[00:00:15.520] 
In the beginning was the forest.

[00:00:24.320] 
Along the seaboard, in small expeditions,
they began to arrive from Europe.

[00:00:31.320] 
 Over a span of three hundred years,

[00:00:33.760] 
they moved on westward
all the way to the other ocean.

[00:00:38.280] 
In certain regions of the country,
over the long period,

[00:00:42.440] 
there grew up local concentrations
of people, business, activity.

[00:00:48.200] 
These became the metropolitan areas,

[00:00:51.200] 
the major urban regions,
the most densely settled parts of America.

[00:00:58.040] 
There's the Atlantic region, megalopolis,
stretching from Boston to Washington,

[00:01:04.560] 
forty million people.

[00:01:06.600] 
There's the Great Lakes region
centered on Chicago,

[00:01:10.560] 
thirty millions.

[00:01:13.520] 
The Pacific region of California,
sixteen millions.

[00:01:19.800] 
Back on the Atlantic side, the Florida region,

[00:01:24.240] 
 five millions.

[00:01:26.520] 
In the heartland, the Ohio region,
another five millions.

[00:01:33.040] 
And the southern Piedmont urban region

[00:01:36.960] 
centering on the Carolinas, again, five millions.

[00:01:43.280] 
Each of these zones is an area of dense
population, human activity, and growth.

[00:01:49.880] 
Each of them faces a future full of [audio skip],

[00:01:52.800] 
 full of problems

[00:01:54.640] 
on a major scale.

[00:01:56.400] 
[music]

[00:02:12.640] 
The State of North Carolina consists
of three well-defined physical areas.

[00:02:18.280] 
The mountain region is cool and forested.

[00:02:22.720] 
 Part of a long Appalachian chain,

[00:02:25.680] 
some mountain settlements date
back to the days of Daniel Boone.

[00:02:29.043] 
[music]

[00:02:47.360] 
The coastal plain and Outer Banks region
along the Atlantic shore.

[00:02:52.640] 
Many waterways, marshes, and inlets
laced among the farmlands.

[00:02:57.329] 
[music]

[00:03:00.560] 
The first settlements in the state were built here,

[00:03:03.360] 
the early plantations.

[00:03:04.614] 
[music]

[00:03:14.600] 
Between the coastal region and the
mountains, the Piedmont plateau.

[00:03:20.240] 
Low hills, red fertile soil,
a mixed economy.

[00:03:25.086] 
[music]

[00:03:30.560] 
Into this region,

[00:03:32.320] 
waves of settlers moved
from north and south.

[00:03:35.800] 
Independent minded people
of various stocks and strains

[00:03:40.600] 
seeking land, sharing the characteristic
problems and ambitions of America.

[00:03:46.529] 
[music]

[00:03:52.520] 
The coastal streams and rivers
opened the way to settlements

[00:03:56.480] 
from the sea, but made travel
difficult along the shoreline.

[00:04:02.440] 
The mountains restricted
travel to the west.

[00:04:08.120] 
The major routes for travel and freight
developed inland through the Piedmont.,

[00:04:14.360] 
People and goods,
moving over a century ago between

[00:04:18.400] 
the plantations of the south
and the growing industries of the north.

[00:04:23.100] 
[music]

[00:04:28.040] 
As always, the easy routes for travel

[00:04:31.520] 
determined where the growing
points of settlement would be.

[00:04:35.280] 
Indian trails,

[00:04:37.040] 
crossing places,

[00:04:38.760] 
local roads,

[00:04:40.160] 
main roads,

[00:04:41.640] 
set the pattern for movement and growth.

[00:04:45.680] 
Nowadays, this movement is a steady flow
by day and night, unceasing.

[00:04:53.120] 
Thousands of tons of goods at any moment
are streaming through the Piedmont region.

[00:04:59.120] 
[music]

[00:05:29.680] 
Each system of movement
supports the other.

[00:05:32.960] 
When the railways were built to
service new communities,

[00:05:36.160] 
factories and towns
sprang up along the right of way.

[00:05:40.280] 
And now an immense volume of freight

[00:05:42.760] 
moves into and through
the Piedmont region by rail.

[00:05:45.657] 
[train horn blowing]

[00:05:50.243] 
[train horn blowing]

[00:06:11.560] 
The channels of communication,
moving mostly north and south.

[00:06:17.240] 
With the air age,
easier travel across the state

[00:06:21.440] 
over the mountains to mid
America and the West.

[00:06:24.720] 
Towns that were already well established

[00:06:27.000] 
became junction points and centers for air travel.

[00:06:31.800] 
Commercial airlines,

[00:06:33.360] 
both national and local,

[00:06:35.440] 
and a host of privately owned aircraft

[00:06:38.160] 
enabled easy access
to all parts of the state.

[00:06:42.680] 
As population began to center on the towns, 

[00:06:45.280] 
communications media
began to link the towns together.

[00:06:49.120] 
Newspapers were first.

[00:06:51.680] 
Then radio stations increased
the speed of news and information.

[00:06:57.560] 
Then television, strengthening still more
the central influence of the towns.

[00:07:02.314] 
[music]

[00:07:21.240] 
Over the past century, as the towns grew,

[00:07:25.120] 
so did the systems for bringing fuel
and energy to stoke their industries.

[00:07:31.680] 
A pattern of electric
power stations throughout the state,

[00:07:35.800] 
pipelines for natural gas,

[00:07:39.680] 
pipelines for petroleum,
fuel oil for homes and factories.

[00:07:44.257] 
[music]

[00:07:50.000] 
Where the main travel
routes intersected, cities grew rapidly.

[00:07:55.520] 
They became centers
for wholesale and retail trade,

[00:08:01.240] 
centers, also, for manufacture.

[00:08:06.000] 
Cities like Charlotte, Greensboro,

[00:08:08.520] 
Winston-Salem, attract new industry
because they provide resources,

[00:08:14.160] 
new markets, workers, and services for industry.

[00:08:18.360] 
Everything grows together.

[00:08:21.050] 
Two thirds of the state's
manufacturing employment

[00:08:24.120] 
is concentrated in the Piedmont.

[00:08:35.280] 
Today, over five million people live within
the hundred counties of North Carolina.

[00:08:41.720] 
The major population lives
in the central Piedmont region.

[00:08:46.960] 
Most of the larger
towns and cities are in this region.

[00:08:55.520] 
Within this area, the eleven counties

[00:08:58.520] 
form a heavily urbanized region
called the Piedmont Crescent.

[00:09:04.200] 
And here the interplay of business,

[00:09:06.640] 
movement, and people,
is a powerful, dynamic process.

[00:09:13.400] 
A hundred and fifty thousand people in 1850.

[00:09:18.600] 
Thereafter, decade by decade,

[00:09:22.400] 
steady growth throughout
the eleven counties of the Piedmont.

[00:09:27.800] 
 In Gaston and Mecklenburg;

[00:09:30.880] 
 in Cabarrus and Rowan;

[00:09:34.000] 
 in Davidson, Forsyth, and Guilford;

[00:09:38.240] 
In Alamance and Orange;

[00:09:41.960] 
 in Durham and Wake.

[00:09:46.000] 
A million and a half people in 1960.

[00:09:51.720] 
First it was Salem and the Moravians,

[00:09:56.360] 
Raleigh the capital,

[00:09:57.271] 
[music]

[00:10:02.280] 
Chapel Hill.

[00:10:05.560] 
Forests turned to farms and towns.

[00:10:08.886] 
[music]

[00:10:15.040] 
The years of war between the states,

[00:10:18.720] 
 the many dead.

[00:10:20.557] 
[music]

[00:10:29.040] 
Duke

[00:10:30.520] 
 and tobacco.

[00:10:31.629] 
[music]

[00:10:35.840] 
Piedmont industry with Duke and Reynolds,

[00:10:40.920] 
grander buildings,

[00:10:42.771] 
[music]

[00:10:46.600] 
 and cotton coming in from the farms.

[00:10:49.500] 
[music]

[00:10:55.240] 
The friendly, easygoing life of small towns.

[00:10:59.086] 
[music]

[00:11:08.120] 
The family album of the past.

[00:11:12.160] 
Sodas and sociables.

[00:11:12.943] 
[music]

[00:11:17.080] 
Greensboro's Centennial Parade.

[00:11:18.929] 
Cotton,

[00:11:21.680] 
thirty thousand in cotton mills by 1900.

[00:11:25.100] 
[music]

[00:11:31.480] 
The legislature finally outgrew its old home.

[00:11:35.280] 
In 1963, rehoused in a growing city.

[00:11:40.720] 
Cities now pushing out into the farmlands.

[00:11:46.120] 
Farming's still at the base
of Piedmont life,

[00:11:49.480] 
but less so.

[00:11:50.700] 
[music]

[00:11:55.520] 
Now, it's not just tobacco and cotton,
but agri business.

[00:12:00.400] 
[music]

[00:12:05.040] 
Processing, a new production,

[00:12:08.440] 
 new skills.

[00:12:09.600] 
[music]

[00:12:13.320] 
Furniture, a major industry since the 1880s.

[00:12:18.800] 
Special efforts to promote
research in industry.

[00:12:23.800] 
New kinds of industry
moving to the Piedmont.

[00:12:27.286] 
[music]

[00:12:40.840] 
But always near at hand,
the pleasures of the woods and farmlands.

[00:12:47.640] 
 Nowadays, an urge for speed.

[00:12:54.120] 
The growth of population

[00:12:56.800] 
decade by decade followed the roads.

[00:13:00.520] 
Forest trails to cart tracks
to gravel roads to paved highways,

[00:13:06.960] 
people followed the roads.

[00:13:09.040] 
And when there were enough people
they built more roads

[00:13:12.960] 
and new people came along the new
roads and settled in the Piedmont.

[00:13:17.760] 
Over a hundred years, decade by decade,
the gradual spread of the network of roads,

[00:13:24.240] 
the economic bloodstream of the region.

[00:13:26.186] 
[music]

[00:13:38.880] 
From the early days,
a vigorous policy of road building.

[00:13:42.714] 
[music]

[00:13:53.600] 
Early congestion Raleigh to Durham.

[00:13:56.500] 
[music]

[00:14:10.000] 
Before 1850, a railway carried
building stone to Raleigh.

[00:14:15.030] 
Then construction

[00:14:16.080] 
of the North Carolina Railroad brought
about the economic growth of the Piedmont.

[00:14:20.920] 
The crescent shaped course
between Raleigh and Charlotte

[00:14:24.760] 
set up a geographic pattern
of industrial and urban growth,

[00:14:28.880] 

which has lasted to the present day.

[00:14:36.560] 
The great time of railway building
was late in the last century.

[00:14:41.680] 
At that time, the railway pattern
of the Piedmont took shape.

[00:14:46.057] 
[music]

[00:15:00.720] 
The public schools, and later the colleges,

[00:15:04.400] 
followed the spread of new
settlements through the region.

[00:15:07.480] 
The schools grew slowly
in the first part of the century.

[00:15:11.680] 
In later decades,

[00:15:13.800] 
 the rate of building increased sharply.

[00:15:17.560] 
Like other services, the schools
followed the pattern of the towns.

[00:15:22.440] 
The larger school units and the colleges

[00:15:25.960] 
consolidated in the larger
centers of population.

[00:15:29.657] 
[music]

[00:16:28.120] 
With colleges, and
universities, and growing cities

[00:16:32.760] 
 an urge towards the arts.

[00:16:34.629] 
[music]

[00:16:52.920] 
Population means people
and their activities. 

[00:16:59.160] 
The people, the activities, are increasing.

[00:17:05.400] 
The towns and cities are
reaching out and touching.

[00:17:07.200] 
A stream of movement connects
them all through the Piedmont Crescent.

[00:17:12.440] 
But the larger numbers

[00:17:14.400] 
and growing industries
don't add up to a perfect picture.

[00:17:19.400] 
There are problems.

[00:17:21.680] 
The one you see most easily is housing.

[00:17:25.720] 
Bad housing,

[00:17:27.560] 
outmoded,

[00:17:29.040] 
unfit,

[00:17:30.520] 
unacceptable.

[00:17:33.000] 
How do we deal with it?

[00:17:34.200] 
[music]

[00:17:45.480] 
The reaching out of cities
brings other problems.

[00:17:49.200] 
Who should be responsible for the
no man's land along the highways

[00:17:54.080] 
where towns extend
themselves and blur together?

[00:17:59.960] 
Who should build

[00:18:02.040] 
 and who should not?

[00:18:04.640] 
And who should decide?

[00:18:05.757] 
[music]

[00:18:16.680] 
The bird's eye view.

[00:18:18.680] 
Towns and cities sprawl along
the ribbon roads without pattern.

[00:18:23.157] 
[music]

[00:18:27.360] 
Despite these problems,
history has been kind

[00:18:31.560] 
to the Piedmont Crescent.
The land and climate are well favored.

[00:18:36.640] 
People have moved here freely

[00:18:38.800] 
and prospered, and their numbers
have sharply increased.

[00:18:44.000] 
What now?

[00:18:45.280] 
Suppose the same rate of population
growth continues after 1960.

[00:18:51.190] 
What will that do for us
by the end of this century?

[00:18:55.040] 
 Here's the picture.

[00:18:56.760] 
Estimated population of the Piedmont
Crescent by the end of this century

[00:19:01.120] 
will be over three million people.

[00:19:15.720] 
Building goes on everywhere these days.
Old landmarks come down,

[00:19:21.440] 
new ones go up.

[00:19:23.760] 
The streets are changed.

[00:19:25.314] 
[music]

[00:19:37.760] 
The schools overflow

[00:19:40.840] 
 and pressure still increases.

[00:19:44.760] 
The largest schools are overburdened

[00:19:49.240] 
 and many more to come.

[00:19:50.486] 
[music]

[00:19:57.320] 
Consider the highways.

[00:19:59.920] 
Suppose that highways grow at the same
rate as now until the year 2000.

[00:20:05.880] 
What will the pattern be?

[00:20:08.560] 
What will traffic be like?

[00:20:11.240] 
Who will make decisions
about routes and costs?

[00:20:17.000] 
Today, some seven hundred thousand cars are
on the roads of the Piedmont Crescent.

[00:20:22.440] 
By the end of the century,

[00:20:24.600] 
about two million vehicles
are estimated in this same region.

[00:20:29.643] 
[music]

[00:20:52.520] 
What comes next?

[00:20:54.880] 
We know what's happened.

[00:20:58.040] 
How do we prepare for the next stage?

[00:21:03.000] 
Growth is inevitable.

[00:21:04.920] 
It can mean prosperity,

[00:21:07.120] 
new investment, and employment.

[00:21:09.680] 
It can also mean other things—
less space and leisure,

[00:21:15.800] 
less comfort and peace of mind.

[00:21:19.800] 
It can mean duplication,
waste, congestion.

[00:21:25.880] 
The prosperous condition of the
Piedmont is due to many things,

[00:21:30.840] 
 but mainly it is due to decisions,

[00:21:34.520] 
decisions made over the years
by local and state governments—

[00:21:39.960] 
public decisions,

[00:21:43.320] 
and decisions made by individuals,

[00:21:46.480] 
 business and industry,

[00:21:48.640] 
private decisions.

[00:21:52.960] 
All these decisions,
public and private, taken together,

[00:21:58.600] 
determine the kind
of environment we live in.

[00:22:02.640] 
But mostly, the big decisions
are made by local government,

[00:22:08.720] 
 made in the public sector.

[00:22:11.680] 
Highways and schools, water supply,

[00:22:15.160] 
disposal of wastes and sewage,
municipal housekeeping.

[00:22:19.960] 
In the past, most of the decisions made
by local government were their own affair—

[00:22:25.920] 
local, self-centered,
without regard to the surrounding region.

[00:22:31.520] 
But now the towns are growing,
merging together. 

[00:22:37.280] 
Strictly local needs that used to be simple

[00:22:39.440] 
now become complex regional problems

[00:22:42.640] 
involving whole groups of
cities and counties.

[00:22:46.680] 
Problems such as regional water supply,

[00:22:49.680] 
regional systems for transportation,
and for education.

[00:22:54.160] 
Other regional problems may be
less apparent on the surface,

[00:22:58.520] 
 but they matter in the long run just as much.

[00:23:02.560] 
 The nature of the air we breathe,

[00:23:05.480] 
the beauty of the countryside,

[00:23:07.760] 
space for recreation,

[00:23:10.160] 
open space between the cities,

[00:23:14.000] 
space that has meaning and value
for the quality of our environment.

[00:23:23.160] 
As our numbers grow, we see that
the single city or county government

[00:23:28.960] 
can no longer handle, by itself,
the complicated problems of a region.

[00:23:35.120] 
Finance and management become
too complex to go it alone.

[00:23:40.520] 
The old pattern of making local,

[00:23:42.480] 
independent, self-centered, decisions
no longer works.

[00:23:47.840] 
We need a new approach.

[00:23:50.400] 
How does each small community

[00:23:52.840] 
relate itself to the growing
region all around it?

[00:23:57.720] 
The answers aren't ready made.

[00:24:00.600] 
There's no book of rules.

[00:24:02.320] 
We only know that we can't
leave it all to chance.

[00:24:07.200] 
In future,

[00:24:08.720] 
the quality of growth in the Piedmont region

[00:24:12.120] 
will depend on how
well that growth is planned.

[00:24:16.920] 
This means many things.

[00:24:19.520] 
A new kind of partnership
between state and local governments,

[00:24:25.440] 
a working partnership between the public
and the private sectors,

[00:24:31.640] 
between government on the one hand,
business and industry on the other.

[00:24:40.200] 
New planning machinery where it's needed,

[00:24:44.200] 
more beef and more ideas
in our planning organizations.

[00:24:49.840] 
Above all, some changes in our attitudes

[00:24:54.320] 
 and understanding

[00:24:56.240] 
 about growth.

[00:24:59.360] 
The beginning is to understand
what's happening here and now,

[00:25:05.120] 
 then our goals become clearer.

[00:25:08.680] 
Then we can discover the ways and means
to harness our restless growth

[00:25:14.560] 
and preserve the special quality
of this rich region.

[00:25:20.720] 
We'll need to try some new experiments
in our towns and cities,

[00:25:24.800] 

new ideas about planning and management.

[00:25:28.400] 
We'll have to recognize how much
our affairs are interrelated,

[00:25:32.960] 
our jobs and programs,

[00:25:35.360] 
between one community and the next
throughout an entire region.

[00:25:40.320] 
We don't have all the answers,

[00:25:42.560] 
but we are getting a better
picture of the problems.

[00:25:46.240] 
 As the goals and targets become clear,

[00:25:49.760] 
we need to take action
thoughtfully and with purpose.

[00:25:55.560] 
 Without such action

[00:25:57.360] 
there's a risk of chaos in the future.

[00:26:01.360] 
With it, there's hope that we'll achieve
the fullest quality of living 

[00:26:05.240] 
in this growing urban region of the Piedmont.

[00:26:08.657] 
[music]