pleased and proud of their community. For example, more than 71% of residents

are pleased with Durham as a place to live, and those very pleased outnumber

those very unpleased by 7 to 1. Durhamites are also proud of the community by

5 to 1 (with very proud, 6 to 1). It is true that deference is often misinterpreted as low self esteem.

6) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham draws visitors proportional to its population.

REALITY: While in some destinations this is a "rule of thumb," Durham far outdraws its own population. Total annual visitors outnumber residents 21 to 1. Overnight visitors alone outnumber residents 4 to 1 annually. A good illustration: airport enplanements. Even though Durham comprises 8% less of the region's population than Raleigh, it outperforms the state capital in non-connecting (resident and visitor) enplanements drawn through the airport by 2%. In visitor-related enplanements, Durham outdraws Raleigh by nearly 10%.

Durham draws 48% more tourism expenditure and 28% more local tax revenue (including 106% more occupancy tax revenue) than its proportion of population.

7) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham is a suburb.

REALITY: Durham is the core city for a 4 county metropolitan statistical area so by official definition it isn't a suburb. It's also the fourth largest city in North Carolina, fastest growing city over the last Census. The misperception that Durham is a suburb often derives from a mistaken notion that all regions are centered around one dominant city. The Research Triangle Region is one of a number of "polycentric" regions with separate, distinct communities and no dominant center.

8) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Duke town/gown relationships are poor.

REALITY: Durhamites brought Duke to Durham and provided its initial financing to become one of the e world. Similarly, Duke officials have always worked hand-in-hand with Durham residents to improve the community. Never has this been moevident than today with several organizations and year-long communityoutreach programs and activities working to sustain communications and relationships between the University (staff, students, and administraand Durham residents and business owners.

E

Carolina, the vast majority of Durham ACC fans identify themselves as Duke sports fans. Durham also has a large concentration of Duke alumniwho either remained in Durham or moved back to Durham after graduation.

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the Durham/Wake County line in Morrisville. It is co-owned by the cities of Durham and Raleigh and the counties of Durham and Wake.

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groups. It is also a community that values open expression of opinion and differences: it receives very highrankings for "tolerance" in scientific matrices. Durham is an experiment and model in power sharing and conflict resolution around difficult socioeconomic issues.

11) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham thinks of itself as the "red-headed stepchild" of the Triangle.

REALITY: This term originated when news media noted that Durham is treated like the "red-headed stepchild" of the Triangle. Durham has always valued that it is different, more textured, and diverse, but there is no evidence in scientific polls that it considers itself the "red-headed stepchild." In fact, from residents per square mile, jobs per square mile, jobs for non-residents, day-visitors, etc., it is the engine for the entire Research Triangle region. On top of that, Durhamites are innovative, progressive, open, and above all, proud of their community.

12) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: There is nothing to do in Durham at night.

REALITY: Durham has around 50 venues that provide live nightlife entertainment. Scientific surveys of visitors, both overnight and day-trippers within a 100-mile radius, show Durham outperforming the average for similar-sized destinations in North Carolina in the area of nightlife.

13) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham and Raleigh should go by the name "Raleigh-Durham" because most people think of the Triangle as one big place.

REALITY: Nearly 8 out of 10 residents of the Triangle prefer to characterize where they live by a specific city, town, or county and reject the term Raleigh-Durham for any other use than the name of the jointly owned Airport. The number seeing it as one area shrinks even more the longer a person lives here. National surveys show that, by 4 to 1, people see this area as made of separate but nearby communities. Nearly 50% indicate that any confusion is caused by the name of RDU International Airport or the assumption that there is only one city per airport.

It is true that surveys of news media show a near even split between the perception of separate communities vs. one big place. The media has divided the world into large, multi-community viewing, listening, listing, or marketing areas. Oftentimes these multi-community areas get misused as the names of single "places."

14) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham has a high crime rate.

REALITY: Durham's crime is at or below average for a cohort of 9 Southeast and 28 national communities of similar size and makeup. Click here to review the statistics. Crime in Durham is localized, and intense local activism is driving the crime rate down every year.

15) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham draws mostly local and state conventions.

REALITY: Durham is different from similar-sized destinations in North Carolina in that Durham mostly hosts conventions and meetings that are international/national/regional in scope (65%). It is true that most third-tier destinations (like Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, or Winston-Salem) host predominantly state conventions, even if they aren't the state capital. Durham is also home to 37 associations, of which 65% also happen to be international/national/regional in scope.

16) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Durham has plenty of developable land and always will.

REALITY: Durham is the state's fourth largest city, shoehorned into the 17th smallest county in land area. Also, a third or more of the county was set aside in watershed to create Falls Lake, so that nearby North Raleigh, which wouldn't perk, could be built out. Further gentrification (or imploding some neighborhoods to create new ones) is one possibility, but there is no guarantee that the unique composition of a community can be retained.

One thing is a given: Durham will come to rely more and more on visitors and health care to fuel the business climate and to spread the burden of funding local government services.

17) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: There should be only one CVB for the Triangle because rivalry is destructive.

REALITY: Visitor Bureaus are local tourism development authorities, by nature designed to reinvest occupancy taxes from business in a specific city or county in order to fuel that specific business climate and expand its tax base. They participate in scores of cooperative marketing efforts to stretch marketing dollars, but ensuring specific community brands. But the three Universities that give the Triangle its name have proven that rivalry can be invigorating, and similarly, keep several different destinations on the shelf, ensuring many more bites of the tourism "apple."

18) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: The Triangle is centered around Raleigh.

REALITY: Traditionally all regions were centered around a dominant city. But the Triangle is one of a new breed that has no one dominant city or town or county. It is a polycentric "family of communities." This is a struggle for news media for which it would be much simpler to truncate its 22-county Triangle viewing area to the name of just one community. But being polycentric makes the region much more attractive as a "family of unique and different communities."

19) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Consultants can lump statistics for a polycentric region like the Triangle and use it in comparisons with centric regions.

REALITY: Consultants studying the Triangle (and even some Triangle leaders) have been tripped up by this one for years. It is apples-and-oranges to compare a region composed of two MSAs (and no dominant center) to regions like Charlotte, Austin, and Sacramento, which are centered around one dominant community. They function very differently in almost every way. The Triangle can better take its lead from the three big-name research universities that provided the region's namesake, RTP.

20) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Corporate sponsorship is difficult to obtain because Durham events haven't earned it or don't perform as well as events in other communities.

REALITY: Durham generates an unusually high number of nationally acclaimed events for a community of its size. The dilemma with corporate sponsorships is that, in the last few decades, Durham's major employers have elected to distribute sponsorships and underwriting based on where employees live vs. where they work. Because half of the people working in Durham commute from elsewhere, half of the sponsorships follow them home. While Durham draws some sponsorships from employers in other communities, there is an extreme imbalance.

21) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Postal addresses reflect actual physical locations.

REALITY: For some time now, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has assigned street delivery designations for mail with little or no regard for actual physical locations. While this permits the USPS to better deploy employee capacity, such designations are very confusing for visitors, newcomers, and residents.

In the early 1990s, Durham led a successful effort to correct the addresses for thousands of businesses in Southeast Durham that had been mis-assigned as Morrisville. The same will need to be done for those in Southwest Durham mis-assigned as Chapel Hill, Northwest Durham mis-assigned as Hillsborough, Northeast Durham mis-assigned as Butner, etc.

22) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: The name of Durham's largest meeting facility is Durham Marriott At The Civic Center.

REALITY: The name of the publicly owned civic center is simply "Durham Civic Center". A privately owned hotel with a Marriott franchise leases the air rights above the building, and it is appropriately named "Durham Marriott At The Civic Center". The owners of the hotel also contract with the City and County to manage the public Civic Center, but the naming rights were never sold or transferred. The civic center is governed by a publicly appointed Durham Civic Center Authority.

23) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Students in Durham public schools do not perform on par.

REALITY: Durham school children have long outperformed state and national averages when the results are disaggregated by race/ethnicity. Durham students also perform well compared to students in a number of other communities, nearby and in the region. Click here to see the latest disaggregated test scores.

24) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: Consultants questioned why a mall like The Streets at Southpoint was built in Durham.

REALITY: It's true but these consultants, even though based in North Carolina, neglected to grasp that the Triangle isn't centered around any one dominant city. The mall's developers accurately identified Durham as the perfect Triangle location for a "super" regional mall, and The Streets at Southpoint is a huge success. But even before the mall, Durham drew the highest market share of non-resident day-trippers of the three core Triangle counties for purposes other than work, and shopping ranks right at the top.

25) COMMON MISPERCEPTION: I-85 is an east-west Interstate.

REALITY: This is a great trivia question. I-85 is a north-south Interstate, but through Durham it predominantly runs east-west. Durham is one of the nation's few communities traversed by two major Interstates (I-40 which runs east-west, and I-85, which runs north-south) and one of the very few through which two major Interstates run parallel.