Good article, thank you! 
It is going to be REALLY hard to define this area “Raleigh”. 
Music? no, that’s Nashville
University’s? No, that’s Boston
I would love to have an actual survey across the nation of anyone that has heard of this area to tell us there thoughts…maybe easier to get an outside perspective instead of looking in? 
I don’t think any of this “there are colleges here” gets to any point about “identity.” Brand, sure, but if you’re looking for an identity like Austin or Nash or NYC (DC has no identity other than being full of terrible people) you’re gonna have to do better than that.
On this one point I will have to disagree…DC is many things including…historic, vibrant, full of culture, food, and soooooooo many things to do…a better question would be to ask, why do you feel that DS is “full of terrible people”?
DC is historic
IBMA festival shout out:
https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/11792/2018-12-19/mix-that-makes-music-festival-great.html
Any identity that we try to manufacture for ourselves will just come across as artificial. We will just have to wait and see if one develops organically. I am not entirely sure the area should want or strive to be the next Las Vegas, Orlando, Nashville, or Austin. Do Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, or Atlanta even have an identity like that? It is entirely possible to be a thriving booming major metropolis without some mystical identity of coolness to hang our hats on.
What if our identity was the fact that we have no identity?
My point was really that you can’t make something “your thing” it just kind of has to happen organically, and it has to be a bottom-up movement, not a top-down one. Places that try to manufacture place and identity invariably fail, or creat a terrible Frankenstein’s monster of commercialism and aluminum siding (cough cough Charlotte). The best thing you can do is give the stuff that creates identity room to grow. For now Raleigh is kind of white bread. That’s ok.
And it is my right as an American to crap on DC for all the insiderism and social climbing and hangers-on and corruption and lack of principle and narcissism despite the existence of any historic value or cool stuff that accidentally happens.
Raleigh: Make the Most of It
Raleigh: A Little Bit of Everything
Raleigh: Your Slogan Here
I clearly need to work on this…
Raleigh: It’s warm and cheap and we have beer. Scratch that, it’s getting expensive. But we still have beer!
Side note, I’ve been looking at a few other city message boards for vacation research, and every one has a bunch of people complaining about how there’s too many new people moving in, too much construction pricing people out, too much traffic, etc. It’s funny that everyone thinks it’s just their city experiencing this reurbanization phenomenon.
I am not entirely sure the area should want or strive to be the next Las Vegas, Orlando, Nashville, or Austin. Do Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, or Atlanta even have an identity like that? It is entirely possible to be a thriving booming major metropolis without some mystical identity of coolness to hang our hats on.
I don’t think “coolness” has to be a narrow thing where you meet specific ideals or be this perfectly packaged destination for the whole family. It’s possible to be a booming metro area without having anything unique to offer. Heck, if we don’t put in any more effort than we “usually” do in the future, we’ll probably be there before we know it.
(Though Houston/Dallas still have NASA and sports, and Atlanta has art, rap music, huge neighborhood full of Korean expats, and Queer Eye… aside for Phoenix, they still have their own degree of “coolness”)
@Spero: (bolded emphasis mine)
The best thing you can do is give the stuff that creates identity room to grow. For now Raleigh is kind of white bread. That’s ok.
For now.
I(?) started this conversation because, of course, we’ve gotten this far as a region without that sort of identity we can rally behind. But is it really acceptable to let things stay that way (especially when that lack of cultural capital keeps us from getting what we want, like Amazon/Apple)?
@GucciLittlePig
[A] bunch of people [on other city forums are] complaining about how there’s too many new people moving in[to their city], too much construction pricing people out, too much traffic, etc. It’s funny that everyone thinks it’s just their city experiencing this reurbanization phenomenon.
It’s a global phenomenon (but people just REALLY don’t seem to give a damn about their civics/economics classes). Like our marketing thing, we just need to learn to make the most of it and come out on top.
Welcome to Raleigh y’all…
We’re southern, but so many northerners have moved here that were not really that southern anymore…
Pigs & Pints
A great place to live - a horrible place to visit
Let’s try a thought experiment: what is the cultural center of NC? What is the North Carolinian stereotype? I’m not native so I’m genuinely curious.
Maybe I’ll get in trouble here but my hypothesis is that there’s no single answer, which detracts from identity; sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. I think South Carolina has identity in spades but it cuts the other way a lot of times.
I Love that quote…
Now, except for not having a “bay” like San Francisco, we seem to have a few things in common with and maybe issues that we could learn from?
I agree with this from the article
Raleigh isn’t trying to be like any other city; it’s cool with who it is and what it’s becoming. Folks in Raleigh live by the state motto, “To be, rather than to seem.”
I don’t think we have one. Either that, or I seriously can’t think of any.
Like we have our love for nature, opinions on basketball and barbecue etc., but… every time I talk to my friends from outside NC, I have a hard time convincing them why it’s worth coming down here to hang out instead of the other parts of the country they’re in. I’ve grown up in/learned to speak English in/love NC, yet I still can’t make fun of North Carolinian stereotypes simply because I have nothing to work off of other than cheap shots at our snow-driving abilities or the Bathroom Bill.
Aside for planning documents and the Amazon/Apple drama, I agree with @Garciavic that we don’t try to act like any other city -or at least, when we threaten to do it, we never really follow through.
But I think we’re “cool with who [NC and Raleigh] is and what it’s becoming” in more of a complacent and mediocre kind of way… sort of like your average, basic sorority girl. Smart, ambitious, confident, pretty, and definitely interesting and charming in isolation, but… somehow gets lost in the noise when you zoom out and look at it in the bigger picture of things?
(Can’t help but imagine $15 decoration pieces from Bed Bath & Beyond with “to be, rather than to seem” inscribed instead of “live, laugh, love”, too)
You are wrong about DC.
Really enjoying the conversation so far. One thing I think about is not the national image Raleigh has, I’m really convinced we’re just not at that level to even have one. Let’s try to zoom in and think about the regional image we have.
What is Raleigh’s unique contribution to the South?
We should probably nail that one down first, own it, live and breathe it, before it starts to network out to the rest of the country.
How bout this one:
Raleigh (or NC)…Union free tax haven with decent weather.
Experiences, experiences, experiences. We have to focus on the experiences in our daily lives, and those of our daily and multi-day event visitors.