Is the Triangle square?

Many find the region pleasant - but plain. Where's the excitement?

Raleigh's newly opened Fayetteville Street is a fine public space that adds an interesting focal point to the Triangle, but it is a surprisingly lonely public accomplishment for an otherwise dynamic region.

Given the growth of the past 15 years, the influx of hundreds of thousands of people and the construction of homes to accommodate them, malls to serve them and an Outer Loop to move them, shouldn't there be more landmark buildings, more public art, more adventurous public undertakings -- a mass transit system, a regional government, perhaps?

The Triangle struggles to collectively express what it is and what it wants to be. Consider Raleigh's current and telling debate over the Fayetteville Street art project proposed by famed Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. Some think it will obscure the heart of Raleigh. Others say it will give it one.

Pleasant is a wonderful quality in a region, but does the Triangle aspire only to be Pleasantville? It is a successful place, but is it also, well, dull?

"I wouldn't say we are dull," said Bill Rohe, director of Center For Urban and Regional Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. "I would say we could be more exciting."

Don't expect anything dramatic in that direction, Rohe said. The Triangle is becoming more of a suburban culture, not less so.

"Once a place has a reputation for being liberal or conservative or quiet or wild, that reputation takes on a life of its own and starts attracting people who fit those images," he said. "Perceptions become very important and end up determining reality."

Rohe's colleague at Chapel Hill, Emil Malizia, chairman of the city and regional planning department, also sees the Triangle as an insular place that has neglected its public life.

Fayetteville Street may be "North Carolina's Main Street," but he said the Triangle's Main Street remains Interstate 40.

"We have a pretty isolated existence," Malizia said, "The only real pubic realms are highways. We interact with our neighbors through our windshields."

It's ironic that a boom launched by a masterstroke of imagination -- the creation of Research Triangle Park -- has produced a culture built around kids' soccer schedules, cul de sacs and lights out at 10 p.m. If the Triangle's economy is cutting edge, why isn't its culture?

Technological work hardly means people will be equally pioneering in how they play, said Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based writer and futurist who studies suburban growth.

"I think that Raleigh-Durham is proof positive that tech growth is not related to hip coolness," he said. "Silicon Valley is also a dull place. It's not dull in terms of business, but would you go to San Jose for fun?"

Kotkin said the Triangle is an example of earnest and insular high tech communities he calls "Nerdistans."

"The tech economy is not built by 35 and single. It's built by 35 and married. If not married to someone, then married to their job," he said.

Creativity ranked high

Nonetheless, some think the Triangle's combination of academics and high-tech workers makes the area ripe for social dynamism. The book "The Rise of the Creative Class" by Richard Florida ranks the nation's creative capitals. Among large metro areas, the Triangle is sixth behind San Francisco, Austin, San Diego, Boston and Seattle.

Creative-cool may fit a smattering of Triangle neighborhoods, but it's not a phrase that fits the Triangle. The question is, what phrase does? Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill doesn't have the instant identity of the first five cities on Florida's list.

Charles Hayes, president and CEO of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, a public/private partnership that promotes economic development, said the Triangle lacks a unified image because it's without a true center. It's not that there's no there there. It's that there is everywhere.