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What many people do not realize is that in our area, Towns do not build roads! Well they may build a few but it is rare.
The State may build/improve some existing older roads (NCDOT) but most of the new local roads are built and paid for by Developers. Once a development is underway and making some money, the developer will add features reflecting the impact of the development. Things like traffic lights, turn lanes, etc.
Developers with projects side by side will each pay for building their own little part of a long road. IMHO opinion, it seems they wait for the last possible moment to do this since they want to be selling product first, which from their viewpoint is reasonable. But, the Towns are trying to coordinate all of this activity with little ability to plan until the developers put forth their proposals.
Last edited by luv4horses; 03-06-2018 at 06:17 AM..
You would have to live here almost 20 years as I have to see exactly how much change has happened. It's been dramatic and in terms of traffic and preservation of natural areas, it's pathetic...
We're not talking unrealistically as though places never change. Most every place changes to some extent over time. We're talking about the degree of change within a short period of time and whether the change is being planned for.
The growth here is not being well managed. Planning is very spotty.
Well-stated. I've lived here for 20+ years, for a short time in Durham County and for much longer in Wake, and my observation has been the same. Infrastructure changes seem to lag significantly behind as the population grows, and not holding developers accountable to help mitigate infrastructure cost is partially the reason.
My largest concern is, as you wrote, the "preservation of natural areas." We still have lovely parks and greenways, and we are a short ride from fantastic natural destinations (you haven't lived until you've visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park), but the erosion is evident. The "clear-cutting" mentality escapes me.
Not holding developers accountable to help mitigate infrastructure cost is partially the reason.
Completely agree with you on this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by E. Milton
My largest concern is, as you wrote, the "preservation of natural areas." We still have lovely parks and greenways, and we are a short ride from fantastic natural destinations (you haven't lived until you've visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park), but the erosion is evident. The "clear-cutting" mentality escapes me.
The thing that drives me crazy is that people in my neighborhood are against any dense development since it'll ruin the character of the neighborhood and cut down trees in my neighborhood. What they don't realize, is the people who don't live there will just end up clear cutting some woods out in Rolesville, which might arguably be worse than a handful of trees.
I had not thought of it that way before, but you are absolutely right that developers are totally clear cutting large swaths of land similarly to the way loggers create moonscapes in the Pacific NW. But it's even worse here, because loggers at least replace most of the trees with seedlings that grow into a large forest again. Here the developers just plop in a cheap tree in each front yard. Since the houses are so close together, a lot of street pavement creates muddy silt runoff into nearby creeks. I'm not sure how animals drink water like that and stay healthy.
Pierretong, the idea that separate houses (on separate lots farther out from the center of town) create more traffic may be true in one sense, but to me this is about quality of life not only for adults but for their children. High rise upward sprawl has its own set of distasteful drawbacks. Even less space for children to play in and explore. For many people a feeling of being cramped next to people, mostly strangers. An obvious emphasis on a life centered around consumerism (shopping or "entertain me" is all there is to do) as opposed to producing a garden with organic produce or creating an outdoor space that soothes and calms the heart or enjoying open areas with fresher air in which to jog or walk.
NYC is a concentration of high-rise upward sprawl and in the summer months the stench from the garbage piles stacked on sidewalks at the base of buildings is truly putrid. There are so many people living on top of one another in a smaller land area that city services can hardly keep up with all the trash produced. Far better in my view to turn vegetable scraps into compost for an outdoor garden.
So are there other ways to look at this? I think so.
Right now housing costs have skyrocketed near RTP. One big reason many people have to commute there for work is because they need to keep their monthly payments within a reasonable budget. (I can't tell you how many times I've looked at homes on the market only to find that the big McMansion is scantily furnished inside. There can be only two reasons for that: Either it's a huge bachelor pad or so much $$$ is going toward a monthly payment, taxes, home maintenance, etc. that furnishings are farther down the list.)
Rather than focus on high density housing closer into Raleigh, can you imagine how much it would help people avoid long commutes today if back in 1959 when RTP was created on 7000 acres, that huge acreage had been divided and designated for several different areas on the perimeter of the three cities it now ties together. Rather than traffic being so heavily focused on Interstate 40, the Durham Freeway, and NC 540, the traffic would be more spread out.
Centralization is in fact what creates more traffic and congestion. This is because so many people are forced to travel to a given point out of necessity.
Currently RTP is home to over 200 companies employing over 60,000 workers. It is basically a city unto itself that empties people out at night and fills back up again in the morning. Think about that when you're on I-540 during rush hour.
Imagine if RTP had been originally planned for businesses to be located in just 6 or 12 different parts of the Triangle region and if developers had concentrated on building homes near each of these 6 or 12 areas so that people could live closer to their jobs.
If when RTP was initially created a plan had been put into place designating neighborhoods near each of those 6-12 business areas then it would have promoted the freedom for more people to easily choose a home closer to work.
As it stands now, people moving to the Triangle area find that housing costs are far higher near RTP than elsewhere and unless they want to spend more of their paycheck on housing, they have to live farther out.
Imo the answer is not to encourage more people to move into high-rise higher density housing closer into smoggy cities, but for incentives to be put into place encouraging companies to locate in areas surrounding cities. Businesses (stores, doctors, etc.) to support people living in these areas would naturally develop just as they are now doing in suburbs like Wake Forest.
What I'm describing is integrating business locations with housing locations and locating them in different areas rather than centralizing everything. Each area could develop its own distinctive flavor just as Cary once did back in the early 70s when developers were not allowed to rake down every tree in sight, but instead required to leave many of them alone to create a park-like atmosphere. Back then Cary was indeed a nice area, but developers went hog wild and today it's a noisy crowded place. Sadly, this is also the fate of Wake Forest as time moves forward because no one is holding the developers accountable. Someone here already made that excellent point.
What I'm describing is integrating business locations with housing locations and locating them in different areas rather than centralizing everything. Each area could develop its own distinctive flavor just as Cary once did back in the early 70s when developers were not allowed to rake down every tree in sight, but instead required to leave many of them alone to create a park-like atmosphere. Back then Cary was indeed a nice area, but developers went hog wild and today it's a noisy crowded place. Sadly, this is also the fate of Wake Forest as time moves forward because no one is holding the developers accountable. Someone here already made that excellent point.
What you're asking for (spreading out people into smaller cities) will just clear cut more of the rural areas than we have now. Like you mentioned, not everybody wants to live in the city. But from an environmental perspective (and arguably, from the best use of taxpayer dollars), there is nothing more efficient than a high-density city. I'll have to find the article but you mentioned NYC - even though there are downsides like you mentioned, the fact is that they are way more environmentally friendly and more efficient than all of it's surrounding suburbs. It's perhaps the most green city in the US because of it's high density environment.
It's one of those things where there's trade-offs for both and you can't have everything you want with either scenario.
"Americans tend to think of dense cities as despoilers of the natural landscape, but they actually help to preserve it. If you spread all 8.2 million New York City residents across the countryside at the population density of Vermont, you would need a space equal to the land area of the six New England states plus New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia — and then, of course, you’d have to find places to put all the people you were displacing."
"Wild landscapes are less often destroyed by people who despise wild landscapes than by people who love them, or think they do — by people who move to be near them, and then, when others follow, move again."
"Population density also lowers energy and water use in all categories, constrains family size, limits the consumption of all kinds of goods, reduces ownership of wasteful appliances, decreases the generation of solid waste, and forces most residents to live in some of the world’s most inherently energy-efficient residential structures: apartment buildings. As a result, New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprints in the United States: 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases per person per year, or less than 30 percent of the national average. Manhattanites generate even less."
You would have to live here almost 20 years as I have to see exactly how much change has happened. It's been dramatic and in terms of traffic and preservation of natural areas, it's pathetic.
Sure, it's not as bad as outside D.C.....yet.
It's not as bad as Atlanta....yet.
Just wait.
For the podunk size area we live in compared to those cities, traffic is high and getting rapidly worse.
Someone once told me that when it comes to building roads or adding new lanes to handle the high influx of people moving here, Raleigh is always years behind. I've come to believe it.
We're not talking unrealistically as though places never change. Most every place changes to some extent over time. We're talking about the degree of change within a short period of time and whether the change is being planned for.
The growth here is not being well managed. Planning is very spotty.
I've lived here more than twice as long as you have lived here. Imagine how it looks to me.
LOL.
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Pierre, we'll just have to respectfully disagree on this. I do not trust your source any more than you would trust mine.
There are those who believe that the world is in dire straights due to carbon emissions, sea levels rising, and the rest. But there are also highly intelligent scientists and thinkers who strongly disagree. Imo, a political agenda is behind much of the sustainability movement, but that's a topic for another thread elsewhere.
With intelligent planning and regulation restricting developers, neighborhoods both centrally located and farther out can be designed so that clear-cutting is not tolerated. Clear-cutting is not a necessity just because a neighborhood is created farther from downtown.
I believe that quality of life suffers significantly when people are centralized for "efficiency."
And to me NYC is hardly a model to follow after, or so many from that area would not be flooding to get out and come here.
With intelligent planning and regulation restricting developers, neighborhoods both centrally located and farther out can be designed so that clear-cutting is not tolerated. Clear-cutting is not a necessity just because a neighborhood is created farther from downtown.
I believe that quality of life suffers significantly when people are centralized for "efficiency."
And to me NYC is hardly a model to follow after, or so many from that area would not be flooding to get out and come here.
I'm not an environmentalist or tree hugger so I'm not arguing about that. I am a taxpayer though and I like my tax dollars to be spent efficiently........not to mention that once infrastructure is built to support low density developments, people will demand that the government keep up with the infrastructure to support it, while the tax base isn't large enough to do that because of the low density.
It's a well known fact that traffic increases the more people have to drive. If you spread everything out, people will have to travel more which increases the amount of traffic.
Imagine if RTP had been originally planned for businesses to be located in just 6 or 12 different parts of the Triangle region
But that's not the original vision of RTP. Driven mainly by the chemistry departments at the three universities, the original vision was a clustering of companies that would form a critical mass and attract workers. From the perspective of the workers, part of the upside was knowing that job mobility from one RTP-based employer to another was merely a matter of driving to a different address in RTP in the morning.
The pharma companies are beneficiaries of this thinking. So are the telecom companies (and a large part of IBM's build-up in RTP was related to telecom).
A decentralized RTP would have been business-as-usual, and I doubt that it would have been successful.
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