My old high school (Wake Forest - used to be Wake Forest-Rolesville when I went) has the old Wake Forest University football stadium… and it is GRAND. Always fun to watch the games there.
Same for my high school before I went there, it was Sanderson at Wakefield. Because Sanderson was getting a new building, so they built and temporarily parked at Wakefield so their there. While Wakefield hadn’t even started yet.
We cannot let our guard down, tech is what makes our area thrive, that’s our version of banking. We cannot let them take it away from they notice our success now they’re trying to take advantage of us, do not do this Raleigh get AGGRESSIVE FOR ONCE!!!
Letting them scream and propagandize is letting our guard, it time for Raleigh to start being ugly and getting things we need!!!
Cringe: Putting the med school in Charlotte
Based: Putting the med school in Kannapolis
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Class of 2000, only graduating class of Sanderson @ Wakefield.
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Just imagine how much larger Wake Forest (the town) would be if the University influenced the last 65 years of growth
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Why is everyone giving me the shushing emoji y’all know this is true!!! That how we make the city better and take risks!!!
“Left” was too strong, but given the market opportunity, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Charlotte programs eventually end up enrolling more grad students than the home base in W-S. Yes, it’s common for universities to open branches, especially for professional programs (I did grad school at Virginia Tech without ever seeing Blacksburg). What’s funny is that WFU in particular has a history of following the money, and so now “Wake” will be atop a skyscraper in… Mecklenburg.
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I’ll share with you my take. Mostly, it was literally just to say that there’s no need to yell. I see and appreciate your passion, and I definitely get that it’s frustrating being in a midsized, mid tier city like Raleigh, that feels like it could be on the cusp of greatness, but makes some missteps from time to time. But at the same time, we have to keep our cool, stay calm, and look forward. I am not really big on the “screaming into the void” sort of advocacy. It gets nowhere. Keep it grounded, keep it concrete, and do everything you can to plot an incremental course from where we are, to where we want it to be.
Also, a pet peeve of mine is the anthropomorphization of cities as something that can “be aggressive”, “have vision”, or “take risks”. Raleigh is not a unitary entity with free will that can take actions in that sense. It is a product of its people, its business community, and its policies. So you want Raleigh to take more risks, be more aggressive. But who should be taking what risks, who should be more aggressive? Also, why, and how? How does this tie in to a vision you have for Raleigh? And how do we connect the dots from where we are, to this vision.
Anyway that’s just my thoughts.
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Let’s hear it for posts that increase our personal vocabularies!
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I knew that word because it’s what we do to animals in children’s books. Now I feel bad every time I kill a bug. Thanks Charlotte’s Web…
(I may be off topic, but I threw in a Charlotte mention, so I’m no more off topic than the rest of you guys!) 
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WOW that’s a really BIG one 
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Something needs to be dispelled about your comments on UNC Charlotte. As a proud graduate of Sanderson High and UNC Charlotte, some observations need to be made:
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I never understand the CLT vs. RDU battle. I caught flack in Charlotte for being from Raleigh, and vice versa when I was back in Raleigh after graduating. It makes no sense and needs to stop.
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UNC Charlotte is an exceptional school that gets held down by higher powers. For the last 16 years, we had a chancellor that refused to promote the school in fear of disappointing the UNC BOG. And the UNC BOG has long held Charlotte back, even going so far as to open Chapel Hill satellite locations in Charlotte while UNC Charlotte fought to have a medical school. If the university powers and state put in 10% of the effort to promote UNC Charlotte, it could be a top national university. But as it stands, you’d be surprised at the great research and academics at the school. No
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Totally agree about the Raleigh vs Charlotte criticisms. I always wonder what makes someone get so worked up about other cities. The two have a lot more similarities than you would think fun reading some of the comments.
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There is a long-standing tradition of boosterism in the South, and some places turn it into a grudge match. In a capital-starved South, the grudges could be everything. Even as we have gotten relatively richer, some grudges die hard.
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So there are no rivalries outside the South? Albany isn’t always trying to one up NYC? Or Philly, NYC, Boston and Chicago? I promise you, folks in Pocatello Idaho harbor an intense dislike of Boise.
Civic pride is as old as towns. As a whole it should be a fun rivalry, especially with in a state, but a region as well. Some times it about capital, sometimes its about the different businesses, sometimes its about the different folks who live there and their history. Could Charleston be any more pretentious? Who else would think the Cooper and Ashley rivers come together there to form the Atlantic Ocean? lol
Business and civic leaders know that there is more success when everyone works together. Charlotte doing well is good for both NC and the people to the south. That is not gonna stop me from teasing them about being “country Carolina gone urban.”
This is one reason that I think MLS teams in Raleigh and Charlotte would be great. I’d love to see the rivalry that would develop.
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There are definitely rivalries outside the South. Sinclair Lewis made a career out of discussing the pernicious downside to boosterism, from a predominantly Midwestern outlook. The South’s was doubly bad because there was so little money flowing into the region. There was no Erie Canal spreading its bounty far and wide. It was a zero-sum competition for both government funding as well as outside business because there was so little home-grown capital.
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The war (as in Civil) did leave the region capital starved. But this is true of most of the far west, the great plains and a lot of areas west of the Appalachians. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have a sometimes deadly rivalry and deep dislike for one another, despite the turnpike, canal, railroads and a goodly amount of capital in that commonwealth. This is nothing unique to the South, although like everywhere we put our own spin on it. Or should I say, our own accent? 
I like Charlotte, and I like that I can visit. But I chose to live in Raleigh because Charlotte is like a crappy Atlanta (somewhere I also like, but wouldn’t want to live). I’ve never gotten the rivalries either. Same with Durham vs Raleigh. To me, it’s like comparing Asheville and Wilmington. They’re both fun to visit, but different. And having variety is nice.
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Well that’s a great question @orulz let me unpack that. Raleigh in thst midsize struggle yes that why the recombining of the Durham-Chapel Hill with the Raleigh-Cary MSA, is crucial extremely crucial to how we get to the National and world stage. That why I’ve been emailing the hell, out of the Census or the link that Is in the Population thread of this forum. Take me as a public advocate New York has one his name is Jumanne Williams it’s an elected office relatively new as it was in 1993, it not exactly like CACs or whatever the new public input system will be, but he’s essentially the spokesperson for the people. Anyways back to this Raleigh Chambers of Commerce I never really hear or see them championing the key points of the City, and i see that other NC city doing it, it maybe hype but it’s getting people attention, now I maybe wrong about the Chamber but somethings up about how they’re presenting Raleigh. That the aggressiveness I’m talking about. If we want MLB Major League Baseball team in Raleigh or MLS, we have get aggressive in companies cause that means a lot corporate support put us on the map for companies with Fortune 500, it gives everybody there dream skyline that I hear everyone on this thread talk and that my visión a City that can compete. I already seen some comments on this page saying stuff like this
we could start advertising about how we’re a short train or car ride away from Charlotte. Whoopdy-freaking-doo. We have a hockey team, March Madness, concerts and music festivals of our own, amazing museums, and a whole lot more, too, so it’s not like we’re missing out on much.
Comments like this erode my confidence on my hope for that future, specifically because we have sorta a macho attitude that instead hyping people we do the research itself like, or we go for the least average like this comments like this below.
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We can be like that we advertise just like them the native can do so much and as a native myself I can’t always speak positively so of you guys thoughts on competitive oh people read through the lines, doesn’t work with the companies who want to setup shop here they want to get down to business. But I feel maybe not all of us, maybe this thread culture has a I don’t care attitude about it. They ain’t no curried in business even what I’ve learned in some free business seminars is that hyping is the key to success in advertising and promoting and don’t expect a it of “cultured people”, or people who will do the research. Consumer tend figure out on there own when experiencing it through things like social media. But comments like these below ehh erode my confidence.
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