Comp plan hearing tonight; what’s next?
The official public hearing on the draft comprehensive plan (revised) is tonight –
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. at City Hall. It’s previewed in the Indy this week, mainly on the question of whether the plan is too promiscuous with its “growth centers” to actually produce any that will amount to the “walkable urban places” everybody says we need. Mitch Silver, Raleigh’s planning director, says it’s not — too promiscuous, that is — and that the metastasizing Brier Creeks and North Hills’s of the world will not undermine Raleigh’s urban future.
Silver recognizes, though, that creating “walkable urban” locales requires a lot of very fine-grained, pro-active planning, public investments, community engagement and follow through with developers who must share the vision and help make it happen. Raleigh’s limited experiences with that kind of “place-making” include Glenwood South, where the hits outnumber the misses, and Fayetteville Street, a work still very much in progress but so far, pretty good. (B+) On the other hand, Brier Creek was supposed to be “urban” too. But it isn’t.
Our next placemaking challenge, Silver says, is on the West Side (”Depot District) between downtown and Boylan Heights, where his imagined “Grand Central Station of Raleigh,” a multi-modal center for rail and bus service, could one day go.
Then, perhaps (my list): The other rail-corridor transit stops with the potential to anchor great walkable places within the next decade or so, including the State Fairgrounds area, the West Raleigh station area, and — in the other direction — New Bern Avenue (a potential streetcar connection) and the Seaboard Station-Devereaux Meadows area off Capital Boulevard.
Anyway, on Tuesday at the City Council meeting Silver unveiled a an extraordinary plan for the re-deployment of his planning department staff. Don’t call it a reorganization, he said. It’s a plan to offer new services and stake a claim as the most innovative planning department in the country. It’s a plan to make the comprehensive plan work the way it’s supposed to.
The basic new service: Planning. Continue reading »
