Carolina Planning Journal

Bridging Theory and Practice Since 1974

Category: Original Research (Page 1 of 3)

Materiality and Space: A Case Study of the New Jersey Floodplains

October 24, 2023 /

By Ivan Melchor

Does landscape form generate society? This is the question posed by Anthropologist Anna Tsing, whose fieldwork in Sorong, Indonesia tracks how rampant mining and construction of impervious concrete infrastructure transforms the city into a ‘pinball machine’ where mud and water interact, ricochet, and respond to this human development, causing the local landscape to flood.[1] The question is applicable in many contexts, none more fitting than in the floodplains of New Jersey. 

Instances of hurricanes are attributed a great deal of importance, and rightly so, but so often the dialogue in the aftermath seems to mirror one another. The common conversation topics post-hurricane includes the following: a critique of the federal government’s response, analogies of negative health outcomes that cannot be quantified, and metrics of the subsequent flooding indicative of the worsening consequences of climate change.

Climate events should be taken seriously, and sea level rise is undoubtedly a reality that coastal communities like Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, New York, are wrestling with already.[2] But what is lost in this echo chamber is a discussion around how the human imposed landscape interacts with rather than reacts to these climate events. Often the dialogue around climate change is future-focused, geared towards generating new technologies and infrastructures. The consequences and answers to climate change are situated in the language of tomorrow but weight should also be placed on the history of the infrastructure in place and what could be recreated with the footprint we’ve already constructed.

I propose two entry points from which to interrogate the issue of flooding in NJ: the concept of the basement and the ‘unbuilding’ of a structure’s footprint.

Historically, the basement has been a common feature of residential buildings in New Jersey. Internet research quickly reveals a vague history explaining its use to deal with freezing pipes, supposedly critical to the infrastructure of the home. A review of FEMA flood claims filed in New Jersey revealed that 78% of claims filed by residential owners were for buildings with a basement.[3] A finding indicative not of causality but rather of how commonplace basements have become.

Figure 1: ArcGIS 3D model of basement square footage per residential building in Princeton, NJ (Source: Ivan Melchor)

Last year, the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization at Princeton University obtained tax and property value data from the town of Princeton, NJ in order to visualize their widespread use. Figure 1 illustrates basement square footage per residential home to represent the below ground impact of development.

Constructing a basement in an area with a high water table can lead to recurring flood problems, making homes susceptible to ankle deep waters after a heavy rainstorm never mind a hurricane. The displacement of soil in order to accommodate these structures can further concentrate stormwater runoff, worsening flooding effects in areas with already high impervious coverage.

Conversations with local zoning officials regarding the issue often contain a cynical undertone. They suggest that new houses are being developed and old houses redeveloped with increasingly large basements despite warnings because they increase property value. And while there may be truth in that claim, it is stated that below-grade living spaces recoup up to 70-80% of the construction cost but do not often result in a gain on investment. [4]

A plausible alternative is that the idea of ‘livable space’ is an expression of our cultural behavior; the increased isolation of single-family zoning in towns such as Princeton reinforce the notion of “private property” and make us less likely to interrogate the issues occurring within our “homes.”  Figure 2 highlights how widespread low-density housing has become in Princeton, NJ for example.

Figure 2: Dasymetric map of Princeton, NJ highlights the spread of low-density housing (Source: Ivan Melchor)

There is also the question of what materiality our infrastructure takes on. Susan Bristol, a policy director at the Watershed Institute in New Jersey, proposes the concept of ‘unbuilding’ as a design practice to lighten our footprint on both the environment and the ground.

Unbuilding would mean returning some of the understory of buildings to pervious surface area rather than only resorting to concrete pours at grade irrespective of environment. This would allow for water to flow horizontally through the building’s footprint rather than creating combative infrastructure.[5]

Both the discussion of basements and the concept of ‘unbuilding’ invite us to think about space, not only how much of it we use but also what materials sustain its life force. The message of resiliency is commonplace, but our infrastructure must not only withstand climate events, but also be ready to interact with external forces such as stormwater.

What the ‘pinball machine’ effect reveals is that communities (and more explicitly property owners) continuously act upon their environment, changing its expression. Zoning laws and development serve as an archive of what a community has become, yes, but also generate a new interpretation of society, obfuscating issues that are ‘out of sight’ but that should be interrogated by urban planners and policymakers alike. 

Citations

[1] Anna Tsing, “Stop Blaming Global Warming: A Pinball Model of Chronic Flooding in Sorong, West Papua” (Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, March 30, 2023).

[2] Liam Stack. “Millions were Spent to Fix Fire Island’s Beaches. Some Have Completely Eroded.” New York Times, August 11, 2023.

[3]  FEMA (2023). FIMA NFIP Directed Claims – v2 [Dataset]. https://www.fema.gov/openfema-data-page/fima-nfip-redacted-claims-v2

[4] Remodeling.com, “Basement Remodel,” accessed on August 19, 2023.

[5] Susan Bristol (2022). “‘Unbuilding’: Out of sight/Out of mind.” AIA New Jersey.

Ivan Melchor is a Data & Research Assistant with the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization at Princeton University. He is interested in how the language of climate change generates possibilities for current and future human development. He is part of a team of academic researchers hoping to produce a documentary on NJ flooding in 2024.

Edited by Kathryn Cunningham

Featured image courtesy of Ivan Melchor

Volume 49 Call for Papers

July 11, 2023 /
By Carolina Planning Journal

EVERYDAY LIFE AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE

“The way we think about space matters. It inflects our understandings of the world, our attitudes to others, our politics.”
—Doreen Massey

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the importance of space, place, and daily experiences in our lives resurfaced. In Volume 49 of the Carolina Planning Journal, we want to reflect on the meaning, politics, and experiences of space, place, and everyday life. We will explore questions such as: How do we produce space? What values shape the production of space? Who produces space? Who has the right to the city or a specific space?  How have social movements worldwide created alternative spaces? What role do our disciplines play in these considerations?

This debate has been explored in the fields of urban planning, geography, cultural theory, sociology, architecture, and anthropology, among others. It allows us to imagine space beyond a two-dimensional, empty backdrop solely for building structures.  Instead, space is social and political, it is a living relationship with nature and each other, and it is a place for community and festivity. By examining our conception of space, we can question how capitalism, colonialism, racism, globalization, and more have diminished our relationship with space and one another.

Students, professionals, and researchers from a range of disciplines are invited to submit proposals that explore the production of space across the world. We invite creative approaches to the topic shared through written pieces, media, or a mix of the two.

Example topics include, but are not restricted to:

  • EVERYDAY LIFE, and how we can imagine and produce new possibilities for resistance and political change in the triviality of daily life.
  • SENSE AND POLITICS OF PLACE, and the influence globalization has had in places and our sense of place.
  • URBAN REVOLUTION, and the role of urbanism in shaping society. What is our relationship with each other and with nature? How can we reshape urbanization?
  • RIGHTS TO THE CITY as to who has the right to claim space, including issues related to informal economies, housing justice, immigrant communities, and other relevant factors.
  • THIRD SPACES, and how American society often lacks a space that is not work or home. How can we fill the void that capitalism creates, and how do we produce these alternatives?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

By September 15, 2023, interested authors should submit a 2-page proposal. Proposals should include a title, a description of the proposed topic and its significance, a brief summary of the literature or landscape (if appropriate), and a preliminary list of references (not counted toward the page limit). Final papers typically do not exceed 3,000 words. Submit proposals and questions to  CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com.

By October 15, 2023, Carolina Planning Journal will notify authors regarding their proposals. Authors will submit the <3,000-word draft by December along with a short biography, an abstract, and any relevant graphics. Editors will work with authors on drafts over the winter.

The Journal will be published at the end of Spring 2024. Carolina Planning Journal reserves the right to edit articles accepted for publication, subject to the author’s approval, for length, style, and content considerations.

Please submit proposals and questions to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com

Demilitarization or Militourism: “Act on Reconstruction of Cities that Formerly Served as Naval Ports” in Japan

August 23, 2022 /

By Chu-Wen Hsieh

Currently, I am conducting fieldwork research for my dissertation at Yokosuka, Japan, approximately 70 kilometers south of Tokyo and facing Tokyo Bay on the east. This place has been developed as a naval port and base since U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry first landed in Japan and demanded to open the nation to trade 170 years ago. Nowadays, it has the only homeport for American aircraft carriers outside the U.S.

My research focuses on the “extra-ordinary ordinary life” of people who live next to one of the U.S. military bases in Japan, the Yokosuka Naval Base. By “extra-ordinary ordinary life,” I am referring to a precarious coexistence in which residents are subject to actions by non-citizens, where security and danger, peace and war live side by side. However, this blog post will not introduce the details of this U.S. base but about the land they use.

People in Yokosuka have less strong feelings against the U.S. military bases on their land. One of the explanations is that the land the U.S. military base is located now was an Imperial Japanese Naval Base. “It’s just changed from one military to the other military,” was one of the common answers I heard from my interlocutors (collaborators).

After the defeat of the Second World War, Japan was disarmed. The former Imperial Japanese Naval assets (facilities, lands, and properties) are succeeded by U.S. Forces in Japan and Japanese Self-Defense Forces. The rest of the assets were transferred to local governments (municipalities) or private enterprises, either free of charge or at nominal cost, based on “the Act on Reconstruction of Cities that Formerly Served as Naval Ports [1].”

“The Act on Reconstruction of Cities that Formerly Served as Naval Ports” is designed to revive the four former naval port cities (Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo, and Maizuru) where their employment rate and population declined sharply after the Imperial Japanese Navy being dissolved by taking advantage on what they have: the former military assets. The law was approved by the Diet (the Japanese National Assembly) and by local referendum in each city and came into effect in 1950.

Based on the law, former Imperial Japanese Naval assets have been converted and utilized for factories, schools, parks, roads, water supplies, public housing, and others. Taking Yokosuka City as an example, the Nissan Motor Corporation Oppama Plant, Yokosuka Sogo High School, Nagai Seaside Park Soleil Hill, etc., are constructed on lands that Imperial Japanese Navy used.

A ruin of a gun battery in Sarushima (Monkey Island). This island was a fortress of the Imperial Japanese Navy and is converted into a park.

Why is this law related to the U.S. military in Japan? If we compare the four formal port cities, the rates of land conversion of these four former naval port cities from high to low are Kure (92.7%), Maizuru(85.9%), Yokosuka(74.4%), and Sasebo(59.5%) [2]. Yokosuka and Sasebo are cities that host the U.S. military bases, which is one of the reasons the two cities have lower land conversion rates than the other two [3].

Moreover, the U.S. military in Japan has been handing over the U.S.-occupied land to Japan bit by bit. Yokosuka City has received the returned land for city development from the central government by paying lower than the market price or even without payment [4]. Other cities, which host U.S. military bases but were not former naval port cities, must pay for the returned land based on the market price, or it will be sold to the private sector. This difference, of course, makes those base host cities, such as Sagamihara City, feel unfair. [5]

One more interesting issue related to this law is its purpose of promoting the peaceful use of former military facilities in those port cities. As the first article of the law states, “the purpose of this act is to transform the four cities that had developed as naval ports to peace-time industrial coast cities, aiming to achieve the ideal of peaceful Japan.”[6] Based on the tone of this article, it is a law for demilitarization of the former naval port cities.

However, opposite to the aim of the law, Yokosuka is now a city hosting one of the most strategically important U.S. military bases. Yokosuka city government also utilizes the U.S. military base and Imperial Japanese naval port heritage to promote tourism and develop Yokosuka. Militourism could be a concept to describe this complexity of tourism and militarism. [7]

To be more specific, the city’s tourism capitalizes on the military image and history as a resource to attract domestic and international tourists. Albeit a successful developmental strategy, one might also be wary that this promotional tactic could also be used as a way to normalize the spread of militarized values into civilian life and embellish the presence of U.S. military forces in Japan. For instance, a cruise of Yokosuka Naval Port for seeing the U.S. battleships and submarines, a U.S.-Japan friendship base historical tour, and certainly no tourists would like to miss the two most famous cuisines, (U.S.) Navy Burger and Kaigun (Imperial Japanese Navy) Curry, when they visit Yokosuka. I am also preparing my lunch from a boil-in-the-bag Kaigun Curry while considering the future of this former naval port city and now a peace-time industrial coast city hosting the military forces from another country.

Navy Burger
Kaigun Curry

Citations

[1] 旧軍港市転換法 (軍転法) https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=325AC0100000220

[2] 旧軍港市転換法施行70周年記念 子ども向けパンフレット

https://www.kyugun.jp/pdf/pamphlet_for_kids.pdf

[3] 本市所在旧軍用財産転用概況https://www.city.yokosuka.kanagawa.jp/0535/kithitai/10/index.html

[4] 旧軍港市転換法70年のあゆみhttps://www.city.yokosuka.kanagawa.jp/0535/kithitai/gunten/index.html

[5] 平成２９年　国の施策・制度に関する提案・要望書 相模原市, p.10 https://www.city.sagamihara.kanagawa.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/001/012/961/teian_h29.pdf

[6] 旧軍港市転換法 (軍転法) https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=325AC0100000220

[7] “Teaiwa, Teresia. 1999.”Reading Paul Gauguin’s Nau Nau with Epili Hua’ofa’s Kisses in the Nederends: Militourism, Feminism, and the Polynesian’s Body.” In Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific, edited by Vilsoni Hereniko and Rob Wilson,249-263. NY: Rowman & Littlefield.

Chu-Wen Hsieh is a PhD candidate at UNC’s Department of Anthropology. She is interested in military bases, social movements, nationalism, empire, and Okinawa and Japan. Her current research focuses on the everyday life of local communities around U.S. military bases in Japan. She graduated with a Master of Arts in Anthropology and Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Political Science from National Taiwan University.

Edited by Jo Kwon

Featured Image: Azumashima is an island the Imperial Japanese Navy used as an ammunition storage area and now is the Us Navy Azuma Storage Area.

A Queer People’s Atlas of Bull City: Exploring the History and Movement of Queer Bars in Durham, North Carolina (Part 2)

August 2, 2022 /

This post is part 2 of a series that chronicles the history of prominent LGBTQ+ bars and nightclubs in Durham, NC, through an intersectional lens. Part 1 is available here.

By Mad Bankson & Duncan Dodson

To the 80s, and BEYOND!

As the eighties rolled around, gay people around the world were forced to become more visible. The AIDS crisis and increasing attacks from the Christian right led people to advocate for their right to exist and survive, necessitating more of a public presence. [1] This increased visibility led to a significant shift in queer culture, especially when it came to bar and club life. Though discretion was still preferred by many, there was more social space for gay establishments, and secret bars and informal gay spaces became less central in queer life. Though Durham was still a small Southern town, the changes of the eighties allowed it to expand into something radically beautiful.

The Power Company

Opened in the early 1980s, the Power Company was known as “the best gay club between DC and Atlanta .” [2] Jeff Inman, a DJ there from 1984 to 1988 said of the club, “The Power Company was a gay force. It was Grand [sic] period, packed with the who’s who.” [3] Located on Main Street in the building that is now occupied by Teasers strip club, the Power Company was expansive in size, sporting a multi-level layout with several bars, a mezzanine lounge, a dance floor lined with humongous speakers, artful lighting, and several disco balls. There was also a conspicuous staircase that served as a kind of unofficial stage for people to walk up and down under the gaze of fellow clubgoers. [4] In addition, the top floor hosted several “don’t ask don’t tell” dressing rooms that presumably offered privacy for more intimate encounters.

The Power Company provided a rare space of reprieve for people to truly let loose and be themselves without homophobic harassment. One former attendee said of their first trip to the club, “‘So this is what it’s like to be gay and open and not have to be beat-up or worried.” While it was explicitly named as a gay club, like many gay spaces in this time period in Durham, like-minded allies were also welcomed. The club was famous for having a large and loyal body of regulars as well as for being visited by many kinds of people, including Duke professors. 

Furthermore, the relative openness afforded by the space went beyond just sexual orientation and gender identity. According to late Durham queer leader Mignon Cooper, the Power Company was also known as a place where interracial couples, immigrants, older people, and even straight couples would come to enjoy a welcoming and joyful club environment with a wide variety of people. [5]

Unfortunately, the club shut down in 2000, marking the end of an era for queer Durham. This came after a period of controversy surrounding the club in the late 1990s, during which the club’s downtown neighbors were highly agitated by the noise level, resulting in frequent police visits. According to the WRAL article, Durham ponders whether nightclub is a public nuisance; the Power Company began to draw negative attention from police and city officials after these disturbances at the club culminated in a person being murdered outside. [6]

One former club attendee noted that the club closed “after the crowd gradually changed from gay to ‘urban’ and people got shot in the parking lot.” [7] While this comment about shifting demographics may simply speak to the eventual popularity of the club among all kinds of audiences, it resonates strongly with other racially coded negative discourse about the character of downtown Durham in the late 1990s and early 2000s. To this day, the Power Company is still a frequent subject of conversation in Durham, much beloved by gays and their allies who used to attend. [8]

Ringside

In 2000, Boxer’s Ringside Bar opened for business. Ringside was a four-story artist club and music venue located at 308 West Main Street, a building that is now occupied by startup offices. “An amazing dive of a firetrap,” the club was famous for its funky, eclectic vibe, with a library, a large, speakeasy style sitting area, and dance floor/stage space. [9] By all accounts, it lacked a coherent theme or aesthetic.

Ringside was never marketed as a gay bar, though it seems that it functionally operated as the primary queer hangout space in town at the time. The club’s owner, a gay man named Michael Penny, had previously owned Boxer’s, a smaller explicitly gay bar. Boxer’s, which opened in 1989, was located in “a flying saucer shaped building off 15-501.” When he decided to open Ringside, Penny said “I never wanted it to be a gay bar. I never wanted it to be anything.” He later remarked that it was “a gay bar for straight people.” 

The primary goal of Ringside was to create an anchor for the Durham music scene, which despite its many talented acts mostly performed in Chapel Hill. Alongside Duke Coffeehouse, the club succeeded at this goal and hosted many local acts during its lifespan. Unfortunately, the queer/art scene in Durham still lacks a solid anchor even today. 

Ringside was the type of weird and wonderful artsy bar that could never compete with today’s high rent downtown Durham environment. After looking for the space for two years, Penny chose the building specifically because of Durham’s dense urban feel and low rents. Even in 2002 when Ringside’s owners and operators were interviewed by Indy Week, there were already concerns about how urban development might impact the space. While the long-term vision was to create a sort of multidisciplinary art space “not just for white hipsters,” Penny and his counterparts were concerned that the owners of the building would soon realize its value and opt to “turn the area into a big RTP.” The exact reasons for Ringside’s closing are not easily clear in the public record, but it seems likely that the image of the future they feared likely came true. Wild and wonderful, it seems by all accounts that Ringside was indeed “too sketchy” to attract high traffic consistently in a city that was undergoing rapid change as tech and medicine money flooded the city. [10]

In contrast to highly beloved venues like Pinhook and Power Company, Ringside’s gritty underground history seems to have faded more from the popular consciousness in Durham. Though its strange, multipurpose artistic vision does remain in the digital journalistic record, the extent of the gay happenings and events that likely occurred there is not well known. However, one remnant of the bar is still with us. Ringside’s old sign is posted on the wall above the doorway at the Pinhook, Durham’s only surviving gay bar today.

The next post focuses on 711 Rigsbee Avenue, another important gathering spot for queer communities from across the Triangle. 

[1]  Hull, B. (2001, June 21). Documenting the American South, interview by Chris McGinnis.

[2] Delgo, T. (2020, June 3). Power Company’s former patrons remember nightclub’s legacy. The Chronicle.

[3] Inman, Jeff. “Durham Nostalgia, Anyone? (Raleigh, Fayetteville, Jacksonville: Appointed, Houses, Schools) – Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary – North Carolina (NC) -The Triangle Area.” City Data, January 21, 2010.

[4] Delgo 2020

[5] Delgo 2020

[6] WRAL. (1998, December 28). Durham Ponders Whether Nightclub is a Public Nuisance

[7] Francois. “Durham Nostalgia, Anyone? (Raleigh, Fayetteville, Jacksonville: Appointed, Houses, Schools) – Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary – North Carolina (NC) -The Triangle Area.” City Data, June 27, 2008.

[8] Delgo 2020

[9] Mandel, A. (2018, February 1). Twenty Years of Bars in Durham. Clarion Content. 

[10] Clarion Content 2018

Mad Bankson is a planner and critical geographer based in Durham, NC. Their interdisciplinary research brings together housing, land justice, urban history, and data analysis. Mad graduated from DCRP with a concentration in Land Use and Environmental Planning in 2022.

Duncan Dodson is a queer planner and researcher from Oklahoma. Community engagement efforts, disaster-relief administration, and data-driven conservation in Durham and DC brought Duncan to Carolina. He graduated from DCRP and explored the mitigation of climate change impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. He is most interested in strategies designed and driven by community members and organizations, and those that center on climate justice.

Featured Image: 2019 Durham Pride. Photo Credit: Jo Kwon

Volume 48 Call for Papers

June 29, 2022 /
By Carolina Planning Journal

URBAN ANALYTICS: CAPABILITIES AND CRITIQUES

“In a world where we all will be living in some form of city by the end of this century, a new city science and a new urban analytics is of increasing relevance.”

—Michael Batty

“Will we be able to invent different modes of measuring that might open up the possibility of a different aesthetics, a different politics of inhabiting the Earth, of repairing and sharing the planet?”

—Achille Mbembe

Our cities are now wired together by technologies that produce vast troves of data. The reach of the internet and the ubiquity of digital devices have been matched by the growth of a computational toolset for analyzing these newly-available data. This presents a compelling opportunity for planners, who have always applied data to decision-making. Planners now apply robust analytical methods to address community problems with greater precision and reach.

These new tools permit a clearer picture of the urban world. They may enable new efficiencies in the delivery of urban services. Like all technologies, however, these tools present risks. Bias enters analytics in ways that are difficult to trace. Concerns arise over privacy and surveillance. Widespread reliance on these technologies has already demonstrated threats to democratic processes.

In Volume 48 of the Carolina Planning Journal, we pause to assess the moment. What should we make of this wealth of data? Perhaps it will lead us into a new era of technocratic decision-making and revive conflicts over the right to the city. Or perhaps democratized access to these tools will help communities resolve longstanding conflicts over urban governance.

What longed-for outcomes will be made possible? How will the perils be managed?

Students, professionals, and researchers from a range of disciplines are invited to submit abstracts that explore the application of data analytics to urban governance and the design of cities. Suggested topics include (but are not restricted to):

  • ENERGY, such as the real-time monitoring of energy grids and power consumption.
  • PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT, such as the use of data visualization in community processes.
  • TRANSPORTATION, such as the live tracking of public transit use.
  • ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, such as the expansion of decentralized digital currencies.
  • HOUSING, such as the automated review of public housing applications.
  • ENVIRONMENT, such as the pursuit of sustainable value chains.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
By August 12, 2022, interested authors should submit a two-page proposal. Proposals should include a title, description of the proposed topic and its significance, a brief summary of the literature or landscape, and a preliminary list of references (not counted toward the two-page limit). Final papers typically do not exceed 3,000 words. Submit proposals and questions to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com.

By September 16, 2022, Carolina Planning Journal will notify authors regarding their proposals. Drafts of full papers will be due by December and editors will work with authors on drafts of their papers over the course of the winter. The print version of the Journal will be published in the Spring of 2023. Carolina Planning Journal reserves the right to edit articles accepted for publication, subject to the author’s approval, for length, style, and content considerations.

Please submit proposals and questions to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com

From the Archives) A Queer People’s Atlas of Bull City: Exploring the History and Movement of Queer Bars in Durham, North Carolina (Part 1)

June 15, 2022 /

This post was originally published on September 17, 2021. As we celebrate Pride month, we go back to one of the archives.

By Mad Bankson & Duncan Dodson

Introduction

A 2019 Durham-based advertising campaign asserted that “Durham is the most diverse, proud and vibrant destination in North Carolina.”[i] For those outside the state, Durham is most well-known for housing Duke University and for its large research industry. However, the Bull City’s history is defined by the presence of vibrant Black communities like Hayti, Walltown, and Bragtown, Civil Rights demonstrations and activism, burgeoning immigrant enclaves, labor struggles in the textile and tobacco mills, and much, much more.

Interwoven throughout these narratives, less visible but no less central, is a diverse queer history. Durham has long been a location of queer celebration and activism and features a somewhat quieter history as a lesbian and transgender stronghold in North Carolina.[ii] In qualifying the City’s assertion of diversity, this series traces Durham’s LGBTQ+ community from the 1960s through the present by examining the history of the primary gathering spaces for its community members: bars and nightclubs. Historic and modern accounts of queer representation in the city affirm a queer community centered around safety, expression, and activism, much of which was cultivated by bars and similar queer enclaves.

This series chronicles the history of prominent bars and nightclubs in the area, with some discussion of such spaces in connection with other marginalized groups along lines of race and class. It draws much of its fact basis from the archival work of the Love and Liberation Durham LGBTQ+ History Project assembled by the Durham Public Library, online forums, oral histories, and alternative newspapers.

No comprehensive research project of this sort exists, therefore this series aims for breadth over depth, addressing the reality that much of queer history is challenging or impossible to recover. As Durham continues to rapidly grow and bring new interests, it still stands to be seen what will come of queer bars and meeting spaces in an area with exacerbating economic issues, soaring rent, redevelopment pressures, and growing divides among people of color and white communities in space. Tracing gay bars and inclusive spaces through space and place offers some insight into these divides and helps identify what has been lost and which vacuums remain to be filled in Durham’s queer nightlife spaces.

This series is broken up into three parts. Part I tells the story of some of the first queer spaces in the Research Triangle through from the 1960’s through the 1970’s. The second part chronicles queer spaces from the 1980’s to more recently, focusing on notable spaces such as The Power Company and Ringside. The last section of this series focuses on Durham’s current queer bars and night clubs.

Pre-1970s

In attempting to create a historic archive of Durham’s LGBTQ+ community, researchers at Durham County Library remarked that “Little documentation about LGBTQ life prior to the 1970s exists, especially for trans people and people of color.”[iii] Because queerness was considered a vice, gay happenings were rarely put into the written record. Much of what we know from this period comes from oral history, particularly an interview with Bill Hull, a white gay man born in 1947 who lived in the area his whole life. Hull describes the Durham-Chapel Hill gay community prior to 1970 as “insular, but friendly — centered mostly around small, underground gay bars, close friends and private parties.”[iv] Though they were far from accepted by mainstream society in a conservative Southern state, available accounts suggest that gay people during this time were mostly left alone as long as they were not publicly visible or flamboyant.

The most famous bar location from the 1960s is the Ponderosa. Located in a “nice little colonial house” near the entrance of the Hope Valley subdivision between Chapel Hill and suburban Durham (“the boonies” according to Hull), the Ponderosa was a private club that required a secret passphrase to enter. The property had a small diner with a drive-in grill setup. Behind the diner was a large concrete building where people would party and dance, an extremely rare type of establishment for the time. Both men and women attended the well-known queer parties here. In addition, one visitor recalled that the Ponderosa was almost always attended by at least a few black people even in the 1960s.[v]

The Ponderosa attracted little outside attention. Though some attendees experienced gay-bashing from Marines (who Hull speculated were likely closeted themselves), the club amazingly had few police interactions. The city authorities were aware of the illegal land use and gay meetings, but “as long as there was no trouble there, as long as people are discreet and don’t break traffic laws and don’t do it in the street and scare the horses, there would be no problem.”[vi] In keeping with the general theme of queerness being allowed to exist in Durham so long as it was not hyper visible, Ponderosa never experienced a raid in its almost decades-long lifespan. When or why it closed is not well known.

Chapel Hill and Raleigh had more active queer scenes during the1970’s. While Durham gays gathered unofficially in places such as the Washington Duke Hotel bar (now Jack Tar restaurant), both cities had official established gay bars. Chapel Hill, home to a very large and connected queer community, was generally much more open than Durham (at least for white gay men). Bill Hull spoke of the cruising scene of UNC’s Wilson Library and several residence and academic buildings. There is less information about Raleigh, but it did have at least one gay bar called The Anchorage that opened in the early 1950s. It should be noted that gay men and lesbians did not interact much very much at these places. Many gay Durhamites made the drive to these places as well, just as today there is significant interchange among the various queer nightlife locations in all three cities.[vii]

The next post continues this narrative into the 1980’s and beyond.

[i] Strahm, A. (2019, June 20). LGBTQ Pride in Durham, North Carolina. Discover Durham.

[ii] City Data. (2008). [AfAm LGBT in the Triangle? (Raleigh, Durham: Chapel, Home, Neighborhood)] Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary – North Carolina (NC) -The Triangle Area – City-Data Forum.

[iii] Durham County Library (2016). “Before the 1970s.” Love + Liberation: A History of LGBTQ+ Durham.

[iv] QNotes Staff. (2011, July 8). Durham bar to close, reopen under new management. goqnotes.com.

[v] Hull, B. (2001, June 21). Documenting the American South, interview by Chris McGinnis.

[vi] Hull 2001

[vii] Hull 2001

Mad Bankson is a queer planner and geographer raised in the South. In their capacity as a researcher at DataWorks NC, Mad focuses on issues related to property ownership, gentrification, and eviction in their current home city of Durham, North Carolina. A recent graduate of the Master’s in City and Regional Planning concentrating in land use and environmental planning, Mad is most interested in planning practice that centers land justice, climate resiliency, and community self-governance.

Duncan Dodson is a queer planner and researcher from Oklahoma. Community engagement efforts, disaster-relief administration, and data-driven conservation in Durham and DC brought Duncan to Carolina. He was a second-year Master’s student in City and Regional Planning, exploring mitigation of climate change impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. He is most interested in strategies designed and driven by community members and organizations, and those that center on climate justice.

Edited by Eve Lettau

Featured image courtesy of Durham County Library, Meredith Emmitt Papers

Restructuring the Bull City: Urban Form Change in Downtown Durham, North Carolina from 1914 to 2020

November 5, 2021 /
By Rahi Patel

Intro

The City of Durham is growing. Over the last decade, Durham’s population grew by 22%.[1] With the continued migration of technology firms, biotech startups, and other businesses to the Triangle, Durham is poised to continue its rapid growth for the foreseeable future. As cities like Durham continue growing, governments and citizens will have to contend with changes to the built environment. An analysis of Durham’s historic urban form can help us understand why Durham looks the way it does today and what lessons we should take about the creation, destruction, and revitalization of our cities as we move forward.

Measuring Urban Form

For my senior honors thesis, I sought to measure Durham’s urban form from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. I used four metrics of urban form for this analysis: direct building frontage, block area, block frontage, and off-street parking. Direct building frontage is the percentage of a block’s perimeter that has buildings abutting the property line. More direct building frontage is desirable because it creates a stronger relationship between buildings and people walking on sidewalks compared to buildings set back from the sidewalk.

Figure 1: Direct building frontage measurement. Source: Rahi Patel

Smaller block sizes and greater amounts of street frontage are desirable because they increase the permeability of the urban fabric, making it easier for people outside vehicles to access destinations throughout downtown.

A limited amount of off-street parking is desirable because off-street parking tends to degrade the experience of street life, creating lots and parking structures that do not encourage people to linger. The space required by off-street parking also pushes homes, businesses, parks, and other destinations further away from each other, eliminating the churn of people that makes urban street life engaging.

Figure 2: Parking decks in downtown Durham, 2020. Source: Rahi Patel

To analyze the historic urban fabric, I used historic maps and satellite images imported into AutoCAD to recreate and measure the buildings, blocks, and streets of Durham throughout the 20th century.

How Durham’s Urban Fabric Changed

The results of the urban form analysis revealed a loss of cohesive, dense, permeable urban fabric from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Most of the change occurred from the 1950s through the 1970s. Average block size increased by 45% between 1950 and 1972. Total street frontage decreased by 10%.

Figures 3 and 4: Building footprints and streets of downtown Durham, 1950 vs. 1972. Source: Rahi Patel

The total amount of land area used for off-street parking increased from just 5 acres in 1950 to 111 acres in 1972. Direct building frontage only decreased slightly, though maps of downtown Durham reveal swaths of building demolition in some areas of downtown.

Figure 5: Change in land area used for off-street parking in downtown Durham, 1914-2020. Source: Rahi Patel

Planning documents published between 1950 and 1972 point us to the causes of these large-scale changes in downtown Durham. The federal government funneled money to American cities to acquire, demolish, and redevelop areas considered to be “blighted” under a program known as urban renewal. In reality, urban renewal programs across the U.S. targeted communities of color for demolition and displacement. Black communities situated close to central business districts were specifically targeted because of their valuable proximity to downtown. Durham was no exception. The Durham Redevelopment Commission displaced 4,057 homes and 502 businesses in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Hayti during the period of urban renewal (not included in the study area but located just southeast of downtown Durham). Plans drawn up by graduate students from UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning in 1957 reveal the policy and design decisions that planners believed would help revitalize “blighted” areas. These included disconnected and hierarchical roads, separated land uses, building setbacks, and vast open spaces. In Hayti, little redevelopment followed the large-scale demolition of homes and businesses. Downtown also experienced demolition from urban renewal, and much of the destruction was not replaced with new development by 1972.

Figure 6: Existing and proposed land use maps for Hayti, 1957. Source: Durham City Planning Department

In addition to urban renewal, federal homeownership policies pushed planners to substantially restructure the form of downtown Durham’s streets and public spaces. Federal mortgage subsidies allowed white city dwellers to purchase homes in the suburbs. The spread of indoor shopping malls further enticed white suburbanites to avoid downtown businesses. This development pattern impacted Durham’s finances, because significant levels of tax revenue was generated by commercial buildings in downtown. City planners responded to the pressures of suburbanization by attempting to lure suburban shoppers back to downtown businesses. Planners proposed street widenings and the creation of a loop road through downtown to increase ease of access for suburban shoppers. Planners were also concerned with providing large amounts of clearly visible parking throughout downtown to assure suburban shoppers that they would have a place to park. However, it is not clear that any amount of road widening, parking construction, or urban renewal demolition could have competed with the larger political and economic forces that threatened downtown Durham’s future.

Tomorrow’s Bull City

Looking ahead, we have much to learn from the restructuring of Durham’s downtown. The decisions made by a complex web of planners, public officials, and private interests still shape the downtown we know today. 88 acres of downtown Durham’s land area is still devoted to off-street parking (decreased from 111 acres in 1972). A study conducted in 2018 found an excess parking capacity of over 5,000 parking spaces throughout downtown. The Downtown Loop cuts through Durham, creating a hazardous and uninviting environment for people outside vehicles. The Durham Freeway funnels pollution and noise through downtown and Hayti.

Figure 7: A pedestrian crosses Roxbury St. in downtown Durham, 2020. Source: Rahi Patel
Figure 8: Five lanes of one-way traffic converge on Roxbury St. in downtown Durham, 2020. Source: Rahi Patel

As the Bull City’s growth continues to provide new opportunities for redevelopment, Durham residents, city officials, and other stakeholders must decide how, where, when, and for whom that redevelopment will occur. The questions of urban form ultimately influence the daily lives of all a city’s residents: where we live, work, shop, play, relax, and celebrate. Hopefully, an understanding of how we got here will give us the tools to continue moving forward.

[1] Durham City-County Planning Department. https://durhamnc.gov/386/Demographics

Rahi Patel graduated from UNC in May 2021 with majors in Urban Planning (through the Interdisciplinary Studies Program) and Economics. He has interests in sustainable transportation, urban design, and architecture. He is currently a planner in the Transportation Planning Division at the U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe National Transportation Systems Center.

Edited by Eve Lettau

Featured image: Ground Diagram of Downtown Durham, 1950. Courtesy of Rahi Patel.

Master’s Project Abstracts: COVID-19 Case Studies

October 28, 2021 /

The research conducted by the Department of City and Regional Planning reflects the planning challenges of the moment, and this relevance is no better represented than through the graduated class of 2021’s Master’s Projects focused on COVID-19. Below are abstracts and corresponding links from selected Master’s Projects that span issues of transportation and housing in response to the global pandemic.

For a complete list of DCRP Master’s Projects see here, and for more information on the Master’s Project process, here.

Active Transportation Policy Decisions in Response to COVID-19: Case Studies from Four North America Cities

Emma Stockton

This Master’s Project explores the planning processes, implementation, and public reactions to new active transportation infrastructure built in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in four North American cities (Washington, DC, Chapel Hill, NC, Oakland, CA, Halifax, Nova Scotia). The implementation of active transportation infrastructure moved abnormally quickly to respond to an increased demand for walking and biking in local areas due to COVID-19 lockdowns, restriction of travel and closure of many businesses. Interviews were conducted with transportation planners working for each of the four cities to gain insight into each city’s experience, lessons learned, and predictions for the future of active transportation infrastructure. The case studies particularly focus on two topics: the community engagement process with residents while physical distancing measures were in place, as well as equity considerations and perceptions of new active transportation programs. It is crucial to understand how these decisions were made as well as the implications of these decisions to guide future active transportation planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Housing Policy for Eviction Prevention during COVID-19

Lauren Turner

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased housing instability and put millions of renters at risk of displacement since stay-at-home orders began in the US in March 2020. Federal, state, and local actors rushed to expand and adapt existing housing policies, and create new ones, to prevent the additional public health disaster of millions of Americans being evicted. This paper examines two housing policy measures – eviction moratoria and emergency rental assistance (ERA) – taken to prevent evictions during COVID-19, exploring these policies at the federal, state, and local level. The paper uses the state of North Carolina, specifically Orange County, as a case study, examining Orange County’s Emergency Housing Assistance (EHA) fund. Finally, this paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of US affordable housing policy, and explores potential policy proposals for the future of housing in the US.

How Has COVID-19 Affected Telework Attitudes and Behaviors?

Christian Snelgrove

Any change is difficult, but massive disruptions such as COVID-19 often make people see their daily habits in a new light. Transportation systems and habits have been acutely affected by the pandemic, and one significant way this disruption has manifested is in a large shift from traditional commuting to telework. The question is how long these changes will last, if at all. Using a cross-sectional attitudinal survey, my paper examines how COVID-19 has affected telework attitudes and behaviors. I asked respondents to report their pre-COVID-19 and current telework attitudes and behavior, as well as different socioeconomic and attitudinal indicators to further stratify the data. My data indicate a sizeable shift in workers’ desired commuting behavior. My respondents largely had positive experiences with telework, resulting in them wanting to telework most of the time moving forward. Commute-mode preferences shifted as well, with many respondents who previously preferred to drive alone now wishing to primarily telework. These results suggest a significant change in commuting attitudes that should be harnessed. Many employers have made large investments in telework technology and training due to the pandemic. This serves as an opportunity to offer workers more choice, creating a working environment better attuned to their needs.

Lane Reallocations during COVID: A Comparison of Interventions and Decision-Making Process

Joshua Mayo

This paper aims to look at the political factors around lane reallocations on commercial and mixed-use streets in the United States during the COVID pandemic. Using multiple case studies, this project will examine the political factors around the decision-making process, implementation, and discussions about the future of these interventions. Case study analysis will be conducted by examining the messaging in public meetings and associated materials, and supplemented by the author’s experience as staff at one of the case studies. This paper is targeted at people interested in the impacts of the COVID pandemic on support for active travel, and aims to set up future research on how these interventions fare after the pandemic.

Post-Pandemic Utilization of Office to Residential Adaptive Reuse Strategies in Cities

Shane Sweeney

American cities are facing an epidemic. Affordable housing is nearly impossible to find in desirable cities. This shortage has cost-burdened almost half of American families who spend 30% or more of their gross income on housing. The COVID-19 pandemic has also exacerbated previously grim outlooks for the office market. Cities nationwide are experiencing historic highs in office vacancy rates and catastrophic deficits in net absorption. Adaptive reuse is an innovative, sustainable, and viable solution to this two-pronged problem. It is the process of taking an older or underutilized structure and repurposing that structure for a new or different use. In this present situation, city officials have the ability to work with owners of underutilized office buildings to assist in repurposing these structures into residential units through a number of tools such as tax credits, grants, expedited permitting, trusts, affordable housing incentives, and much more. Adaptive reuse is a multi-dimensional solution to an emerging problem which encapsulates the real-estate market, city dynamics, zoning, housing stock and prices, homelessness, and long-term sustainability of cities. This paper serves as a guide to planners, students, and citizens to elaborately define the problems at hand, explore a successful case study, provide a repeatable and thorough analysis, present feasible tools and policies to enact change, and discuss the challenges of doing so. With this research, planners in large urban areas can assess the need and usefulness of adaptive reuse to help curb the constantly changing problems cities face and the effects of COVID-19 in their communities.

By James Hamilton

Featured image courtesy of Carolina Angles

Assessing Extreme Weather and Climate Impacts on Public Health Practitioners

October 8, 2021 /

Last summer, Emily Gvino (MCRP and MPH 2021 alumna), teamed up with Dr. Ferdouz Cochran to conduct a needs assessment of public health practitioners across the southeastern United States to understand the impact of extreme weather and climate events in their work. With support from Carolina Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA), the duo surveyed 108 professionals from emergency management and disaster services, healthcare coalitions, hospital or clinical based organizations, government-based public health agencies, and other community organizations.

The survey found that public health stakeholders are concerned about not just hurricanes, but also heavy rain, prolonged rain events, and heat. Funding, political climate, and organizational leadership are the main barriers to addressing the health impacts of climate change. Participants were also very concerned about power and infrastructure failures. Participants are greatly concerned about the health impacts of heat but less frequently utilize wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) in their work. WBGT is different from the commonly known heat index as it accounts for “temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle, and cloud cover (solar radiation)” in direct sunlight.[1]

A preview of the report’s findings can be found below, while the full report can be accessed on the CISA website.

Concern about Extreme Weather and Climate Events

Participants were very concerned about heavy rain, prolonged rain, heat, and hurricanes. Participants across all organization types were more concerned about heavy rain events (that may lead to flash flooding events) compared to prolonged periods of rain or flood events themselves. Participants were not at all concerned about fog and generally only somewhat concerned about drought, tornadoes, wildfire, and wind. Healthcare coalitions and emergency management—which operate on local and regional scales—are very concerned about localized impacts of winter weather, which is a lesser concern for other organizations that may operate on a larger scale. Non-profit and community organizations expressed a higher level of concern across flood-related hazards, heat, hurricanes, and storms. Those working in hospital- or clinical-based settings (primarily based in North Carolina) were very concerned about heat and prolonged rain.

The health risks of extreme heat events, from the question, “In your role, which of the following individual-level health risks of excessive heat concern you?”

The health risks of extreme heat events, from the question, “In your role, which of the following individual-level health risks of excessive heat concern you?”

Information and Tools

Despite concern about the health impacts of heat, survey participants less frequently use wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) in their work—a widely accepted and promoted measure of heat stress. The vast majority of respondents had not heard of WBGT and represent a key demographic that could benefit from access to more information, awareness, and tools regarding WBGT for their work, in comparison to relying on ambient temperatures alone. Across all types of extreme weather and climate events, participants trust the National Weather Service over other information sources, such as other phone apps, national TV stations such as the weather channel, or other web-based sources, such as Weather Underground. When asked to share what sources of information they are lacking in their current work, participants identified real-time phone and web alerts, showcasing opportunities here for improved climate communication.

In addition, public health stakeholders expressed interest in applying future climate projections and priority mapping to their current work. Based on these results, there may be opportunities for increased communication about the health risks of extreme heat and climate events for those in the public health and medical fields. For example, when it comes to heart attacks as a result of winter weather events, there was a disconnect between emergency management, who were very concerned about heart attacks, and those working in hospital or clinical settings, who were mostly concerned about car accidents due to winter weather events. Further research could explore this disconnect between different types of public health stakeholders.

Local Capacity and Leadership Building

Across all types of organizations, survey participants expressed that local levels of leadership should be responsible for preparing for extreme weather and climate events. However, survey participants shared that funding, political climate, and leadership are the most prominent barriers to action regarding addressing extreme weather and climate events in their work. Participants also expressed high levels of concern about power and infrastructure failures and access to healthcare facilities, which may require more regional capacity building and leadership across stakeholder groups. The majority of participants shared that their organizations had an emergency preparedness plan, and over half of these respondents had support the preparation of the plan. While participants reported Hazard Vulnerability Assessments (HVA) were fairly common at their organizations, less than one-third of respondents said that an HVA was prepared annually. Less than half of survey participants and their associated organizations are involved in a healthcare coalition. This summary reports our detailed findings across the top three extreme weather and climate events concerning public health stakeholders: extreme heat, winter weather, and flooding.

A full version of the CISA Public Health Needs Assessment: Summary Report is now available online through the CISA Library. If you’d like to learn more about this project, please contact Emily Gvino ’21.

[1] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, WetBulb Globe Temperature

By Emily Gvino, MCRP/MPH ’21

Featured image: Cows who survived Hurricane Florence, stranded on a porch, surrounded by flood waters in North Carolina. Courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur, Unsplash

Master’s Project Abstracts: North Carolina Case Studies

September 22, 2021 /

Several Master’s Projects from the graduated class of 2021 underscored the impact the Department of City and Regional Planning can have in addressing equity, resilience, and accessibility across the North Carolinian planning landscape. A selection of abstracts and accompanying links to the full report are listed below.

For a complete list of DCRP Master’s Projects see here, and for more information on the Master’s Project process, here.

“The Answer Really Lies in the Community”: Exploring Inequity in Resilience Planning through Community Voice – A Study of Post-Florence New Bern, North Carolina

By Ranger Ruffins

The most recent National Climate Assessment states that low-income and marginalized groups with “lower capacity to prepare for and cope with extreme weather and climate-related events” will continue to be most affected, and that “adaptation actions for the most vulnerable populations” should be prioritized. However, while equity is receiving more attention in planning discourse, the uneven impacts of hazards on socially vulnerable populations are often ignored by traditional planning efforts. In 2018 Hurricane Florence devastated New Bern, NC, and in its aftermath revealed communities that were disproportionately at risk from the impacts of the hurricane. Through interviews with New Bern residents, this study aims to provide valuable insight regarding challenges and barriers facing equitable resilience planning in New Bern. The participants’ stories, experiences, and insight speak to some of the factors contributing to uneven resilience across the city. This study found that the avoidance and lack of confronting racism in New Bern, coupled with issues of mistrust and poor community engagement practices, are contributing to patterns of inequitable resilience in New Bern. This paper aims to provide a further understanding of these complex challenges and offer insight that can inspire approaches to resilience planning that best serve all of New Bern’s residents.

Bicycle Parking in Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Where It’s at and Where It’s Going

By Eli Powell

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a bustling college town with a great number of bicyclists, yet bicycle parking is a largely neglected topic by both its Code of Ordinances and its transportation planning staff. This project seeks to change that. Over six months in 2020, I collected a fieldwork inventory of almost all bicycle parking and maintenance resources within Town limits. I published this inventory as a public-facing interactive map and used it internally to perform a site-level analysis of adherence to the Town’s bicycle parking capacity requirements and design guidelines. I then evaluated the results of this analysis and consulted bicycle parking requirements in five United States municipalities similar to Chapel Hill to formulate recommendations to Town planning staff on improving their own codified bicycle parking requirements. My findings suggest that at least half of all sites in Chapel Hill have been violating bicycle parking capacity requirements and that almost all of them have been violating design guidelines, with the most common offense being an unsatisfactory amount of long-term parking. With my assistance, the Town of Chapel Hill Planning Department will use this dataset to amend bicycle parking capacity requirements and design guidelines in the Town’s Land Use Management Ordinance. The dataset will also be useful to all Chapel Hill bicyclists for more reliably locating bicycle parking at their destinations, making the Town of Chapel Hill a more bicycle-friendly place to live, work, and visit.

Dorothea Dix Park Access Study

Lucy Laird

This project proposes improvements to the Raleigh transit network and to Dorothea Dix Park’s edges that will allow for greater accessibility to neighborhoods both proximate and farther from the park, with an eye toward environmental justice concerns.

Historic Preservation and the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard: Case Study in New Bern, NC.

Rachael Wolff

Climate change will lead to more frequent and powerful natural hazards that can threaten historic resources and the benefits they provide to communities. Integration of different planning efforts offers one strategy towards better understanding gaps between land use policies that support or hinder resilience of historic resources. While prior research has explored both disaster planning for historic preservation and the resilience of a community’s network of plans, these two topics have not yet been combined. This study builds upon previous applications of the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard and applies it to historic properties at risk from flooding in New Bern, North Carolina. Using the 100-year floodplain and Hurricane Florence flood extent as the hazard zones and a sample of historic resources designated on the National Register as the planning districts, this research analyzes whether land use policies in New Bern’s network of plans increase or decrease resilience of historic properties. Findings suggest that New Bern’s historic resources are vulnerable to flood hazards since contradictory plans do not support their resilience. However, the deep, local ties of historic preservation planning provide an opportunity to enhance resilience and protect future resources.

Making the Case for Planning Analysts: A Study for North Carolina Localities

Hallee Haygood

This project considers whether an analyst within city and county departments would be beneficial to its growth and success. An individual in this role could address roles of budget preparation, strategic planning, special projects, and more. A variety of departments currently have this type of position, and this paper outlines the recommendations for this position. In addition, it clarifies that based on qualitative interviews, it may not be necessary for all planning departments. Typically, those with over 250,000 people benefit the most from these positions. Municipalities like Raleigh, Durham, and Wake County were the most interested in this opportunity. As such, I recommend that localities consider adding these positions, and their benefits can be further studied.

Walking and Biking while Black: Wake County, NC

Luke Lowry

For Black Americans, the risk of being a victim of traffic violence while walking or biking is higher than it is for the general public. However, for local and regional governments, racial crash disparities are not well documented, and existing methods for addressing racial crash disparities are not widespread. Consequently, the purpose of this report is to provide an example of racial crash disparities at the regional level, and to test the effectiveness of an existing method used to address racial differences in crashes. Wake County, NC was selected as the analysis region for two reasons: the robust pedestrian and bicycle crash data publicly available, and the lack of existing analysis on pedestrian and bicyclist crashes by race. The ‘High Priority Network’ method for addressing racial disparities is the most popular existing model, and it can be easily modified for different regions. The Portland Vision Zero ‘High Priority Network’ model is a prominent version of this model; thus, it was applied and tested in Wake County. Its three main components—Communities of Concern, High Crash Roads, and High Crash Intersections—were analyzed individually. The analysis revealed that the overall rates of crashes were considerably higher for Black pedestrians and bicyclists, as were the median crash rates by Census Tract. Additionally, Black pedestrians and bicyclist crash victims had consistently less access to infrastructure at the location of the crash. When applied to Wake County, the Portland model for High Priority Networks was fairly competent at locating areas within Wake County with high numbers of Black crashes and a high rate of Black crashes. By modifying the network to focus on racial metrics, the model was more effective at addressing areas of high racial disparity. While some of the racial metrics were less effective at addressing all crashes within the system, a model which combines the standard metrics used by Portland and racial-specific metrics may result in better equity outcomes while not sacrificing the overall efficacy of the model.

By James Hamilton

Featured image courtesy of Carolina Angles

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