Tag: Downtown

The Battle for the Heart of [Downtown] Greensboro

March 22, 2018 / odrozd

Looking at a map of downtown Greensboro, it becomes apparent that something big is coming. The entire eastern side of the downtown is undergoing a major shift, and much of it is entrenched in public dissent tied to development choices being made by the City and local developers. This is apparent in various current projects in Greensboro, from the Tanger Performing Arts Center, controversy around Cafe Europa, and the great parking deck debacle occurring simultaneously with the City Manager’s premature retirement, to the sale of the Bardolph Building–home to many of the city’s social services–for less than tax value to a local developer whose vision greatly strays from the building’s namesake. The entire eastern side will be torn earth between 2015-2020, with millions of dollars poured into the oft overlooked area.

For just under a year, I have been spending a significant amount of time in this strip as part of the work I’ve been doing with the Greensboro Mural Project, a local mural arts group, installing a community-collaborated mural. The Greensboro Mural Project has been creating community inspired and powered murals since 2011, making a priority of engaging the people in the places where we paint.

In December of 2016, we started collecting love letters and poems to the city, tabling at many events to gather the thoughts and feelings people had about Greensboro. We anticipated the responses were going to be lovey-dovey affirmations of the city, though perhaps not that revealing. What we got was a series of complex emotions of both fondness and fraughtness with the city. The very first time we were tabling and collecting love letters we asked someone to write a letter and he said no, that he had fallen out of love with the city many years ago. Others just didn’t want to mess with love. Some of the letters spoke of a love-hate relationship with the city, the fondness found only after being able to leave the city and return by choice, a love of the greenery, a love of the legacy of social justice, or even stating that Greensboro is “culturally psychotic.” Taking the messaging and meanings found in these love letters we created a design, and got permission to install the mural on a wall of the old News & Record building across from the bus depot and right in the middle of the above aforementioned section of the downtown.

A piece of our heart showcasing the vibrancy of Greensboro. Photo Credit: Alyzza May.

We came to call this mural “Tough Love” as it portrays the tough love that residents from very different walks of life have for the city. Rooting in the notion that tough love is something you have for your family or those closest to you that you offer because you want to see them grow and improve. The love letters we received are tough love letters because we know Greensboro can be better for all of us. This brings us back to the what I am calling the battle for the heart of downtown Greensboro. In January 2018, the Greensboro Mural Project was notified by the property manager that our lease granting us the right of way to the building was going to be terminated in thirty days, six months earlier than our lease stated, and that the building will be demolished.

This news was a devastating blow, as we had not yet finished painting the mural, and we would need to break the news to the 400+ volunteers and the wider community. The irony of the tough love residents expressed about the city, growing in the creation and destruction of this wall, is not lost on members of the Greensboro Mural Project. In the past two months we have held an unveiling and launched a petition that is influencing the property manager. As of right now there is a six month delay in demolition, and preservation of the wall is being investigated. Of course, if you or anyone you know has $4 million and wants to make a sound investment in downtown Greensboro, let us know.

BBoy Ballet dances while Cakalack Thunder performs in front of the Tough Love Mural during the community mural unveiling. Photo Credit: Alyzza May.

This wall sits in the crossfire of downtown development: development that praises creativity and sees the economic value of murals, but only as placeholders before demolition and development. And while I do not feel like our project was targeted for our content or process, I do feel that our mural is caught by both the real estate speculation going on from the properties around it, and from the age old growing pains of a city with an identity crisis and superiority complex. The city is marketing itself for people who are not yet in the city, not those who are already building the city from the ground up, who stay during the tough times, and believe in the promise of the city. In trying to fix our identity crisis we are seeing a destruction of the very things that make us unique, that make us Greensboro.

As many medium size southern cities struggle to assert what makes them distinctly them, they are working against people, the communities that make them them. The role of public participation is more than at the municipal level, it is also at the street level where people are putting their own embellishments on the city. Where people are having a direct say as to how our cities are being developed.

Are cities meant for people? Are they meant for businesses? Are they meant for young people, or old people, or the wealthy, for houseless people, renters, recent immigrants, generational residents, artists, people of specific or varied racial identities, or any of the many different kinds of people?

In Greensboro we must ask ourselves this very question. Who is Greensboro made for? Who is it currently being made and envisioned for? Who is Greensboro? Part of the answer is connected to whom we ask this question, and who is allowed to answer.

We are in a critical place in the development of Greensboro’s identity, which will be formed and reformed whether intentionally, haphazardly, or with little consideration for all those it will affect.

When thinking about who a city is for, it is critical that we understand that we all have a right to the city, both in its physical space, but also in its creation. So I challenge each of us to go further, to demand of the city, and enact in our daily lives what it would look like to draw all sorts of people in to the conversation and creation of what we each want the city to look like. We’re all responsible, but as I said everyone has to be allowed to answer these questions, to have their voice heard, instead of being pushed out by such haphazard planning practices. Greensboro, our heart is on the line, what will we do?

Featured Image: “Tough Love: Love Letters to the City” within the heart of downtown Greensboro. Photo Credit: Alyzza May.

About the Author: Alyzza May is an angelic troublemaker and cultural organizer in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were part of a team that worked to start the first participatory budgeting process in the south, co-founded the Greensboro Mural Project, and are committed to helping build the new economy. Alyzza is currently a Master’s candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying City and Regional Planning with a concentration in Housing and Community Development.

Reviving Wasted Pavement

September 29, 2016 / odrozd

How should we use public space in downtown cores? What is the social role of parks? What form can community action take?

Angles sat down with environmental studies and city planning student Caroline Lindquist, a senior undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill, to find out. We discuss the parklet she and her friends designed, built, and enjoyed on September 16th, known fondly by guerrilla urbanists throughout as “PARK(ing) Day”.

Angles: What is PARK(ing) Day?

Caroline Lindquist: PARK(ing) Day is an “annual open-source global event” where citizens transform parking spaces into temporary public spaces or parklets for the day. The event began in 2005 in San Francisco with a design studio called Rebar, that created its own parklet for a day. The mission of PARK(ing) Day is “to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated.”

A: How did you set up the park? Did you need permission to use the space?

CL: To build the Chapel Hill parklet, we gathered our group of friends who studied sustainable community design through the Burch Study Abroad Seminar in Spain and Germany in 2015. We all brought different items from our houses such as carpets, plants, chairs, sofas, tables, anything that we thought could help make a fun public space. We then bought two big rolls of astroturf and rolled them out to lay the groundwork for the parklet (because what’s a park without some green?) After arranging basic seating, we drew a checkerboard on the pavement with chalk and added a little putt-putt green to encourage activity in the space.

The parklet on Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill, NC. The park included household furniture, a putt-putt green, and potted plants. Photo: Caroline Lindquist

Did we need permission? Technically no. The original creators of Parking Day, looked at the zoning code in San Francisco and other cities and saw that as long as you pay the parking meter, you can use the space however you want. The Director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, Meg McGurk, was extremely supportive and encouraging of PARK(ing) Day. Meg went out of her way to reserve parking spots for us, pay the meter, and even provide Starbucks gift cards for anyone who visited the park to use.

A: Who were some of the people who visited the park?

CL: The type of people who used the park varied throughout the day. In the morning, the parklet was mainly occupied by our set-up crew, some folks experiencing homelessness who helped us set up the parklet the year before, moms with young kids, and coffee shop patrons.

Sidewalk chalk entertained younger parklet visitors. Photo: Caroline Lindquist

In the afternoon, our friends stopped by, along with other UNC students, and those who heard about the event through social media or word of mouth.

By the evening, the sidewalks were heavily populated, since there was a home football game the next day. That was when more families and adults visited the parklet.

Early in the day, the parklet was hosted a variety of activities. People conversed, played music, and read. Photo: Caroline Lindquist

A: How was the space used throughout the day? What was the space like at 9am compared to 5 in the afternoon?

CL: Throughout the day, the space changed based on the sun orientation and the people who used the parklet. At 9am, the space was very basic with a few spots for seating, a picnic table, some couches, a bench. At mid-morning, we added balloons on the ‘No Parking’ cones to make the space more celebratory and inviting. We also added sidewalk chalk, which attracted some of the younger children walking by. In the afternoon, a friend brought by a foosball table and a soccer ball. We turned the astroturf section of the parklet into a mini soccer field using the ‘No Parking’ cones for goals.

A: What do you hope creating the parklet accomplished?

CL: I think this parklet showed people how much public space is devoted to the automobile (the sheer size of a parking spot is statement enough). Many people could not believe that all the parklet space was just two parking spots.

The parklet was a testament how public spaces strengthen community by encouraging interaction between different members of society (students, children, professionals, homeless, elderly) that may otherwise never meet.

The park also encouraged people to take more ownership of their city by transforming spaces to better reflect community values.

By the evening, the parklet truly evolved into a social space. Photo: Brian Vaughn

A: What urban designers inspire you?

CL: Though she’s not a designer, Jane Jacobs is one of my greatest inspirations. She was a journalist, author, and activist who criticized urban designs of the day, saying that they did not reflect the needs of city dwellers. The urban realm should be designed to the human scale to encourage ‘eyes on the street.’

Ghigo DiTomasso, a professor of mine at Berkeley is another major source of inspiration. He works for Gehl Studios, a world-renowned urban design firm, on activating public spaces and using tactical urbanism.

Lastly, Thomas Woltz, a landscape architect has inspired me with is urban design projects (such as the Hudson Yards project in New York City) because of the way he focuses on revealing the intersection between landscape ecology and cultural history with his work.

A: What projects are you working on right now?

CL: Right now, I am doing an independent study on the psychology of biophilic urban design. My work is focused on understanding the mental health benefits of integrating nature into cities as well as the psychology behind designing successful public spaces. I am using Dix Park in Raleigh as my case study, which was a mental health hospital before the land was bought by the City in 2015. I am also serving on the Dix Park Master Plan Advisory Committee, where I have the opportunity to help with the planning process and design of the new park.

Dix Park in Raleigh. Credit: City of Raleigh Parks & Recreation

About the Author

Caroline Lindquist is a senior at UNC majoring in Environmental Studies and minoring in City and Regional Planning. Her primary interests are biophilic design, tactical urbanism, and landscape architecture. She has spent the past two summers studying renewable energy in Spain and Germany and studying Urban Design at UC Berkeley. Caroline currently serves on the Dix Park Master Plan Advisory Committee for the City of Raleigh.

Feature Photo: Caroline Lindquist

Durham’s Crisis of Priorities: Parking and Housing

June 30, 2016 / odrozd

A version of the following piece was originally published in the Triangle-based Indy in response to an article about the downtown Durham parking “crisis”. The article mentions that the city of Durham will soon begin charging for on-street parking and that local leaders are debating whether to use two county-owned downtown parcels for parking or affordable housing.

A large surface-level parking lot in the Brightleaf area of Durham. Another surface-level parking lot (not pictured) occupies a city block just across the street. Credit: William Moose

The assumption that plenty of parking should be easily available to all who wish to park downtown is deeply flawed.The fact that there is more demand for parking than spaces is an indicator of a healthy downtown and a downtown with employment and desirable destinations. Most large and thriving cities do not come close to meeting the demand for parking, and many have stopped trying with good reason.

More driving, more traffic, and more car-oriented development are the result of free and/or cheap parking. These effects bring negative social, health, and environmental impacts. If parking is easy and readily available, people will choose to drive individually to work or to eat or shop. If a city wants to encourage the use of public transportation, walking, biking, and carpooling, there is no better way than restricting the overall number of parking spaces or charging for access to those spaces. Doing so encourages people to make healthier and more environmentally-friendly travel choices such as biking or taking transit.

Attempting to meet the ever-growing demand for parking leads cities to cede valuable downtown real estate to one of the least productive uses of land: parking. Parking decks and parking lots require large amounts of space and are generally dead zones in the urban landscape. Whether it’s a surface lot or parking decks, these features kill the pedestrian vitality of an urban space. People tend to find walking by a parking lot or a massive parking deck unpleasant, and parking creates areas that people generally avoid at night. Ultimately, placing a priority on parking prioritizes space in the city for cars over space in the city for people and precludes the use of those spaces for other more economically or socially beneficial uses that could enhance the city’s vitality.

Ultimately, placing a priority on parking prioritizes space in the city for cars over space in the city for people and precludes the use of those spaces for other more economically or socially beneficial uses that could enhance the city’s vitality.

Durham has a far greater need for transit improvements, bike lanes, sidewalks, and affordable housing than for additional parking. Many bus stops in Durham have no bus shelter, no sidewalks, and no safe places to cross the street. I have seen unfortunate bus riders who presumably have no other choice, standing by a sign along a highway with no sidewalks on a muddy patch of ground in the rain waiting on the bus. I have seen pregnant women with small children hurrying across multiple lanes of traffic from a bus stop where there is no safe place for them to cross. Or consider the state of Durham’s streets for cyclists or pedestrians. Many of our streets are dangerous spaces for the people who, whether out of choice or out of necessity, are making the most socially and environmentally responsible choices on how to travel. For every worker who feels entitled to a parking space downtown, there is somebody who is deserving of the dignity of having a proper bus shelter, or a cyclist who deserves the safety of a bike lane, or a walker who deserves quality sidewalks and safe crossings.

A parking deck dominates a prominent corner in downtown Durham. It is one of seven parking decks currently in existence in the downtown. Credit: William Moose

Let’s also not forget that just a few decades ago, Durham destroyed much of its urban form by constructing highways through the heart of the city in the name of convenience for automobile users, decimating and dividing communities of color and contributing to the city’s precipitous decline. Urban renewal highway projects like the Downtown Loop are now widely accepted as major planning blunders and the tragedy that befell the Hayti neighborhood when the Durham Freeway was built on top of it is infamous. Let’s not repeat these mistakes by putting cars before people once again.

Let’s not repeat these mistakes by putting cars before people once again.

I understand that with the growth of both population and businesses in downtown Durham there will be a desire for greater access to parking. This is particularly understandable when quality alternatives to driving are often unavailable. If the city of Durham is serious about being a great city, it must invest in transit, it must invest in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and it must invest in affordable housing. Quite simply, the progressive and thriving cities of the future are not prioritizing parking; instead, they’re investing in transit and in pedestrian and bicycle improvements, all of which are measures that the city of Durham should take more seriously.

William Moose is a graduate of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC, Class of 2016. His specialization was transportation and he is currently working at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center. When not railing against parking, he enjoys playing the guitar, listening to music, studying languages, traveling, and cooking.

Rap and the American City

March 25, 2016 / odrozd

At its genesis, Hip-Hop was a perverse art form breaking away from cultural norms and mainstream sounds. It’s vibrancy attracted people, it encompassed rapping, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. The Godfather of Hip-Hop, Afrika Bambaataa, started this community through block parties in the Bronx as a way to unite young people through the medium of music. Furthermore, Lisa Alexander described hip-hop as a way for the early hip-hop pioneers to “redefine their neighborhoods as places of pride, rather than mere spaces of material deprivation and social dysfunction”. Hip-Hop is much more than just its music, it is the story of an oppressed population, confined to the boundaries of the inner city that was systemically disinvested in.

Read “m.A.A.d city” by Kendrick Lamar on Genius

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Rappers from Kendrick Lamar to Nas to TuPac to Drake eloquently paint a vivid picture of their lifestyles. They convey their lived experiences to define their music and these lived experiences are influenced by our city life. Illmatic and Good Kid, M.A.A.D City are two highly rated, influential albums that are focused on the lifestyle of a young man and his instances with his friends, family and sometimes the law. These are lived experiences of some young people in the American inner city. While not every rapper is socially conscious, those that are use that to influence their work of art.

Kendrick Lamar, who was born and raised in Compton, California, frequently raps about his upbringing in the city. Photo Credit: Merlijn Hoek-wikiportret.nl

Rap can express frustrations with social and political order. Below is an excerpt from “m.A.A.d city” by Kendrick Lamar, which criticizes California Governor Jerry Brown:

They say the governor collect, all of our taxes except
When we in traffic and tragic happens, that shit ain’t no threat
You moving backwards if you suggest that you sleep with a TEC
Go buy a chopper and have a doctor on speed dial, I guess,m.A.A.d city

Rap, real rap, is a gateway into the lives of some members of our society that is often glamorized by the industry as a one-dimensional space which is crime ridden, drug filled land of immorality. However, it is much more than that; it is a very three-dimensional space where people do not necessarily fit into stereotypes and battle with issues such as feminism, colorism and domestic colonization.

Urban blight in the birthplace of Hip-Hop South, Bronx, New York City in 1987. Photo Credit: “Flats to Let 1987” Urban Photos

This short piece is only the tip of a much bigger topic on a range issues that show the inextricable link between the city and hip-hop. For people of color, the city became a dilapidated space that was left to their responsibility. Hip-Hop, specifically rap, is a medium by which people are able to express their emotions. We as an audience can begin to understand the experiences in the ghetto through musical expression. These messages could be used as a starting point to develop solutions to the dire situations of some inner cities. There is an intimate connection between the rapper and the city that urban ethnographers struggle to achieve.

Adeyemi Olatunde is a London, UK native and lover of good music, good cities and good vibes. Olatunde is Majoring in geography with a minor in urban planning. He is a Morehead-Cain Scholar, serves as a Programming VP for the Carolina Union Activities Board, a varsity fencer and the Assistant Modeling Director for Coulture magazine.

Free Speech, Signs, and the City

March 4, 2016 / odrozd

The passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been dissected for its potential impact on litigious issues from campaign finance to abortion. Yet one surely settled issue is the court’s June 2015 ruling on the limits of control a government may use to regulate signs. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court found that the small town of Gilbert, Arizona exceeded its authority when it applied a basic and common ordinance to the directional signs of Good News Presbyterian Church. The repercussions of the Reed v. Gilbert case for city planners are still being felt and—at best—are not fully understood.

Context Good News Presbyterian Church operated like many congregations do that lack permanent facilities; each week, the church would deploy small directional event-like signs with arrows showing worshippers where to go. Under the town’s sign ordinance, these signs were categorized as events and were subject to certain size and time restrictions. Other signs that displayed political issues or advertised home-owners associations were granted larger sizes and longer duration. The town of Gilbert thought its regulations were constitutional, because they were both content neutral (e.g. you can talk about whales) and viewpoint neutral (e.g. you can advocate saving the whales). Creating categories for differing sign messages was a reasonable method to regulate signs in the face of larger public interests like traffic safety.

The Supreme Court thought otherwise. It struck down the town’s sign ordinance on the grounds that it infringed upon the church’s constitutional free speech rights by basing the categories and exceptions on what the sign said. The court opined that by having different standards for different speakers, the town was expressing a preference for certain speech. Sign regulations now had to pass a harder test, “strict scrutiny,” requiring that governments prove that their regulations were finely tailored and essential to the intended outcome. This ruling was a win for free speech advocates. The majority opinion described an initial list of permissible sign regulations including: lighting, size, changing text, and location. But the decision also left considerable ambiguity as to the applicability of this new test to commercial speech.

The Roberts Court, 2010. Photo Credit: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Following the Reed v. Gilbert ruling, groups such as the American Planning Association (APA) and the International Sign Association called for for regulatory clarity and showed intent to produce educational materials for towns to take corrective action. During one APA chapter webinar, a guest speaker recommended town officials:

remove references to categories based on content
add a severability clause so that in the event of legal action, the larger ordinance would stand.

Given the breadth of categorical-based sign ordinances, towns are in the process of reviewing their ordinances for compliance, while—I fear—others may be unaware of the conflict at all and vulnerable to legal action.

The months immediately after the Reed v. Gilbert decision provided yet another turn in sign regulations. With the new requirement of strict scrutiny, federal courts struck down city panhandling ordinances in Massachusetts and Illinois. The Supreme Court’s ruling was interpreted to overturn ordinances that restricted types of speech (i.e. requesting financial support). A desire to prevent the uncomfortableness of being asked for money was not sufficient to bar how individuals could use public spaces.

Tension between free speech and the police powers of the state have always been present, and it appears that free speech is winning. Ordinances have many potential purposes such as encouraging aesthetic continuity, compatibility of use, and pedestrian and vehicle safety. But this ruling has curtailed city planners’ popular and simple tool for controlling the aesthetics and use of public space. Municipalities must now clearly justify their attempts to control not what is said, but rather where and in what manner. It is a responsibility that was the planning profession should not take lightly.

How else will the Reed v. Gilbert decision be interpreted in the urban realm? The answer will depend on the actions of municipalities, their planners, and their city attorneys as they revisit decades odd ordinances to reflect the the messy, confrontational, but ultimately beneficial, process of citizenship.

Joe Seymour is a first year Masters Candidate at the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning with interests in land use and transportation. He’s not a lawyer, but sometimes plays one on TV.

Public Space and Conscious Design: A Case Study

November 11, 2015 / odrozd

Think of your favorite public space. It could be the park near your childhood home. It might be the waterfront promenade where you run, or walk, or ride your bike at sunset. Perhaps it’s a busy downtown street. Now consider: what is it about this particular space that makes you happy? That makes you feel safe, comfortable, welcome, at home? It is likely that your favorite place was consciously designed to attract you to it, to keep you engaged with dynamic activities and programming, and to maximize social interaction: in essence, to create a cohesive sense of place.

The open space outside Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC. Photo Credit: Mia Candy

One of my favorite places in the small town of Carrboro that I now call home is the outdoor grounds at Weaver Street Market, a community owned grocery store. The space sits at the intersection of East Weaver Street and North Greensboro Street, and covers roughly 30,000 square feet of land. The site functions primarily as a place for patrons of the market to eat and drink, but the site has a multitude of other uses and is open to anyone, and is, as such, a truly public, open space.

Sitting and chatting at Weaver Street Market. Photo Credit: Mia Candy

I spend a lot of time in the space and enjoy its consistent vibrancy, but I recently set out to analyze why it works so well. Looking particularly for conscious design elements and social interactions, I spent a few hours walking around, sitting in, sketching, and photographing the space. What follows is a brief overview of my findings.

Author sketch of design elements and amenities in the space

The public space outside Weaver Street Market functions as the epicenter of the town. Its location at a central intersection as well as its proximity to varied retail and commercial activity and services brings a variety of residents into the space. However, the success of the space is that it encourages people to stay for hours on end instead of merely passing through.

Climbing trees at Weaver Street Market. Photo Credit: Mia Candy

A number of well-designed features of the space contribute to this comfortable and welcoming environment. The first is that it is primarily designed to encourage people to sit. The abundance of different types of seating options (benches, picnic tables, and small tables) and the shade and rain cover mean that the space offers places for anyone at virtually any time to sit and read, do work, meet friends, have a meal or a drink, or just people watch. It is also a space that encourages play: there is art to look at, trees to climb, and open space in which to run around, or dance, or play music.

Doing work at Weaver Street Market. Photo Credit: Mia Candy

The space is also dominated by natural elements, materials, and textures: greens and browns, tree planters and grass, red brick facades and walkways, and wooden tables. These features make the space feel somewhat like a natural ‘sanctuary,’ and noise from the nearby intersection is softened by tree cover along its edge.

But design features are not enough. Weaver Street offers free wifi, garbage disposal (including recycling), restrooms open to the public, and night time lighting, all of which allow people to remain in the space for long periods of time. In addition, the space is easily accessed from all directions and by all modes of transit, with a multitude of places to park a bicycle or car.

Place to sit, garbage disposal, bike racks and proximity to a bus stop

Weaver Street Market, like many of our favorite spaces, is actively designed to bring people together for extended periods of time. For this reason, it goes beyond existing as a neutral space and becomes a vibrant, dynamic, and truly public place.

About the Author: Mia is our Managing Editor of Online Content here at Angles, and is a second year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC. She grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, where she first developed an interest in urbanism and the complexities of urban development in emerging cities. Mia lived in New York City for two years, researching occupational and environmental health. Her research focuses on planning for public space and urban design, and implementing placemaking strategies in the developing world. Mia’s lifelong dream is to write a children’s book.

Exploring Downtown Chapel Hill’s Informal Pathways

September 8, 2015 / odrozd

In this report, authors Aaron Hursey and Melanie Morgan explore the often overlooked ways of getting from here to there. The pair identified and analyzed thirteen informal pathways between Hillsborough Road and Raleigh Road to the East and West, and between the UNC campus and Rosemary Street to the North and South for Professor William Rohe’s Urban Neighborhood Revitalization course. In a report prepared for the Town of Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, the pair identified several advantages to the informal pathways including reduced travel time, economic benefits, and social engagement. Each pathway was evaluated based on several criteria. An assessment of current conditions and proposed changes were presented for each of the thirteen identified informal pathways. Funding mechanisms for proposed enhancements are also outlined in the report.

Aside from the clear accessibility benefits offered by informal pathways, other significant benefits include the uniqueness and sense of place provided by the unstructured nature of back alleys and unanticipated access points. Each informal pathway is defined not by the strict grid of the car and transit oriented street, but by the natural flow of people moving from place to place, finding the most efficient way on foot. Using informal pathways is inherently different from walking on a sidewalk or a street, and the authors make careful suggestions that do not over-enhance or sterilize these places. Turning an informal pathway into a bright, clean, pedestrian promenade risks turning a unique place into a walkway that could be anywhere. The authors respect the impromptu nature of these pathways by recommending small improvements to wayfinding, lighting, maintenance, and overall accessibility and ease of access. Each of these interventions, they suggest, will enhance existing places without eroding the existing character of each informal pathway.

Without these informal pathways, Chapel Hill risks losing an important part of its character. As development intensifies in and around downtown Chapel Hill, it is a positive sign that the Town of Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership are interested in preserving and enhancing the existing informal pathways that help give Chapel Hill its unique sense of place and mobility.

Here is the full report, including all sorts of fun and dynamic visuals: Chapel Hill Informal Pathways Report.

Aaron Hursey is a 2015 graduate of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC. His primary interests are environmental planning, urban revitalization, and the resiliency of urban environments. Aaron has a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Georgia and spent time serving as a community outreach coordinator in Astoria, Queens. Aaron received a Georgia Chapter ASLA Merit Award and is certified as a LEED Green Associate through the U.S. Green Building Council. He currently works as a Planner for the City of Seattle.

Melanie Morgan came to UNC with a Bachelor’s in public health and a desire to make it easier for people to walk and bike throughout cities. As questions swirled about a light rail system in the Chapel Hill area, she became interested in the impacts of new rail and transit-oriented development projects. Her master’s project on rail stations and demographic change was awarded the Terry Lathrop Award for Outstanding Work in Transportation Planning from DCRP. She is currently working as the Innovation Team Data Analyst for the City of Centennial, Colorado. Her team, funded by a 3-year, $1.5 million grant through Bloomberg Philanthropies, aims to embed innovation in local governments.

Differing job counts between tract and local boundaries in Raleigh, NC: Only one census tract lies within Raleigh’s local downtown boundary, excluding several blocks of significant employment.

Open Data: an Answer to the Downtown Data Dilemma

July 22, 2015 / odrozd / 0 Comments

Downtown Anytown, USA is a challenging research subject. Vague terminology, idiosyncratic boundaries, and limited data availability have contributed to a disconnected and incomplete body of research on the contemporary downtown. A downtown’s geography is a particularly vexing matter; there is no formal or even consensus definition for downtown; they are not recognized by the government, the Census Bureau, or the Postal Service, so many traditional sources for demographic and housing data are not readily applicable to a city’s urban core. Nearly all downtown research generalizes downtown districts to an aggregation of census tracts. The methods for identifying downtown tracts vary among researchers but notable methods include:

Identifying tracts within a local downtown boundary
Identifying tracts with centroids in an x-mile radius of city hall or of some antiquated Central Business District
Identifying tracts within an area of high job densities

Each of these methods has strengths, but also major weaknesses:

Local boundaries diminish the ability to compare across cities
Uniform radius applied across cities ignores variations in size and topography
Job density definitions assume that downtown must continue its historic role as a central business district (where it may in fact be primarily a cultural destination or residential district)

Arguably the greatest shortcoming of all of these approaches is their reliance on the census tract. No major studies have defined downtown without generalizing the boundaries using tracts. The reasons for this are straightforward: local population, housing, and workforce data is often derived from national sources like the Census and the American Community Survey. These sources only release limited data for geographies smaller than the tract, and for many downtowns tract definitions result in overgeneralization and would benefit from evaluation measures derived from smaller geographies.

Downtowns that do not have a major residential population contain fewer census tracts that cover larger geographic areas. Downtown boundaries built from these coarse geographic units may have little in common with local boundaries and can result in gross misrepresentations of downtown’s contents.

Tract-based downtowns are too generalized for the small, rapidly changing downtowns most in need of clear indicators of progress and precise measures of change. Perhaps a reason previous studies have not used this level of geographic precision is lack of awareness of sources for data at finer geographic scales. Some of the sources providing this level of detail are relatively new and trends in “open data” have made resources increasingly accessible.

: Differing job counts between tract and local boundaries in Raleigh, NC: Only one census tract lies within Raleigh’s local downtown boundary, excluding several blocks of significant employment.

: Differing population counts between tract and local boundaries in Durham, NC: Three census tracts have centroids within Durham’s local downtown boundary, but these tracts don’t correspond with the local borders and grossly misrepresent the downtown population. (Block level data from LEHD)

: Census tracts within Philadelphia’s Center City: The 22 tracts within Philadelphia’s Center City almost perfectly align with the local borders.

: Census tracts within Chicago’s Central Area: The 18 small tracts within Chicago’s densely populated Central Area allow for a reasonable approximation of a local boundary.

: Downtown New York City, as defined by radial boundaries: Several researchers have defined downtowns as the area within some set distance of city hall. If downtown New York were defined this way, it might include a good deal of water and a chunk of New Jersey.

The table below identifies some data sources that provide reliable and pertinent information at a geographic scale appropriate for most downtowns.

Name	Smallest Geography Available	Data Provided
OnTheMap (Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Data)	Custom areas (based on block units)	(For the employed population) Count, occupation, income brackets, ethnicity/race, distance and direction traveled from home to work
Esri Business Analyst Online	Custom areas (business data based on address, demographic data based on census geographies)	Businesses by industry, demographic and housing (derived from Census data)
Reference USA	Address	Businesses, including some historical
Local Tax Parcel data	Parcel (Address)	Property values, land use
CoStar	Address	Rent, vacancy, value, land-use, square footage, building history
Decennial Census	Block (much more data available for larger areas)	Population, ethnicity/race, household count, household type

About the Author: Rachel Atkinson is a 2015 graduate of UNC Chapel Hill with a degree in her self-designed major: Urban Planning & Sustainable Development. Her thesis research dealt with the development of comprehensive downtown performance indicators. You can see more of Rachel’s work at www.rachel-atkinson.com. Currently, Rachel is working to launch Native South Creamery, making local, pecan-based milk alternatives.