here, it takes him just four minutes to drive to work.

Plus, considering he only needs a heavy jacket one week of every winter, he's not looking to go anywhere else. An older sister moved here after him, while another sister and brother have remained contentedly in Pittsburgh.

"Pittsburgh was an interesting place to live with a lot of things going on, a big-league town," Murphy said. "Here, it's not as interesting, but it's a great place to live."

---

Back to main story: Pittsburgh is most livable and most leavable