This post was originally published on June 22, 2022, but the brunch, brew, and budget options for Durham, North Carolina are still relevant today!
About the series: Welcome to our ongoing travel series. These are all posts written by planning students and professionals about what to do in a given city when looking for Brunch, a Brew, or a good idea on a Budget. To cap it all off, we include a fun planning fact!
By Henry Read
About the visit: I’ve lived in Durham for four and a half years, including my time at UNC-DCRP. It’s a fun town, and it has grown by leaps and bounds even in the short time I’ve been around. Between the diverse population, the acclaimed universities, the expansive parks, and the ever-evolving nightlife, there is a little something for everyone’s taste here. Whether you’re looking for a night out or a place to make a home outside of the Chapel Hill bubble, Durham is worth checking out.
Brunch
Geer Street Garden, all set up for brunch
My preferred brunch spot in Durham is definitely Geer Street Garden. From 11 to 4 on Sundays,this longstanding neighborhood bar and grill eschews its usual menu and serves up an incredible all-you-can-eat buffet featuring all the southern classics, from grits and gravy to deviled eggs to banana pudding. Boozeisn’t included with the meal, but their mimosas are cheap,and their bloody marys are strong and come with a kaleidoscope of garnish options. To top it off Geer Street Garden has one of the nicest patios in town, so you are assured of quality ambiance as you nurse your drink and pick at your third plate of chilaquiles amidst the trumpet vine and honeysuckle at this Old North Durham standby.
Brew
Someone enjoying a brandy flip at the bar at Kingfisher’s
In the latter third of the 20th century, Durham suffered from a reputation as a difficult town to find a drink in. But it is hard to imagine that in 2022; the bar and brewery scene in the contemporary Bull City is varied and ubiquitous.
For beer lovers, Fullsteam Brewing Company is a must-see. They are the oldest operation in the city, and for my money far and away by far from the best. Their core set covers all the major styles of American and European beer from tripels to pilsners, but where Fullsteam REALLY shines are their limited-run foraged beers. These small-batch runs are made with locally sourced fruits and botanicals, and consistently combine creativity and drinkability in remarkable ways – if you are in town in the fall, be sure to pick up a pawpaw IPA.
Cocktail enthusiasts in Durham have a range of excellent options available as well. The Accordion Club is a mainstay of the service industry set in the Geer Street nightlife district and serves heavy pours and legendary loaded fritos to everywhere else’s bartenders on their days off. And for a higher-end experience, Kingfishers has both the ambiance and the artistry to engage even the most jaded pallet. Located right next door to the midcentury masterpiece that is the Durham Hotel, this basement retreat is no dive – the ever-evolving menu of artisanal concoctions is matched perfectly by the luxurious private booths and the truly talented jazz quartet.
Budget
One of the older sections of Duke Gardens in late summer
Despite its rising fortunes in the last few decades, there is still some cheap fun to be had in Durham, if you know where to look. Every Friday night talented young Ddurhamites gather in CCB Plaza for Med City Cypher, an improvisational expression of rap, singing, and beat making. More collaborative than a battle but more polished than an impromptu meetup, this rolling group performance is guaranteed to inspire and is open for all to observe and participate.
One of the fringe benefits of playing host to a world-renowned university like Duke is access to its cultural resources, and Durham has its share. The Sarah P. Duke Botanical Gardens are host to an incredible display of natural beauty from all around the world and are worth a visit in any season; entry is free, though parking is not. For the more artistically inclined, Duke Coffeehouse hosts musical acts from around the country and the world in an extremely intimate setting at the edge of the old campus, always BYOB and usually for under $5 a head. The venue is fully student-run but is funded by the university, attracting, and paying for some truly innovative concerts.
Movieloft cleaves to a similar DIY aesthetic as Duke Coffeehouse, with the additional authenticity of being a completely independent concern. Meeting on the third Thursday of every month in a photography studio at the Ample Storage Center, this underground film club screens cult classics and grindhouse delight unavailable on any streaming service. The festivities start at 7 with a potluck cookout and a DJ set inspired by the evening’s movie. The film rolls around 8, and is free to anyone who can find it within the maze of storage bays. Drinks are provided as well, though only a real jerk would tap the keg without throwing a few bucks in the bin to keep the lights on.
Fun Planning Fact
Brightleaf Square, the Watts and Yuille warehouses, post-redevelopment
Durham was a leader in the now ubiquitous practice of tobacco warehouse renovations into live-work spaces. Beginning with the Watts and Yuille warehouses in 1980,much of the city’s downtown industrial buildings have been converted into shops, offices, and apartments. And it is easy to see why the trend kicked off here; the attention to detail exhibited in the neo-Romanesque brickwork of the 1890s warehouses is an architectural marvel. These renovation projects proved to be agreat economic success as well, and today these once derelict but now vibrant buildings are an essential component of Durham’s urban form.
Featured Image: Durham’s downtown skyline, facing north from the North Carolina Railroad.Photo Credit: Henry Read.
Henry Read graduated from the Department of City and Regional Planning in 2023. He is fascinated with the minutia of development regulation and doesn’t understand why so many people think zoning is boring. He hopes to work in the public sector after graduation and would like to be remembered as the guy who got your town to stop requiring bars to have customer parking and start planting native fruit trees in parks.
In January 2022 NC Governor Roy Cooper, along with other political notables, announced that Boom Supersonic would be opening its “Overture Superfactory” at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTI). This facility is intended to test and build supersonic airliners. Boom claims it will employ 1,750 people by 2030 and lead to over $0.5 billion in investment in Guilford County. Officials project that Boom’s presence in the state will expand GDP by $32.3 billion by 2035 [1]. This potential windfall won’t come cheap; to attract Boom NC and Guilford offered $236 million in incentives, including infrastructure improvements at PTI, tax abatements, expansion of aerospace-related community college programs, and the first-ever use of NC’s High-Yield Job Development Investment Grant (HYJDIG) [1]. These incentives were instrumental in outbidding Jacksonville, FL and Spartanburg, SC for the Superfactory [2].
However, the deal has its detractors. Supersonic airliners have never made consistent profits or recouped their development costs, and no established aerospace firms are even attempting to build them [3]. Boom is a six-year-old startup headed by a CEO with no prior aerospace experience, who audaciously claims that the Overture airliner will be quieter, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly than older designs. Its functional scale model is five years late [4], and a similar startup abruptly declared bankruptcy after making an analogous deal in Florida last year [5]. Why and how then, did multiple levels of government make such a large and risky investment?
Comprehensive Rational Model
The first theory to consider in analyzing these decisions is the Comprehensive Rational Model (CRM). In this plan making conception, actors are assumed to use logic and investigation to define a problem, identify all possible solutions, categorize criteria to evaluate the solutions, judge each solution through the criteria, compare these judgments, and pick the solution that best satisfies the most important criteria. With sufficient care, this method guarantees a utility-maximizing conclusion. However, sufficient care is almost impossible to apply when dealing with complex problems. Analysis takes time and resources — the more factors to consider, the more likely an actor is to cut corners and end up with an inadequate result.
In this case, the decision making process is obscured by the length of time involved, the number of actors, and a lack of insider sources. From the Governor’s perspective, the problem would likely have been defined as “how can NC be made more prosperous?” All potential answers would then have been considered and judged on various standards, like the potential for growth, cost, and cultural impact. It’s conceivable that all actors involved (who reportedly include every level of government, local universities, business organizations, and Duke Power [6]) collectively went through this convoluted process. But it’s unlikely that such an open-ended query would be answered with such a risky solution, particularly with so many different interest groups.
Organizational Behavior Model
A more illuminating theory is the Organizational Behavior Model. In this view, organizations’ actions are largely determined by their standard operating procedures (SOPs). Organizations are made up of many people who will make many different and conflicting decisions. To function as a collective their individual decision making is sublimated into rules and culture, establishing consistency at the expense of flexibility and creativity. “Outputs,” actions and their results, are considered appropriate when they mirror those made in the past rather than based on merit.
The pursuit of Boom can be partially explained by the SOPs of NC’s government. The Department of Commerce, Economic Development Partnership, and significant portions of the state’s political class have long aimed to build up the aerospace industry. Many investments have been made over the years, including similar incentive packages to attract HondaJet and Spirit Aerosystems. When presented with the goal of “make NC more prosperous,” one of the SOPs is “recruit an aerospace company.” Additionally, there are specific advantages to locating in NC that these organizations promote; low taxes, low wages, quality logistics infrastructure, and a well-developed higher education system [7]. These appeal to particular kinds of companies, which further narrows the potential outcomes. By adhering to their SOPs, stakeholders in NC’s economic development sphere bounded the possible results of their efforts, leading to the recruitment of Boom.
Stream of Opportunities Model
There is a third theory of plan making that also explains the choice to incentivize Boom to locate in Guilford; the Stream of Opportunities Model (SOM). In this paradigm, decisions are made through a confluence of four factors – issues, solutions, decision makers, and choice opportunities. Issues are the problems that planning attempts to address. Solutions are the tools that exist to address problems. Decisionmakers are people with the authority to deploy resources and connect solutions to problems. Choice opportunities are situations that allow decision makers to act. All of these factors exist independently, floating in the metaphorical “stream of opportunities.” When plans are made and actualized factors combine without much discernment; what’s available gets used, regardless of its efficacy [8].
Viewed through the SOM lens the recruitment of Boom makes considerably more sense. The issue of economic development is a core concern of state government – it will always seek to address it. Over the decades a consistent set of solutions has developed; infrastructure investments, tax abatements, and grants are always ready to be applied. PTI was recently expanded and upgraded at great expense through an initiative from the General Assembly, colorfully named “Project Thunderbird [2].” Consequentially the choice opportunity of making planes at PTI was highly attractive since this investment demanded justification. Solutions also aligned for the deal; the HYJDIG offered to Boom was designed by the legislature in 2016 but never used, becoming a hammer in search of nails [9]. And one of the most significant decisionmakers involved in the recruitment process is both a former Commerce Secretary and a consultant at a Raleigh-based firm hired by Boom [10]. The combination of these preexisting factors made the decision to court Boom far more likely, and diminished the possibility of any serious attempt at using CRM.
The Die is Cast
Time will tell if NC’s high-risk, high-reward bet on Boom’s prospects will pay off – this summer has seen positive and negative news for the company, including preorders from American Airlines [11] and a falling out with contracted engine designer Rolls Royce [12]. But if NC and its boosters’ move to back the startup does prove successful it will not be the result of calculations and analysis. Rather, it will be due to a combination of inertia, social relationships, and luck. Organizational Behavior filled the Stream of Opportunities, and the serendipity of the stream led to the decision that was made.
Henry Read is a Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, with a focus on land use policy. He is fascinated with the minutia of development regulation and doesn’t understand why so many people think zoning is boring. He hopes to work in the public sector after graduation and would like to be remembered as the guy who got your town to stop requiring bars to have customer parking and start planting native fruit trees in parks.
Managing our day to day lives is becoming increasingly difficult without the use of modern technology. However, approximately 32 million people in the United States do not have the skills to confidently navigate and utilize computers [1]. Computer skills are increasingly fundamental in K-12 schools, with much of a child’s educational experience built around technology and internet use. Adults who did not have the benefit of learning these skills while they were young are experiencing an increasing digital divide between themselves and the younger generation. That said, this issue is not limited to one demographic. As technology continues to evolve everyone requires continual education and assistance to remain digitally literate. The Community Workshop Series (CWS) works to close the digital divide and provide assistance to those in our community who are learning computer fundamentals for the first time and those looking to expand their current knowledge.
Learning to use technology and building essential skills can be difficult without the proper resources. Investing in digital literacy benefits not only the individual but the community. Being able to access computers and the internet increases a community’s civic engagement and people use technology to search for information about their local government; public transportation options; information about voting and upcoming elections; new economic opportunities; and most companies require an online application from prospective employees. The internet reduces the amount of time spent searching for a job and makes it easier to see what positions are available. A basic level of computer literacy is a common job expectation, and an online presence increases visibility for small businesses. Healthcare providers are increasing their use of online forms for patients and online portals are used to create appointments and connect doctors with their patients [2]. Local and global news resources are widely available online, making finding and evaluating this information more critical than ever. These resources and opportunities are cut off for those lacking computer skills.
The Community Workshop Series works with local libraries to host classes to increase digital literacy in the community. University students volunteer to teach classes that provide basic tech skills and computer fundamentals; internet searching, how to use programs, online job searching, evaluating online sources, email basics, smartphones, Google applications, and more based on community needs. Through direct interaction with the community, CWS continuously adjust classes to ensure they are valuable to participants and responsive to their needs. Recently, CWS has been able to begin offering computer basics courses in Spanish to better serve the surrounding community in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Durham. CWS serves the community through digital literacy and improving information access and provides local university students with an opportunity for service learning. Students teach classes, help develop and update curriculum, and work directly with communities to help close the digital divide.
To learn more about the Community Workshop Series or volunteer opportunities, please visit our website https://cws.web.unc.edu/ or contact us directly at silscommunityworkshopseries@gmail.com or rbritta@ad.unc.edu.
Citations
[1] Kendall Latham, “Empower Communities to Strengthen Their Digital Literacy Skills,” Dell Technologies Social Impact Blog, June 27, 2022. https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/empower-communities-to-strengthen-their-digital-literacy-skills/
[2] Colorado State Library, “Benefits of a Digitally Literate Community,” (infographic), 2013. https://www.maine.gov/msl/libs/tech/diglit/benefits.pdf
Rachael Brittain is the Coordinator of CWS and a second year Library Science student with a concentration in Archives and Records Management at UNC’s School of Library and Information Science. She has an interest in material preservation and community engagement. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Any spare moments are spent reading, listening to music, and hiking.
Edited by Jo Kwon
Featured Image: CWS Logo. Photo Credit: Jess Epsten
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.
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
About the series: Welcome to our ongoing travel series. These are all posts written by planning students and professionals about what to do in a given city when looking for Brunch, a Brew, or a good idea on a Budget. To cap it all off, we include a fun planning fact!
By Henry Read
About the visit: I’ve lived in Durham for four and a half years, including my time at UNC-DCRP. It’s a fun town, and it has grown by leaps and bounds even in the short time I’ve been around. Between the diverse population, the acclaimed universities, the expansive parks, and the ever-evolving nightlife, there is a little something for everyone’s taste here. Whether you’re looking for a night out or a place to make a home outside of the Chapel Hill bubble, Durham is worth checking out.
Brunch
Geer Street Garden, all set up for brunch
My preferred brunch spot in Durham is definitely Geer Street Garden. From 11 to 4 on Sundays,this longstanding neighborhood bar and grill eschews its usual menu and serves up an incredible all-you-can-eat buffet featuring all the southern classics, from grits and gravy to deviled eggs to banana pudding. Boozeisn’t included with the meal, but their mimosas are cheap,and their bloody marys are strong and come with a kaleidoscope of garnish options. To top it off Geer Street Garden has one of the nicest patios in town, so you are assured of quality ambiance as you nurse your drink and pick at your third plate of chilaquiles amidst the trumpet vine and honeysuckle at this Old North Durham standby.
Brew
Someone enjoying a brandy flip at the bar at Kingfisher’s
In the latter third of the 20th century, Durham suffered from a reputation as a difficult town to find a drink in. But it is hard to imagine that in 2022; the bar and brewery scene in the contemporary Bull City is varied and ubiquitous.
For beer lovers, Fullsteam Brewing Company is a must-see. They are the oldest operation in the city, and for my money far and away by far from the best. Their core set covers all the major styles of American and European beer from tripels to pilsners, but where Fullsteam REALLY shines are their limited-run foraged beers. These small-batch runs are made with locally sourced fruits and botanicals, and consistently combine creativity and drinkability in remarkable ways – if you are in town in the fall, be sure to pick up a pawpaw IPA.
Cocktail enthusiasts in Durham have a range of excellent options available as well. The Accordion Club is a mainstay of the service industry set in the Geer Street nightlife district and serves heavy pours and legendary loaded fritos to everywhere else’s bartenders on their days off. And for a higher-end experience, Kingfishers has both the ambiance and the artistry to engage even the most jaded pallet. Located right next door to the midcentury masterpiece that is the Durham Hotel, this basement retreat is no dive – the ever-evolving menu of artisanal concoctions is matched perfectly by the luxurious private booths and the truly talented jazz quartet.
Budget
One of the older sections of Duke Gardens in late summer
Despite its rising fortunes in the last few decades, there is still some cheap fun to be had in Durham, if you know where to look. Every Friday night talented young Ddurhamites gather in CCB Plaza for Med City Cypher, an improvisational expression of rap, singing, and beat making. More collaborative than a battle but more polished than an impromptu meetup, this rolling group performance is guaranteed to inspire and is open for all to observe and participate.
One of the fringe benefits of playing host to a world-renowned university like Duke is access to its cultural resources, and Durham has its share. The Sarah P. Duke Botanical Gardens are host to an incredible display of natural beauty from all around the world and are worth a visit in any season; entry is free, though parking is not. For the more artistically inclined, Duke Coffeehouse hosts musical acts from around the country and the world in an extremely intimate setting at the edge of the old campus, always BYOB and usually for under $5 a head. The venue is fully student-run but is funded by the university, attracting, and paying for some truly innovative concerts.
Movieloft cleaves to a similar DIY aesthetic as Duke Coffeehouse, with the additional authenticity of being a completely independent concern. Meeting on the third Thursday of every month in a photography studio at the Ample Storage Center, this underground film club screens cult classics and grindhouse delight unavailable on any streaming service. The festivities start at 7 with a potluck cookout and a DJ set inspired by the evening’s movie. The film rolls around 8, and is free to anyone who can find it within the maze of storage bays. Drinks are provided as well, though only a real jerk would tap the keg without throwing a few bucks in the bin to keep the lights on.
Fun Planning Fact
Brightleaf Square, the Watts and Yuille warehouses, post-redevelopment
Durham was a leader in the now ubiquitous practice of tobacco warehouse renovations into live-work spaces. Beginning with the Watts and Yuille warehouses in 1980,much of the city’s downtown industrial buildings have been converted into shops, offices, and apartments. And it is easy to see why the trend kicked off here; the attention to detail exhibited in the neo-Romanesque brickwork of the 1890s warehouses is an architectural marvel. These renovation projects proved to be agreat economic success as well, and today these once derelict but now vibrant buildings are an essential component of Durham’s urban form.
Featured Image: Durham’s downtown skyline, facing north from the North Carolina Railroad.Photo Credit: Henry Read.
Henry Read is a Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, with a focus on land use policy. He is fascinated with the minutia of development regulation and doesn’t understand why so many people think zoning is boring. He hopes to work in the public sector after graduation and would like to be remembered as the guy who got your town to stop requiring bars to have customer parking and start planting native fruit trees in parks.
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.
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 byEve Lettau
Featured image courtesy of Durham County Library, Meredith Emmitt Papers
For the better part of a century in the United States, exclusion, restriction, and fastidiousness were core values within the accepted best practices around zoning and development. While national trends seem to slowly be reversing course toward less aggressive regulation of uses and limitations on density, the built, legal, and economic environment in communities across the country strongly reflect this history. Even in places that actively seek to be bastions of progressive culture and policy, the legacy of older philosophies persists. And the most severe and obvious of these reflections is the current crisis of affordability in housing.
As a small town with a consciously welcoming culture adjacent to the state’s flagship university, Carrboro, NC, is emblematic of this wider trend. Despite broad community consensus on the need for affordable housing for all residents, housing prices have risen faster than median incomes for decades and new housing construction has been outpaced by population growth for just as long. Carrboro has not been idle in the face of this problem; many policy initiatives have been attempted to address the scarcity of affordable homes. But due to more significant dynamics within the town and the country, these solutions have consistently come up short either in design or implementation.
In an effort to explore and address this archetypical wicked problem, this project from 2021’s course on Zoning For Equity uses mapping, statistics, legal analysis, and investigative journalism to determine why affordable housing is so difficult to come by in an environment so seemingly amenable to its creation. Through the medium of ArcGIS StoryMap, Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened) describes the background of Carrboro’s housing crisis, the most notable attempts that have been made to address it, and the trends and policies that continue to negate the impacts of those attempts. The StoryMap then goes beyond analysis by offering a suite of potential solutions, ranging from immediate and practical tweaks to Carrboro’s zoning code to grand reworkings of America’s conception of the relationship between property rights and human rights.
In addition to existing as a static artifact of research, Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened)has entered the world of planning politics in its own right; Its creators presented it to both the Orange County Board of Health and the Carrboro Affordable Housing Advisory Board in early 2022. Hopefully, this project can be revisited and revised to reflect breakthrough successes in Carrboro’s fight for housing affordability in the near future.
Henry Read is a Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, with a focus on land use policy. He is fascinated with the minutia of development regulation and doesn’t understand why so many people think zoning is boring. He hopes to work in the public sector after graduation, and would like to be remembered as the guy who got your town to stop requiring bars to have customer parking and start planting native fruit trees in parks.
Edited by Jo Kwon
Featured image: Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened) StoryMap
This week Chapel Hill Transit celebrated Valentine’s Day by restoring several bus trips that had been removed at the beginning of the year.[i] Following an erratic Fall semester, the provider officially reduced its service in response to staff shortages. Beginning in January 2022, the A, CL, CM, CW, D, J, and N routes all had leaner schedules with the goal of “minimizing missed trips throughout the system.”[ii] Anecdotally, reliability did indeed improve; however, despite adjustments as “the number of callouts [started to] decrease,” conversations among frustrated UNC students on being late for class were replaced by those on having no choice but to be half-an-hour early instead.[iii] Even as route schedules continue to return to normal, expectations for service quality remain low.
The bus driver shortage is far from a unique problem for the Town of Chapel Hill. In October 2021, public transit employment was at 84 percent of pre-pandemic levels.[iv] Arguably the most heavily hit by the trend are schoolchildren: over 80 percent of school districts have altered their service since the outbreak of COVID-19, further complicating the learning of student cohorts already balancing blended instructional delivery modes.[v] More broadly, public transit disruptions have racial equity implications, as 60 percent of riders nationwide are people of color.[vi]
Other than food and agriculture workers, transportation operators face the highest risk of COVID-19 death of all employment sectors, so an individual’s cost-benefit analysis that produces a verdict that $16.50/hour is not worth jeopardizing her health or that of her loved ones is, perhaps, understandable.[vii],[viii] With that in mind, below I evaluate potential policy measures that Chapel Hill Transit and other public transit systems can consider to remedy the impact of bus driver shortages.
Partner with Rideshare Companies
At the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago proposed rideshare companies as a potential stop-gap for bus driver shortages caused by mass resignation over Chicago Public School’s vaccine mandate.[ix] The idea would be to strike an agreement with Uber, Lyft, or a similar company to fulfill the transit needs of the city’s school children. Although no deal was made, the suggestion no doubt tickled the fancies of transportation engineers. Can mass transit need be fulfilled by a fleet of personal automobiles operated by gig workers?
Uber certainly seems to think it has a role to play; the company is positioning itself as a new public transit option, suggesting that replacing 1 to 6 percent of bus trips with their ridesharing services could result in a 15 to 30 percent cost reduction per trip for transportation agencies.[x] Putting aside that Uber almost exclusively cited data from “Uber analysis” in its report, the conclusion is not illogical: ridesharing’s variable cost structure is inherently more responsive to demand than is the fixed cost structure typical of public transportation agencies. In Uber’s vision, if it were to integrate into a public transportation system, tax-payer money would go directly to its corporate headquarters instead of toward financing bus routes; so, if ridership decreases, cost would too. The simple beauty of this measure is that the more thoroughly a local government commits to it, the less consequential the shortages become. Running out of bus operators? Cut some lines, throw subsidies at Uber, and save some money.
Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit
+ Point-to-point service would improve first- and last-mile connectivity; blind allegiance to the Invisible Hand would restore patriotism to Orange County.
– The rush of developers hoping to revitalize defunct bus stops could cause speculation.
Uber’s intricately detailed explanation of economics to local government. Source: Uber
Induce Demand for Operators
Historically, transportation planners have either misunderstood or chosen to ignore “induced demand.” This economic principle states that if a good that people value is provided at no cost then demand will meet the supply.[xi] The frequently referenced (and even more frequently witnessed) scenario is that of highway expansion; local governments try to alleviate traffic by building new lanes, thereby attracting more car drivers to the road and instead increasing congestion.
Cries for officials to recognize this trend are only growing louder, and opportunity awaits those that do. Not only can planners reverse their auto-centric policies and reduce congestion and emissions, they can mitigate bus driver shortages as well. Following the above logic, if public transit providers construct buses and allow people to drive buses free of charge, the demand of people willing to drive buses will meet the supply of buses. In theory, this policy could maximize the potential of induced demand in transportation, as bus operators are paid – imagine how many cars would be on the road if drivers earned money to be there? It remains a personal curiosity and frustration of mine that so few planners have a working understanding of induced demand.
Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit
+ Surplus bus drivers can be retrained as bus conductors, adding new jobs to the economy and reinstating a sorely missed pillar of 1970s European society.
– Building more buses may contribute to sound pollution by also inducing demand for young mothers singing “The Wheels on the Bus.”
Highway expansion is often used as an example of how planners have traditionally ignored induced demand theories. Source: Steve Davis
Force Passengers to Say Thank You
Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, wrote 30,000 notes to his employees between 2001 and 2009, each one thanking an individual for a specific contribution; in that time, the company transformed from one with falling stock to one outperforming both the S&P Food Group and the S&P 500.[xii] Many understand the power of the words “thank you” on an intuitive level, but thinking about the phrase as having economic value is not so widespread.
As mentioned above, many former or potential bus operators do not see the pay as worth the risk of transmitting COVID-19, but the increase in gratitude that a thank-you-mandate would provoke would effectively add an additional wage, thereby encouraging more drivers to work for public transit providers.
Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit
+ Bus operators will feel so valued that Chapel Hill will never have to worry about collective bargaining.
– If saying thank you is forced, there is an outside chance it will come across as disingenuous thereby having the opposite effect.
Campbell’s Soup was the inspiration for one of Andy Warhol’s most famous pieces – could Chapel Hill benefit similarly? Source: The Museum of Modern Art
Wait for the “Thin Air Phenomenon”
Perhaps by virtue of its Big Bang ancestry, the world has a habit of conjuring something where nothing came before it. From monoliths to Beanie Babies, Jesus to Eminem, unexplained phenomena can be found throughout human history. American democracy has often relied heavily on the “Thin Air Phenomenon” to drive much of its national agenda. Trickle-down economics, good-guy-with-gun theory, and clean coal initiatives have all successfully informed government officials that doing nothing is often the best way to achieve desired results. Waiting might be transportation providers’ best option.
Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit
+ Easy, no cost to tax payer
– Can the Town be trusted not to abuse handouts?
Immaculate conception has a strong political tradition in American democracy. Source: Garrett Parker
Pay Bus Drivers More
The least likely measure that I shall not waste time articulating.
[vi] National Campaign for Transit Justice Alliance for a Justice Society Labor Network for Sustainability TransitCenter, Invest in Transit Equity, Invest in Transit Workers.
James Hamilton is a first-year Master’s student with the Department of City and Regional Planning whose interests center on urban design in relation to community marginalization, environmental justice, societal cohesion, and suburban retrofit. He studied public policy and economics at Duke University and has since worked in New Orleans and New York before circling back to the triangle. Never happier than when he is hiking up a mountain or traveling on a train, James fails to commit enough time to his average writing collections, ambitious reading list, and lifelong rugby enthusiasm.
Edited by Amy Patronella
Featured image: A Chapel Hill bus advertises for new operators. Courtesy of the Town of Chapel Hill.
If you’re a vehicle owner and you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you can think of a time or two in your life where you felt a real freedom attached to driving. However, I’d also wager that you don’t always love sitting in traffic when you’re already twenty minutes late to work. Recognizing the environmental and economic downturn that has been borne out of American auto dependency has planners searching for both sustainable and efficient transit options to offer to the average commuter. However, where cities like Raleigh have faltered on offering new-age transit options, others like Charlotte are at the forefront of modern mass transit. The questions of how to best move the thousands of residents that make daily commutes into a city may at first seem daunting, especially given the American romanticism of the car. But for planners, the answers may lie in the not so distant past.
In the early 20th century, streetcars lined the roads of American cities in all directions, offering clean and safe transportation for all. Now, the light rail is doing the same thing in many major US cities. Given that light rails cost less than subways, are often cheaper to construct and maintain than normal trains, and offer more consistent on-time service than buses, it is easy to see why urban planners across the country have made the light rail their answer to both sprawl and auto dependency.
Throughout 2020, Raleigh had a single occupancy vehicle use rate of nearly 80%.[i] This means that nearly 80% of drivers were traveling alone when commuting. In addition to Raleigh’s high rate of lone drivers, the current average commute time is 23 minutes.[ii] These statistics indicate the city’s need for some form of mass transit that can alleviate the burden placed on both infrastructure and environment by auto dependency. As a regular driver in the Triangle, it is this writer’s very professional opinion that something needs to change so I can spend less time sitting in Durham traffic. There are innumerable reasons the light rail is an excellent answer for this conundrum. In multiple cities, this form of mass transit offered not just alleviation from congestion, but also economic and neighborhood revitalization in downtowns of cities in decline.
Source: Triangle Business Journals
Since 1986, the MAX Light Rail in Portland, Oregon has carried urbanites all over the city. The city has a population of approximately 650,000 people, and yet the light rail still manages to move roughly 3.9 million people annually. During non-Summer work months, like October, the Portland light rail moves an average of about 80,000 people a week. [iii] Given Raleigh’s similarity in population (467,000 people in 2020), and the abundance of surrounding towns outside of both Portland and Raleigh that serve as bedroom communities bursting with city commuters, the success of the light rail in Portland bodes well for Raleigh. The large number of mass transit users in Portland bodes well for other cities bold enough to introduce light rail as a transit option, despite some worry about who precisely benefits from light rail services.[iv]
On that note, it is important to ensure that low income individuals, people of color, and other disenfranchised communities are offered the opportunity to make use of a light rail, since these populations are often the ones who rely on mass transit services the most. Minority communities are often faced with, as engineer Christof Spieler states, “different standards for ‘choice’ and ‘dependent’ riders (that is to say white and Black).”[v] Spieler’s article goes on to explore the inequities in transit quality, bus stop location, and overall experience for commuters in different boroughs of Houston, Texas. While a light rail will not solve every racial divide in the transportation sector, equitable and clean transit is a great way to offer services than benefit multiple communities within a city. However, to reach those underprivileged communities, a city must first take a leap of faith through one key step: giving people new ways to get around.
Charlotte, North Carolina is a recent convert to the light rail lifestyle, having just debuted a light rail service in 2007. The city of Charlotte is an excellent example of a metropolis that recognized the potential benefits a light rail could have. Like Raleigh, Charlotte is surrounded by smaller towns and suburbs full of city commuters, and the city’s own data suggests that a least half of the city’s workforce commutes from outside the county. Additionally, the same data indicates that roughly 37% of Charlotte commuters spend over 30 minutes in their vehicles each morning.[vi] I was born just outside Charlotte. My parents ultimately moved us out of the city in the mid-2000s because the daily congestion was becoming unbearable. The data in Raleigh is strikingly similar, though commute times in the capital city are admittedly a bit quicker than that of the average Charlottean.
However, the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) rose to the challenge, working with the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) to debut the light rail and revamp the streetcar system across the city.[vii] While the system may not have been in place as long as Portland’s, and as such cannot be analyzed as extensively, implementation in Charlotte points towards something that might prove to be a useful transportation solution for Raleigh planners. Charlotte geared their resources in the direction of capacity increase for transportation options. As a result, the city now has the potential to move more residents on public transit than ever before.
City officials hope that with this expansion of transportation options, people will make the transition from personal vehicle use to a more sustainable and accessible transit option that will also cut down on their daily commute to work. Charlotteans did not just invest in a light rail, they invested in their own future. Raleigh should do the same.
Ian is a second-semester senior at UNC, set to graduate in May with a BA in Public Policy. He also has minors in Geography and Urban Planning, the latter of which led him to the Carolina Planning Journal. He is a DJ for WXYC, the campus radio station. Ian was recently accepted to the Master’s Program in Public Policy at UNC, and will be part of the first cohort to graduate from the program. His planning interests include environmental land use planning, expansion of public transportation, and revitalization in areas initially targeted by Urban Renewal.
Edited by Ruby Brinkerhoff
Featured image: LYNX light rail system in Charlotte. Courtesy ofJames Willamor, Flickr
This memo provides a brief summary of the history and background of zoning laws, both federally and within the state of North Carolina, as well as the impacts of NC’s current exclusionary zoning status quo on housing affordability, economic opportunity and development, racial and class disparities, as well as its environmental consequences. This memo also addresses counter arguments raised by proponents of exclusionary zoning practices, and specific measures the NC General Assembly can take to eliminate exclusionary zoning within the state.
Background
“Zoning” broadly refers to the range of land-use regulations designed to restrict the types of buildings that can be built on certain parcels of land as well as their design, height, size, and use. The most common residential zoning in NC, as well as much of the United States, is R1 zoning. R1 zoning only permits low-density, single family detached homes. Outside of formal zoning, other regulations exist, including parking minimums, maximum height limits, setback requirements, and minimum lot sizes. All of these regulations often work to promote low-density, urban sprawl.
In contrast, “upzoning” refers to liberalizing existing zoning regulations to permit higher density construction and potentially mixed-use development. Other states, such as California, as well as many municipalities (including Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota), have implemented upzoning policies. Upzoning can look radically different from place to place, as some municipalities only permit the development of duplexes or additional dwelling units (ADUs), while others go further to allow much higher density construction in what were originally R1 areas.
The History of Zoning
Zoning laws began cropping up throughout the United States beginning in the early 1900s, with the first being passed by the Los Angeles municipal government in 1908. In 1923, the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) permitted local city governments to develop zoning codes, and by the end of the century, a dozen NC cities had adopted such codes.[i] Zoning was supported and strengthened by the 1926 Supreme Court case Euclid v. Ambler, which established that local governments’ policing powers also encompass zoning powers. Beginning in 1934, when the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was created, residential zoning was solidified by federal influence as the standard method of improving property values and ensuring only “desirable” development was permitted. As suburbanization spread and the “Baby Boom” population growth increased population density, zoning laws became increasingly common. By 1960, the majority of NC cities and towns had implemented zoning policies.[ii]
Zoning in Modern North Carolina
Modern zoning codes in NC, as in much of the United States, tend to be long and complicated. Local zoning codes, even for small cities and towns, typically exceed 100 pages in length. Zoning has also become increasingly powerful, as legislative changes and constitutional rulings have expanded the permissible uses of zoning codes to include aesthetics and historic preservation.
NC is somewhat unique compared to other states in that the state-level government has a considerable amount of power over localities, even when it comes to local zoning codes. In NC, local governments have no inherent power, all of their power is derived and permitted by the state government. The state government has granted broad authority to local governments to develop zoning laws; however, the state government also has a considerable history of interfering in local zoning conflicts.[iii] Attempts by Cabarrus County to zone based on school county were struck down by the NC’s Supreme Court on the grounds that the state-granted zoning authority did not explicitly include the ability to zone according to “efficient and adequate” provision of public facilities.
The NC state government also outlines strict procedures regarding the enactment and enforcement of local zoning laws. All rezoning attempts require a public hearing, two public hearing notices (with the exact dates specified), a review and comment period for the planning board, specifications for how many city council members must approve for a rezoning ordinance to pass, and a public statement explaining why rezoning is reasonable and within the public interest.
Housing Affordability
The connection between land-use policies and housing costs is hotly debated; however, there is compelling evidence that exclusionary zoning increases the costs of housing. At a theoretical level, exclusionary zoning restricts the supply of land that is available for construction, which — by extension — reduces the supply of housing. The argument follows that, if developers could build multifamily apartments without these supply constraints, housing stock would better match demand and prices would go down.
The empirical data on this relationship is broad and varied. Rothwell (2008) finds that upwards of 20% of the variation in metropolitan housing growth is attributable to anti-density regulation, and that these same regulations inflate housing prices during demand shocks.[iv] Quigley and Raphael (2003) find that every additional land-use regulation in California increases the prices of owner-occupied housing by 4.5% and increases the price of rental housing by 2.3%.[v] Glaeser and Gyourko (2005) exploits gaps between housing and construction costs to determine the role that land-use regulations play in increased housing costs in several metropolitan areas in the US.[vi] They argue that these regulations play a significant role in the inflation of housing costs, especially in New York City. Ihlanfeldt (2003) conducts a broad review of the literature on the association between land-use regulations and housing costs and finds mixed but compelling evidence that exclusionary zoning increases the cost of housing.[vii]
Upzoning is not a substitute for affordable housing policies targeted at low-income households; however, upzoning will be a necessary prerequisite for developing the affordable housing supply we need. These restrictive zoning laws often create the legal support for “NIMBY” (not-in-my-backyard) activism that opposes affordable housing construction on the grounds that these developments violate existing zoning regulations.
Racial Equity
This history of residential zoning is deeply tied to racial segregation. Zoning laws have historically been used to lock Black and other non-white populations out of economically dynamic areas, justified by white property owners arguing that the presence of Black residents would lower property values. Further, white urbanites feared the demographic changes that happened during the Great Migration, which motivated the implementation of explicitly racialized zoning laws. White homeowners used privately-held, government-supported covenants to prohibit homes in their neighborhood from ever being sold or rented to Black families.[viii] Even after the practice was legally prohibited in 1948, local white community members found extralegal ways to exclude non-white families. Their tactics included intimidation, threats, and even violence and firebombings of Black residences, all of which were overlooked by local authorities.[ix]
Although explicit racial segregation by law is no longer allowed, modern zoning restrictions still act as a form of de facto segregation. Single family zoning artificially inflates the costs of housing and prohibits alternative forms of housing to be constructed. This type of zoning is prevalent in economically prosperous suburbs, but the high housing costs lock out low-income families, who are often disproportionately Black or Brown. Even without racist intentions, single family zoning has racially disparate impacts. These impacts are not small, either. Economic opportunity research from Raj Chetty’s Moving to Opportunity study finds that moving low-income families to wealthier neighborhoods increases the likelihood of college attendance for children and increases children’s future earnings by 31%.
Beyond locking low-income people of color out of economic opportunity, single family zoning promotes environmental and public health inequalities. The history of toxic land-uses being permitted primarily near low-income, Black communities is well-documented.[x],[xi] This system is bolstered by a zoning policy that excludes large swaths of the local population from wealthier (and, by extension, healthier) communities. This inequity has serious impacts on the long-term health outcomes for low-income Black and Brown families. Racial minorities in the US have higher rates of asthma, lead exposure, certain cancers, and a wide range of other health problems related to environmental factors.[xii]
Environmental Impacts
Single-family zoning promotes and upholds inefficient land uses that incentivize urban sprawl. This sprawl has a wide range of environmental impacts, including impacts on water usage, energy efficiency, carbon emissions, and wildlife habitats. Suburban households, compared to both urban and rural households, produce the most carbon emissions.[xiii] Without legalizing denser urban environments, global climate change mitigation goals cannot be met.
Firstly, single-family zoning promotes the construction of large housing units, while actively prohibiting the construction of smaller housing units. The range of zoning regulations includes not only what type of housing gets constructed, but also minimum lot requirements, setback requirements, and parking minimums, all of which further encourage the use of more space. This increased lot size and house size per household increases the per capita carbon emissions of individuals.
Urban sprawl, especially in the United States, has also promoted urban design that necessitates individual car ownership. Transportation accounts for 29% of US carbon emissions, making it one of the biggest contributors to climate change.[xiv] In the US, much of this is driven by car dependency. Simply switching to electric vehicles, while certainly beneficial, is also not sufficient to address climate change concerns. The infrastructure needed to maintain car-centric design requires the extensive use of asphalt, energy-intensive batteries, and large swaths of land dedicated to parking and roads. Instead, allowing for denser development would encourage individuals to choose less energy and land-intensive transportation options, such as walking, bicycles, e-bikes, or public transit.
Climate change should be of utmost concern to the state of NC. Our coastlines are uniquely vulnerable to increased rates of natural disasters and increasingly intense storms. Hurricane Matthew killed 26 NC residents and cost NC $1.5 billion.[xv] Hurricane Florence in 2018 killed 15 NC residents and resulted in $22 billion in damages.[xvi] As these types of weather events become increasingly common and more severe, NC needs to take preventative measures by decreasing our carbon footprint. Fundamentally changing our urban design to become more dense and incentivizing alternative transportation methods is one of the most important tools that we have for combating climate change.
Population Growth
NC has seen the sixth largest population increase over the last decade, with most of this increase attributable to net migration from other states.[xvii] The State Demographer projects that 84% of population growth over the next nine years will be from net migration. Much of this population growth is driven by the placement of high profile companies in NC’s two major urban centers: Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham.
The geography of NC’s population is also shifting, causing further pressure to build more housing in urban centers. More and more individuals are living in urban areas, much of this change driven by inmigration. The state of NC should target Wake County, Durham County, Mecklenburg County, Guilford County, and Forsyth County to a.) propel the construction of new units to accommodate newcomers and b.) preserve existing affordable housing to prevent gentrification and displacement.
Arguments for Exclusionary Zoning
One concern is that upzoning will not meaningfully address the need for affordable housing.[xviii] The housing that would primarily be permitted would be market-rate, and therefore not accessible to the poorest members of the community. Upzoning is not enough, and as such, my proposal ties upzoning legislation from the NC state government to directives for local governments to substantially increase their housing costs based on market studies. Furthermore, my proposal includes affordable housing mandates based on local needs. Upzoning is a necessary prerequisite for creating the housing abundance NC needs in the coming years.
An additional concern over upzoning is a fear of gentrification. The research on the role of upzoning in gentrifying urban centers is mixed.[xix] However, urban economic research indicates that a “filtering” effect occurs over time.[xx], [xxi] As new, market-rate housing units are constructed, the older housing in the area becomes more affordable and prevents displacement by directing wealthier individuals to these new units. This is not a complete solution for the problems of affordable housing, however, it can still provide increasing housing affordability for middle class individuals and potentially reduce demand for lower-income units.
The Policy Solution
To address the above problems facing NC, I recommend that the NC General Assembly pass Senate Bill 349 alongside two amendments: 1.) require local governments to tie housing construction to market study predictions of demand, and 2.) require all private developers to set-aside 10% of units as affordable housing units for those making 50% AMI.
Implementing this policy is a necessary and meaningful first step to pushing NC into the future. These reforms will increase housing affordability as well as the supply of affordable housing, allowing more households to access economic opportunities in NC’s urban centers. These reforms will also act to reduce NC’s carbon footprint, moving NC away from car-centric infrastructure to more dense, sustainable development. Finally, removing these exclusionary zoning ordinances is a necessary step towards racial equity and expanding economic opportunity to all.
[x] Taylor, D.E. (2014). Toxic communities : environmental racism, industrial pollution, and residential mobility. New York University Press: New York, NY.
[xi] Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing: New York, NY.
[xii] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Committee on Community-Based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States; Baciu A, Negussie Y, Geller A, et al., editors. (January 2017). Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US), The State of Health Disparities in the United States.
Elijah Gullett is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Public Policy with minors in Urban Studies and Environmental Justice. His academic interests include fair and affordable housing, sustainable development, and LGBTQ+ urban life.
Edited by Cameron McBroom-Fitterer
Featured image: Redlining map in Durham, NC. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.
