A 1993 report looked at the Triangle’s future. What did it see – and miss?

Peirce, then 61, had made a side business out of producing these broad assessments at the request of local newspapers. Before coming to Raleigh, he had taken the measure and forecast the futures of Phoenix, Seattle, Baltimore, Dallas and St. Paul.

Last week, I looked over a reprint of the series. Peirce earned his commission. He and a team of three assistants interviewed local leaders, conversed with ordinary citizens and compiled charts on population, employment and commuting.

Peirce found the region’s government and business leaders content, even complacent. Years of growth in the 1980s had realized the promise of Research Triangle Park and the Triangle – then something of a new and contrived name – was drawing national attention for its mix of universities, high-tech businesses, government and a leafy quality of life.

The reports opened on that note: “Travel America in the early ’90s and it’s hard to find a region that equals the Triangle in blissful confidence about the future.”

But Peirce and his co-author, Curtis Johnson, saw trouble ahead. The Triangle was a Titanic of easy confidence heading for several icebergs. Among them: struggling schools, suburban sprawl, crime-ridden urban centers, gridlocked traffic and a lack of regional leadership that could leave towns and counties competing with each other.

Given the growth of the last quarter century and the Triangle’s still high quality of life, it appears the confidence Peirce observed was justified, but so were the fears the report raised. In looking ahead, Peirce was at a disadvantage. He, like almost everyone else, did not foresee how much the digital revolution would change the ways we work, socialize and shop. And he was also writing during a crack cocaine-fed national spike in homicides that led many to see a future with cities terrorized by “super predators.”

In a dire passage, Peirce and Johnson called on universities to step up as regional leaders to fight “a rising tide of violence, family dissolution and educational failure.” If vigorous leadership from the region’s “strongest institutions” didn’t occur, they wrote, “then the region has peaked, its finest days are behind it, and the future holds bitter disillusionment.”

Peirce didn’t see the sudden revitalization of downtowns brought on by a new generation of young people prospering in a digital economy and preferring urban life. In a virtuous circle, a drop in urban crime opened the way to gentrification and gentrification has further reduced urban crime.

Universities are key to the Triangle economy and culture, but it’s fair to say that it was committed and farsighted county and city leaders — not chancellors and university presidents — who brought the Triangle successfully through the last quarter century.

The Peirce Report was correct in stressing the need for a Triangle-wide commuter rail system. Peirce and Johnson went so far as to call for a suspension of the 1-540 Outer Loop’s construction in favor of putting the money into mass-transit. Unfortunately for today’s 1-40 commuters, that recommendation went unheeded.

A curious recommendation of the report was that if the Triangle wants to be a “world class region,” it should focus its development around the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The development would include “a substantial urban complex, a constellation of structures.” Amid this center of the Triangle “citistate” designed for the “telecommunications age” would be “a great Triangle architectural symbol, akin to the Eiffel Tower, or St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.”

The City of RDU and the super symbol didn’t happen. But the story of the Triangle’s tomorrow that began with the assessment and speculation of the Peirce Report has come, at least for now, to a happy ending.

Barnett: 919-829-4512, nbarnett@ newsobserver.com