One of our
fellow residents
contributed this
passionate tribute
to our
neighborhood.
If you'd like to
send us your
thoughts about
living in OWD,
email OWDNA.
Why
I love living in Old West Durham
Diversity, Harmony, Community
Like a lot of people around here, I'm a transplant. In fact until very recently I considered myself a transient: from somewhere else and on my way to somewhere else as soon as this grad-school, first-job phase of my life was over. I used to think North Carolina was a nice place to go to school but no place for this west-coast girl to settle down. I just didn't feel at home here: it was too humid, too flat, and too Jesse.
Then I moved to this little neighborhood called Old West Durham. It's nothing fancy, just some simple (but very cool) homes that border Duke's East campus, around the Ninth Street area. Here I found this amazing thing - real community. Folks stop while on walks to chat to each other and go out of their way to help neighbors out. I even get compliments on my efforts to spruce up my flower beds (a gardener I am not...but I do try occasionally), and as for cat care when we go away, there's always someone willing to feed and visit 'em.
And there's this group - Old West Durham Neighborhood Association - to which we all can belong: renters, owners, long time residents and short timers. We meet every month and discuss issues important to us. And guess what? We can affect our quality of life - we can get streetlights so folks feel a little safer walking at night; we can get a 4-way stop sign at a busy intersection, to make it a little easier for us to cross a busy street. We've also done a good deed or two, like collecting food to donate to local shelters, and organizing a neighborhood clean-up day. And of course we chat and get to know and appreciate each other. This is small stuff, but in these days of long commutes and longer work hours, I think it's all the more important to foster strong ties with our neighbors. It helps us to gain a sense of community and a stronger sense of self.
Take something as simple as a neighborhood sign that says Old West
Durham. We unveiled it a few weeks ago on the island at the corner of
Ninth St. and Hillsborough Rd. While it took a lot of work and perseverance
to make it happen, the end result is simple and elegant and goes a long
way toward building community. It just states who we are, and what we
believe.
Old West Durham
Diversity, Harmony, Community.
To me that means a lot
- to me this is home. And I don't feel too much like a displaced Californian
anymore. I've learned to sweat in the summer, to drive to the beach and
the mountains when I feel the need, and to take pride in voting for what
I believe in. And I do go out west often. But then I come home - to Old
West Durham.
OWDNA
board member Betsy Puckett reads, "Why I Love Living in Old West Durham"
(by Kelly Rimer) at ceremony dedicating a sculpture to the neighborhood
by a local artist and resident.
Why artists, geeks and rock bands are the key to economic recovery: The Triangle ranks sixth in the nation for its 'creative class'
(Independent Weekly, September 2002)Sitting in the basement café of the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, Rose-May Guignard explains why she wants to move to the Triangle as soon as she can. She's in town for the weekend visiting friends, which she's been doing as much as possible. There's a buzz of energy in the room, and it's coming from her. Young, single, about to finish her Ph.D. in Public Affairs and Public Administration at Virginia Tech, she's ready to settle in a place full of cool people who are taking risks with their lives. "At a party, someone asked me, 'So are you one of those people who's going to find a job and go wherever your job takes you?' I said, 'No, I've made up my mind. I want to move here.' And they gave me that quizzical look and said, 'Why?' I said, 'You know, it's that concentration of educated people that I can go and have an intelligent conversation with.' For me what made Durham so interesting is that here I meet so many people that are not just talking about what they're going to do, they're trying it out. That's exciting to be in a place where people are like that."
Guignard is just one of a growing group of people who are building their lives around the city they want to live in. She is a member of what author Richard Florida calls the "creative class," a group defined not by income level but by one common quality: creativity. In his provocative book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University, lays out who this group is and why they drive the new economy by creating new ideas, inventions, patents, and technology. Florida rates the Triangle as one of the top ten creative centers in the country. That means SAS software developers, Sierra Club organizers, Duke professors, graduate students, self-employed consultants, indie rockers, lawyers, biotech researchers--basically, anyone who has the luxury of thinking for a living--is taking part in the cultural shift.
Since its release this spring, the book has gotten a lot of buzz--far more than the typical book on regional economic development. An excerpt ran as the cover story of the May issue of the Washington Monthly with the headline, "Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race." The book sends an emphatic message to cities: Keep your historic buildings occupied and your downtowns thriving. Treat your artists and rock bands with some respect; they draw economic prosperity. And stop spending all that tax money on sports stadiums and shopping malls, it's not what brings the people you want.
Most provocative is the thesis that cities without a thriving gay scene are likely to lose out economically. In charting his research on creative centers, Florida found that it correlated almost exactly with a colleague's research on gay centers. He calls gays and lesbians "the canaries of the new economy"--their presence is an indication of the tolerance that draws other non-traditional creative types. And he lumps all "creatives" together, from starving artists to six-figure earning engineers, asserting that anyone generating new ideas or inventions spurs economic growth. "You can't have high-tech innovation without art and music," he writes. "All forms of creativity feed off each other."