Tag: UNC Planning

From the Archives: Advice from the Class of 2017

August 27, 2021 / odrozd

Back in 2016, the UNC City and Regional Planning’s Class of 2017 answered some of the incoming class’s deepest darkest questions as they began their first year of graduate school. As the Class of 2023 wraps up week 1 of the program, we revisit this great advice, still just as relevant a full five years later.

By Rachel Wexler, Daniel Bullock, and Chris Bendix, MCRP ’17

2018: What advice do you have for students who are transitioning from working full-time to being a student full-time, in terms of getting back into an academic mindset?

2017: Depending on your priorities, you might not need to change your mindset too much. If you’re organized and efficient you can treat school like a 9 to 5. Generally though, you will likely not have a full day of rest and relaxation until summer time. So hold onto your hat. Also, it’s pass-fail and there will be times when you will need to do less than you’d ideally like to for the sake of your schedule and your own sanity.

2018: How much group-work is required, and do you have any tips for working in groups?

2017: A large amount of projects are done as groups but once tasks are delegated work is largely independent. Assign project components based on the skills each member has and the skills they want to gain. Have internal deadlines.

2018: How early should first-years start thinking about summer internships?

2017: It should always be in the back of your mind but second semester is the time to actively seek internships. With that being said, if you know you want to stay in the area and start working before summer starts, go ahead and start looking now. With that being said, internships can and may come together at the last minute and still work out really well.

2018: Do you recommend that first-years take the introductory courses for all of the DCRP specializations to get a sense of options, or is that unnecessary?

2017: No. Don’t do this. Maybe take two courses in different specializations if you’re trying to decide but really, there isn’t enough time. If you are unsure about what specialization you’re aiming for try to take courses that count towards multiple specializations. This is not hard to do if you’re wavering between ED and Housing.

2018: Any advice for balancing schoolwork and extracurricular activities like TA-ships?

2017: Be prepared to turn in work that you know you could have done better on. There is not enough time to do everything to the best of your ability. Focus on the things you want to get out of the program and forget about perfectionism.

2018: What’s your favorite bar and/or coffee shop in Carrboro/Chapel Hill?

2017:
Grey Squirrel – hip
Open Eye – study spot
Johnny’s (now called Present Day on Main) – local community vibe
Honeysuckle Tea House – if you like tea and farms this is the place
OCSC -seems to be the grad student go-to
Beer Study – for beer geeks
~~Zog’s – divey~~ (now closed)
Lantern – for the fancy occasion
Steel String – nice patio and people-watching

2018: Any advice for cultivating relationships with professors in your first year?

2017: You probably heard this in undergrad but the same goes for grad school– go to office hours, ask questions, be engaged in class. They’re generally really accessible and genuinely care about helping their students but they’re not going to come to you. Try not to be too intimidated by them. They understand how ridiculously complex planning things tend to be so it’s ok if you show up and ask really basic questions. Also, use your TAs, especially if they’re DCRP PhD candidates. They’re crazy knowledgeable.

Rachel Wexler specialized in Economic Development at DCRP, and is now a German Chancellor Fellow at ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin, Germany.

Daniel Bullock was in the Housing and Community Development and Real Estate specialization, and now works as the Housing and Facilities Development Manager at CASA of Oregon in Sherwood, Oregon.

Chris Bendix studied both Housing and Community Development and Transportation, and is a Project Developer at Mercy Housing in Seattle, Washington.

Featured image courtesy of Alison Salomon

CAN SOMEONE TELL US WHAT’S GOING ON?

September 30, 2016 / odrozd

A bit belated but still entirely relevant. Here are some answers provided by the class of 2017 for the the class of 2018’s deepest darkest questions starting their first year of graduate school in City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill. The ones you were afraid to ask.

2018: What advice do you have for students who are transitioning from working full-time to being a student full-time, in terms of getting back into an academic mindset?

2018: How much group-work is required, and do you have any tips for working in groups?

2018: How early should first-years start thinking about summer internships?

2018: Do you recommend that first-years take the introductory courses for all of the DCRP specializations to get a sense of options, or is that unnecessary?

2018: Any advice for balancing schoolwork and extracurricular activities like TA-ships?

2018: What’s your favorite bar and/or coffee shop in Carrboro/Chapel Hill?

2017:
Grey Squirrel – hip
Open Eye/Looking Glass – study spot
Johnny’s – local community vibe
Honeysuckle Tea House – if you like tea and farms this is the place
OCSC -seems to be the grad student go-to
Beer Study – for beer geeks
Zog’s – divey
Lantern – for the fancy occasion
Steel String – nice patio and people-watching

2018: Any advice for cultivating relationships with professors in your first year?

Featured Image Photo credit: Rachel Wexler

Rachel Wexler is the co-editor of the Carolina Planning Journal and pursuing her master’s degree in City and Regional Planning. Her bachelor’s is in english from UC Berkeley; prior to beginning her master’s she worked as an editor, cook, and musician. Her academic work focuses on economic development, neighborhood revitalization, and placemaking. Her non-academic work focuses on playing in general and playing cello in particular. She also thinks frequently about Oakland, California and Berlin, Germany, both of which she calls home. These are also the urban spaces that brought her to this charming small town to study planning.

Daniel Bullock is a UNC master’s student in City in Regional Planning, specializing in Housing and Community Development and Real Estate. He is interested in issues of equity in affordable housing and access to financial opportunity. Daniel also serves on the Orange County Affordable Housing Advisory Board and works as a Real Estate intern with the Self-Help Ventures Fund.

Chris Bendix has a passion for seeking efficiency, equity, and sustainability in policy-making, especially at the nexus of transportation and real estate. A Seattle native, Chris earned a BA in Philosophy from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He is a member of the CPJ Editorial Board and will graduate from DCRP in 2017 with a specializations in Housing and Community Development and Transportation.

Plan for All —Making Planning More Inclusive

September 12, 2016 / odrozd

As planners, we are supposed to represent the public interest. But ensuring that this representation truly reflects a diverse public with uneven access to power can be challenging. Addressing this challenge is the mission of Plan for All, a subcommittee of the Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) student governing body, Planners Forum. We aim to bring greater awareness of social justice issues like inclusivity, equity, and diversity within DCRP and the broader planning profession.

What does that look like, exactly?

Plan for All hosts a Brown Bag series featuring speakers who discuss issues related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and more.
We have “informal conversations” and film screenings to foster dialog among students on equity and diversity.
We established a review of DCRP curricula that examines how well course topics address social equity and inclusion and how well authorship of required readings reflects a diversity of experiences.
We created an award that recognizes outstanding student and faculty research related to Plan for All’s mission.

Plan For All’s Spring 2016 Brown Bag Series

Along with this ongoing work, we held an exciting event at the end of the 2015-2016 school year. The “Community Conversation” was a workshop that brought together more than two dozen students, faculty, and staff to discuss how we can make DCRP a more inclusive and engaged community. Groups collaborated to identify challenges, goals, and strategies to create positive change related to four focus areas: classroom environment, curriculum, outreach and admissions, and the larger political climate. Here are some of the takeaways that emerged from the event:

Notes from the May 2016 Community Conversation within the Department of City and Regional Planning. Students, faculty, and staff identified problems within four areas (classroom environment, curriculum, outreach and admissions, and the larger political climate), discussed goals to address those problems, and brainstormed strategic ways to meet one of those goals.

Although our first Community Conversation was planned as a one-time event, we hope to continue holding these discussions on a regular basis to ensure that DCRP has an effective feedback loop with regards to our diversity and inclusivity. We are excited to explore some of the strategies developed during the workshop and experiment with implementing them within DCRP this year.

Attendees continue the conversation about the small group portion of the Community Conversation. Source: Plan for All

We are even more excited to welcome the new class of planners to their first year in DCRP and learn from all the new insights and experiences flowing into our department! There is plenty of work ahead of us to move DCRP closer to our vision of a department that critiques injustice in both theory and practice, fights for social equity, and includes a diverse group of students, faculty, and staff. If you’re into these things too, check us out on Facebook or email dcrpplanforall@gmail.com to get involved!

Bryant Reimagined: The Creation of a Small Area Plan

June 8, 2016 / odrozd

Most students pursuing a master’s in Planning are required to complete either a thesis or original project as part of their degree. Ben Lykins, a 2016 graduate from the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill, choose a practice-oriented route and created a small area plan for Bryant, Arkansas. Ben says that creating the “Bryant Reimagined” plan was a challenging way to incorporate the holistic planning education and wide array of data, mapping, and design skills he dabbled with both in the classroom and through professional experiences. Angles sat down with Ben to discuss his approach to the project, the challenges that arose during the planning process, and what he learned from the experience.

Angles: How did you decide on Bryant, Arkansas as the subject of your Master’s Project? BL: I decided to do a project in Arkansas because I am from there and a lot of my interest stems from the lack of planning I witnessed growing up in Arkansas. There aren’t many planning jobs in Arkansas, and I wanted to create an additional portfolio piece as a networking opportunity to explore the few jobs that do exist. Why Bryant in particular? I identified several projects and then thought Bryant would be the most interesting and would provide an opportunity to cover the full spectrum of planning themes: transportation, land use, mixed use, etc…

Angles: What was your general process for approaching the small area plan and how did you determine what sections to include? BL: I knew that the area was a good candidate for sprawl repair. I looked at a lot of cases of communities re-making their downtowns and fixing sprawl and I followed those examples. What I wanted to do was come up with guidelines for reshaping existing development and make sure that new development wasn’t poorly built, ugly, or car-oriented. I was mostly thinking about what steps you’d need to take to make the area a place people actually want to hang out. There wasn’t a specific plan I referenced because there isn’t anywhere quite the same.

“Bryant Reimagined” includes improvement ideas for key roads in the study area, which encourage bike and pedestrian uses to share the road comfortably with cars.

Angles: Did anything surprise you when you were doing background research? BL: I was surprised by some of the current zoning regulations, and just how broad some of the categories were. I was surprised that there were zoning types the city had created but not actually implemented. For example, Bryant has a flood zone category, but they don’t apply it to their floodplain areas. The commuter habits were also really interesting. There are a total of 8,000 people who live in Bryant and have jobs. But of those 8,000 people, only 800 both live and work in Bryant.

Angles: Not that these are mutually exclusive, but what were the most enjoyable and challenging parts of the process? BL: Finding a lot of the regulation information for Bryant was challenging for a while. Once I found it, I had it, but initially I was looking in the wrong places. I really enjoyed quantifying the amount of infrastructure. I think it’s an easy way to show the lack of investment in public infrastructure. I can say how much sidewalk they have, but that doesn’t mean much until I tell you how much sidewalk they have as a percentage of how much roadway they have.

Angles: “Bryant Reimagined” is a set of policy suggestions. How much of it do you think can realistically be accomplished? What would it take for all of your suggestions to be implemented? BL: They would probably need to create and pass a funding mechanism and that would allow them to make some of the serious infrastructure changes in the transportation section. They would have to encourage developers to do things in a certain way, and keep up with their zoning in a more serious way. The plan provides no timeline, but instead lays out the steps needed for achieving the vision I suggest.

Angles: What was your biggest takeaway from the process? BL: The project was a good way to augment my skill set. It allowed me to take a bunch of separate skills that I had learned independently and combine them into one big project. It was exceptionally useful to reorganizing my knowledge in that holistic manner.

Ben Lykins is a 2016 graduate from the Department of City and Regional Planning here at UNC. His Primary interests are transportation planning, land use planning, and streamlining planning through the use of technology. Ben has a bachelor’s degree in geography & public administration from the University of Central Arkansas and has spent time working as a GIS analyst. He currently works as an urban planner for Garver Engineering in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Best Masters Project, 2015

April 15, 2016 / odrozd

Each year the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning bestows the Best Masters Project Award to a graduating Masters student. Mikey Goralnik was the 2015 recipient of the award. Below is an excerpt of his Masters Project titled “Resource Resiliency: preparing rural America for an uncertain climatic future through community design and ecosystem service provision.” A link to his entire project is provided at the end of this post.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New York City and nearby urban areas in New Jersey. In response to the second costliest natural disaster in the US since 1900, President Barack Obama unveiled the Rebuild by Design Competition, likely the largest federal investment in resiliency. Six international transdisciplinary teams will share $920 million to design and implement infrastructural improvements throughout coastal New York and New Jersey that are massive in physical scale, temporal scope, and international renown.

Just as the mainstream public is likely familiar with the impacts of Hurricane Sandy on metropolitan New York, planners and designers from various disciplines are likely aware of the responses to the disaster that have been mobilized from these fields. However, neither group is likely aware that Hurricane Sandy left the same percentage of customers without power in hyper-urban New York as it did in largely rural West Virginia and New Hampshire. Voters and designers are also likely unfamiliar with rural Vermont’s ongoing struggle to recover from Tropical Storm Irene, where four to eight inches of rainfall caused nearly every river and stream in the state to flood, isolating much of Vermont’s non-urban population—many without power—for weeks. And designers and the public-at-large are almost definitely unfamiliar with the story of rural Kinston, North Carolina, where unprecedented rainfall from successive hurricanes caused the Neuse River to jump its banks, flooding a low-lying neighborhood, uprooting a historically close-knit African American population, and challenging a community to plan and design for resilience in a changing climate.

For the millions of Americans who do not live in cities, promoting more resilient planning and design decisions in rural areas remains a critical and under-examined endeavor, one that is literally a question of life or death. What can planners and designers do to achieve a more resilient physical environment in the distant, often isolated communities of the US? This project seeks to answer that question in Kinston, NC. First, I take an ecosystem services-based approach to redesigning nearly 750 acres of publicly-owned land along the Neuse River. By leveraging an asset common to all rural communities—lightly or undeveloped land—I examine methods of monetizing the ecosystem functions that naturally occur on the site. After establishing a baseline value for the site’s current ecosystem service provision, I design a masterplan for the site that both optimizes those ecosystem services and reimagines the site as an amenity for the community.

Results and Conclusions

Comparing the credits to the debits yields a net gain of $4,700/year of social value in transitioning to the new scheme. Given the rough approximations involved in sample-based ecosystem service modeling, a difference this small suggests that redesigned scheme would essentially provide the same quantifiable ecosystem services as the undeveloped status quo, which also means that the new scheme could be expected to receive the same amount of compensatory mitigation wetland credits as the current state would. Based on this analysis, the developed masterplan scenario could receive $36,000-$63,000 in actual, spendable wetland credits, while also serving as a public amenity to the community of Kinston.

Furthermore, as a public amenity, the site would then be able to generate social value, if not actual revenue, through added ecosystem services. For example, given that the site is currently both undeveloped and inaccessible by the public, any recreational activity that would accrue to the redesigned site would be additional recreational activity. Not only does this type of physical activity boost community morale, but it also avoids social costs like healthcare subsidy and hospital operation by promoting healthy lifestyles. Improved recreational facilities like those proposed in the masterplan scenario could also attract tourism dollars to Kinston, thereby stimulating the local economy.

Overall, what this analysis indicates is that financially productive, contextually sensitive, and legally permissible floodplain design is eminently possible in rural North Carolina. By prioritizing revenue generation through ecosystem service provision, planners and designers can implement landscapes that, from an economic perspective, work for their community.

Click here: Mikey Goralnik, Best Masters Project, 2015

The World Trade center Transportation Hub: Worthwhile or Wasteful

April 14, 2016 / odrozd

Some are questioning whether the exuberant lower Manhattan Transportation Hub was a good investment.

The first iteration of the new World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened in early March, 2016. The new transportation hub forms the main transit access point for the new WTC complex, which includes 1 World Trade Center, several other high-rise office buildings, and the September 11th memorial, flanked by reflecting pools representing the imprint of the original towers. In an era when public transportation works seldom reach the scale of the early 20th century, the new Transportation Hub will, according to Port Authority officials and some architectural critics, rival Grand Central Station. One Port Authority employee recently dubbed the complex the “eighth wonder of the world.”¹

However, a strange squabble occurred in early March, weeks before the scheduled opening, when the Port Authority’s Executive Director and highest ranking official, Pat Foye, cancelled the celebration planned for the opening. Citing the high costs associated with the project and the pressing need for investment in the region’s infrastructure, Foye called the Hub “a symbol of excess.”² (It’s worth noting, however, that Foye will leave the Agency later this year, as the Port Authority’s commissioners continue their search for a new CEO to replace him.³)

As Foye alluded to, much of the media coverage of the project has focused on the ballooning costs of the complex. An October 2015 report from the Rudin Center projects the amount of money placed in the complex from 2002 to 2019 at approximately $17 billion. This astronomical figure was financed by the Port Authority, Silverstein properties (a real estate development firm), and a large amount of federal money. Critics allege that these costs have greatly diminished the Port Authority’s ability to invest in many necessary transportation projects, including a new interstate bus terminal to replace the aging structure in midtown.⁴ However, according to others, the complex may yet succeed. The same NYU Rudin Center report notes the Port Authority seems likely to recover much of its investment in the site, and has stimulated the regional economy considerably in the process.⁵

The WTC Transportation Hub seen from ground level just before opening in March, 2016. Photo Credit: author’s image.

Meanwhile, the cost of Transportation Hub alone totals at least $4 Billion,⁶ more than doubling the original estimates for the cost of the structure. Much of these increased costs arose from contracting and construction issues, as well as the unusual design of Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish starchitect who designed the Oculus. The Oculus serves as the centerpiece of the new transportation hub, and is a steel structure which allows light to enter through glass windows into the central terminal. Calatrava’s design of the Oculus changed dramatically over the several years of its construction, owing to practical concerns and unforeseen costs. However, one aspect the Agency did not change was the Transportation Hub’s skylight, in which panes of glass will retract each year on September 11th, exposing the building to the elements.⁷

Architecture critical opinions on the new complex vary widely, with charges ranging from calling it “functionally void” to a testament to the “cost of beauty.”⁸ What many critics have neglected to address, however, is the unique challenge of building a major, functioning transportation hub on the site of an incredible amount of trauma. Little needs to be written about the events that unfolded in lower Manhattan almost 15 years ago. Lower Manhattan and its real estate development will forever be marked by the events that have led to its current spatial configuration.

The Oculus structure. Photo Credit: author’s image.

A fair amount of institutional trauma exists, as well. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s headquarters were located in the North Tower of the World Trade Center towers and the Agency lost 84 employees in the attacks; this figure includes the Agency’s highest ranking official, its then-Executive Director.⁹ The original World Trade Center train station was destroyed by the collapse of the towers, and caused water to flood into the Hudson River tubes back into Jersey City in New Jersey. Because the Port Authority financed and built the original complex, and received much criticism for doing so, the Agency’s future may always remain linked with the event.

It remains difficult to assess what effects recent history has had on the success of the project. One could conclude that the Port Authority, tasked with rebuilding this critical piece of transportation infrastructure, has been enmeshed in a fugue state of trauma. Under this theory the Port Authority has been throwing money into an abyss, trying to fill an absence that can never truly be restored to its previous state.

Another popular narrative sees the development of the entire complex as the height of capitalist and patronage politics. Under this theory, the redevelopment is a consumer-oriented space showcasing a luxury mall, bringing commuters from the outer boroughs and New Jersey, as well as tourists, to the shiny, tone-deaf complex. The ballooning costs owe themselves not to unforeseen logistical complexities because of Calatrava’s design, explains this theory, but rather the awarding of favorable contracts to construction companies and consultants with ties to the Port Authority’s leadership. This theory, of course, gets a boost from recent embarrassing scandals exposing the shadowy political forces working behind the Port Authority’s scenes.¹⁰

Transit users pass through a portion of the station structure before its grand opening in March, 2016. Photo credit: author’s image.

Finally, a more optimistic view of the Transportation Hub sees this project as a deeply personal and valuable project for the Port Authority, New York City, and the region. Given the trauma associated with the destruction of the original station, the Port Authority has used its resources and political clout to revitalize and recreate the whole of lower Manhattan. Perhaps the Port Authority overspent and prioritized the project at the expense of other important infrastructure projects. But no other government body, under this theory, could fund and manage such an enormous and important project. Maybe, as the aforementioned critic stated, $4 Billion is simply “the cost of beauty.”

Ultimately, no contemporary critic alone decides the fate of the Transportation Hub. The Transportation Hub, despite its luxury mall status, will serve as a transfer point between PATH, the New York City Transit rail system,, and city buses. With or without a celebratory opening in March, the Hub exists, and will serve millions of riders every year. Only these riders can truly say if it was worth it.

The author of this piece wishes to remain anonymous.

This article’s featured image is a rendering of the Oculus structure. Rights belong to Forgemind Archimedia and it was reproduced under Creative Commons.

Notes

Jack Moore, “World Trade Center Re-opens as Tallest Building in America,” International Business Times, 3 Nov 2014.
Dana Rubinstein, “Port Authority Declines to Celebrate Calatrava-designed transportation hub,” Capital New York, 22 Feb 2016.
Patrick McGeehan, “Port Authority Leader to Quiet As C.E.O. Search Drags On,” The New York Times, 19 Nov 2015.
Stephen Jacob Smith, “PATH/Fail: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Train Station,” The Observer, 14 May 2013.
NYU Rudin Center, “Surprise! The World Trade Center Rebuilding Pays Off for the Port Authority and New Jersey,” Oct 2015.
David Dunlap, “How Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 Billion,” The New York Times, 2 Dec 2014.
Zoe Rosenberg, “Skylight of World Trade Center Oculus Will Open Each Sept. 11,” Curbed New York, 20 Jul 2015.
Amy Plitt, “Is Santiago Calatrava’s WTC Transportation Hub a ‘Lemon’ or a ‘Beauty’?”, Curbed New York, 22 Feb 2016.
Paul Vitello, “Ernesto Butcher, Who Managed Port Authority After 9/11, Dies at 69,” The New York Times, 22 May 2014.
Katie Zernicke and Jad Mouawad, “United C.E.O. is out Amid Inquiry at Port Authority,” The New York Times, 8 September 2015.