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I'm sorry but I refuse to even consider the thought of 314,164,757 (and counting) people living under those restraints. That's a lot of steel tracks, buses, and high rises (for the ability to walk and bike) to support and feed that population.
Let's just be realistic and say that humans will ALWAYS want a way to move as they please, when they please. Maybe not cars forever, but it will always be something that the VERY few minority population will ***** and moan about.
Of course not everyone would be without a car. But there's certainly something in between nobody having a car and everybody having a car they rely on 100% of the time. There's nothing wrong with supporting the building of walkable communities.
Of course not everyone would be without a car. But there's certainly something in between nobody having a car and everybody having a car they rely on 100% of the time. There's nothing wrong with supporting the building of walkable communities.
Then you and I are on the same page. I was mainly responding to "American got to learn how to get around and not depend on cars."
One further comment regarding the dependancy on cars and raleigh being a city that lacks walkability. I see a lot of people take the bus in and walk to the DMV (?) off Tarboro. The fact that the city has been adding more bike racks have prompted more people to ride their bikes downtown and the fact that they are talking of adding more R-Line stops will help out some I believe as well.
I find Raleigh to be very walk-able. Both my wife and I walk/bike to the grocery store, multiple shopping centers, North Hills mall, green way to Crabtree/Raleigh blvd area, and much more. If we wanted we could walk/bike to everywhere we wanted in Raleigh including our extended family's home. We try to do at least 5 miles of walking a day and sometimes do 20+ miles bike riding.
The attitude of the drivers in Raleigh keep me off the main roads and I will NEVER set foot/bicycle tire on/in any major road no matter if there are any bike lanes or not. I stick to back/neighborhood roads and sidewalks (big no no, but don't care). I refuse to be run over by some impatient/incoherent jerk in a vehicle of any kind.
My wife can walk/bike to work. My 20+ mile plus the fact that I can't take 440 to Wade to I40 into RTP on a bicycle, though occasionally do on a motorcycle.
I'm not a Raleigh-an (?) yet so this is an outsider's view, but I was in town recently for some apartment hunting. I drove through downtown on a Friday night just to see what was going on and it was surprisingly active with people going to dinner, out to bars, etc. It seemed particularly active on the east side of downtown rather than the west. Certainly, as you go south from there it gets bad pretty quickly. To the east it didn't seem as bad unless you went pretty far.
Anyway, from reading things on this board earlier, I had assumed that the east side of downtown would be more run down. However, my wife and I drove through the Oakwood area on another day and were amazed at some of the beautiful homes there. Of course, we can't afford much there but it is an attractive area right next to downtown. I'm not sure if the area has just improved in recent years or if I had gotten the wrong impression from things I've read.
And how would you get to and from where you needed to go (for example Work, School, Family outings)? Let me guess, you would just sit on your ass and do nothing all day? Sounds like a wonderful Utopian idea to me.
Something called your legs. Maybe public transportation or a bike. I am not saying do that right now. We need to prepare ourself to high gas prices. Start moving our jobs, schools, and shopping to city centers so we can start walking. The USA is the only country in the world that lives more then 50 percent in the suburbs. Educate yourself and see what your suburban utopia is doing to this world. High pollution, higher obesity, consuming more energy, and killing wildlife are all affect of your "utopia".
As much as I like to see areas get revamped I prefer it happen organically and not through forced "gentrification". It is easy to say "the city should tear down the homes" and build something new, but you can't do that without trampling on personal property rights and a boatload of money. They city doesn't have extra money sitting around and they certainly don't want to get into the business of evicting people from their homes simply so the can redevelop an area with expensive new condos and upscale shops. The city can create an environment to promote revitalization, but it can't be artificially manufactured if you want it to truly succeed.
Incentives can help spur private re-development but ultimately the market will dictate where private developers want to invest their money. Right now there are more attractive options than southeast downtown Raleigh.
Anyway, from reading things on this board earlier, I had assumed that the east side of downtown would be more run down. However, my wife and I drove through the Oakwood area on another day and were amazed at some of the beautiful homes there. Of course, we can't afford much there but it is an attractive area right next to downtown. I'm not sure if the area has just improved in recent years or if I had gotten the wrong impression from things I've read.
Oakwood is the very western edge of eastern downtown Raleigh. The further east you move from Oakwood the worse it gets, though a lot of those neighborhoods have really cleaned up over the decades.
The DLA just posted something about walkability yesterday. Random facts:
Walkability of a neighborhood highly dependent on the surroundings. Estimate of how far people will walk before they climb in their cars:
* 3/4 mile: Main Street with stores and restaurants
* 1/4 mile: Street in a dense single-family neighborhood
* 250 feet: Suburban subdivision
* 25 feet: Between a road and a parking lot
how do you take all of those absentee-owner properties, some of which have numerous deed/interest-holders, and all the owner-occuppied by < median income/wealth folks, and MAKE them get their properties redeveloped?
This ^.
When my husband and I were shopping for houses of the course of an entire year , we did a lot of looking in the neighborhoods immediately east of downtown since that was just about the only area it seemed we could afford and still be walkable to downtown.
There has been a lot of renovation in the area, some of which is highly questionable and cosmetic, but improvements nonetheless. After doing a lot of research and hearing from a long-time resident, the big issue in that area is that there are many absentee landlords who live across the country and who have little interest in what is going on here. Their property was likely passed down to them (plus several other family members in some cases) in a will, and they are just keeping it in the family by doing the least amount of maintenance and upkeep possible. Chances are they don't have a mortgage anymore, so the rent they bring in is all income. Some of them are likely taking in higher rents than the condition of their property merits because they are willing to rent to the "least common denominator", e.g. people with no credit, criminal backgrounds, etc. who can't get a lease anywhere else. These owners have little incentive to sell if they have a steady income stream, plus I'm sure some of them have an emotional attachment to keeping the property within their family.
Because of this, I think development in the area will be slow. It seemed to really pick up when the first-time homebuyer tax credits were being offered, and then it sort of tapered off for a while. There are some other community issues as well regarding the type of development that the local leaders desire (new "affordable" housing) vs. the private development that has already happened (improved, market rate housing). But, that is a whole other ball of string.
I do know that the city had put out a RFP on the Stone warehouse in recent years, but it doesn't seem as though anything worthwhile came of that. I feel that if something happened with that property, it could encourage more individual private investment in the area.
I lived in Raleigh for 8 years, until 2010. Loved the city, loved to see the nice changes while living there (new art museum, more mid/high rises, Hillsborough Street re-design, North Hills, new convention center, etc.). It seems to me that the one really unattractive thing (about downtown, specifically) is the area just to the S.E. and East of downtown. Raleigh really needs to look past the whole "historically African-American area" blinders that are used too often as an excuse for not redeveloping unsafe/unsightly areas, and really think about how this quarter could be re-invigorated for the future. Most of the housing there is not of historic value, much is not owner-occupied, and frankly much of it is borderline slummy.
I live in Europe now (I know, I know), and what I've learned is that the areas near the city centers really need to be at a higher level (when possible) to keep the "core" city centers healthy and attractive to visitors (of ALL races/creeds). Residential infill of low-rise buildings (4 floors max) would be perfect, with retail or art spaces on the first floor here and there, along with "buy up/knock down" of certain rows of marginal properties. People shouldn't have to worry about taking a wrong turn at Moore Square when they just want to walk around with their family; Raleigh is better than that. Lets stop pretending that the SE/East areas near downtown are off limits to serious redevelopment for the benefit of all socio-economic levels.
Any thoughts?
MikesWorld9999, I live in or near (depending on how you draw the boundaries) the area I guess you're referring to, just to the east of downtown Raleigh. I can understand what you're talking about to an extent, and I agree with some of it, but I also think you're mischaracterizing it somewhat, too. For one thing, in my experience and my opinion, most of that part of the city really isn't in as bad a shape as you make it out to be. Are things perfect? Obviously not. There are still too many bad blocks and bad buildings in this area. But there are lots and lots of good people and well-maintained properties, too, and I don't see it as nearly as bleak and hopeless as you make it seem, and I don't even necessarily agree that it's "unattractive" on the whole. Just in the past five or ten years, there has been a substantial influx of new people, attention, and investment in the area, and it's made a difference (frankly, I wouldn't have wanted to live where I'm living now ten or fifteen years ago). There's still more crime in the area than anyone would like, but in all but a few pockets it's not unlivable, and I'm optimistic about it continuing to get better.
I don't think it's quite true that people "have to worry about taking a wrong turn at Moore Square when they just want to walk around with their family"; there's no place within several blocks of Moore Square that's so categorically unsafe for random people that they should necessarily not want to walk there, and in fact you see lots of people of all sorts at all times of day walking around that part of Raleigh with no problem (including me walking around with my family sometimes). The crime rates in that part of Raleigh are somewhat higher than in other parts of inner Raleigh, but they're actually not really that much higher than areas like Glenwood South and the N.C. State campus, and the actual, practical danger to a random person walking down the street minding his or her own business is pretty small. Obviously, some basic commonsense precautions are a good idea in any urban area (lock your car, be careful with large amounts of cash or valuables, don't start trouble with strangers, etc.), but in my experience that's not that much more true east of downtown Raleigh than north or west of it. I realize also that some people just get uneasy when they see mostly African-American people hanging out in a particular place, but that doesn't make it intrinsically particularly unsafe.
I also don't exactly agree that "most of the housing there is not of historic value." Actually, what I see on the east side of Raleigh is a great range of building types and styles, including some that definitely would be better off razed, but many others well worth preserving, including lots of older homes that either have been or are in the process of being renovated. So, there's certainly lots of potential and opportunity for renewal in that part of the city, but the existing housing stock is a lot better than you're giving it credit for.
I certainly agree with what you and other posters have said that the biggest short-term obstacle to further improvements in much of these neighborhoods is the many properties owned by far-off landlords who too often can't or don't care about or invest in their buildings. That is a real problem, and it probably doesn't have an easy immediate solution. But I strongly believe that in the bigger picture, that problem will tend to resolve itself due to market forces, which can hopefully be nudged along by the city's policies. I believe that demand for reasonably sized and priced housing with that proximity to downtown Raleigh will continue to increase over the years (despite some bumps in the road) such that those slumlords will tend to be effectively priced out of the market. That's part of what's already happened in other parts of Raleigh's urban core (let's not forget that as recently as 20 years ago, neighborhoods like Five Points, Boylan Heights, and the area across from N.C. State were suffering from some of the same problems, with lots of shoddy rental real estate, and were not particularly desirable places to live), as well as in lots of other cities, and to an extent it's already happened and happening east of downtown. All of that is my opinion, of course, so we'll see what happens. But I would bet you good money that in another five or ten or fifteen years, you'll see many of those areas you now view so negatively will be even more vibrant and "gentrified" (for better or worse).
Also, I understand your concern about the possible excessive sensitivity to the complex issues surrounding that part of the city's role as a "historically African-American area." I'm white, and there are actually now quite a few white, Hispanic, and Asian-American people living in this part of the city (another big change from just a few years ago), but it's certainly still predominantly African-American. Among my black neighbors, I hear a predictable range of reactions to the current and predicted "gentrification" of the area. I have met older folks who are uncomfortable with the changes, and understandably concerned and at times defensive about the prospect of perhaps someday being priced-out of neighborhoods they've lived in for a long time. But I would say that the majority (maybe two-thirds to three-quarters) of the people I encounter are fairly open and guardedly welcoming to changes that are mostly for the better. Frankly, I'm ambivalent, and can see both sides of it. But I also anticipate that in the big picture, it may not matter that much what individual people think about it, since larger economic and market forces are likely to dictate the future of those parts of Raleigh.
Overall, I really like my neighborhood and most of the parts of Raleigh to the east of downtown. It certainly has issues and challenges to overcome, but it also has enormous potential, and for the most part it's really a very good place to live right now. Generally, I'm in favor of the kinds of developments and improvements you're looking for in that part of the city, and I think they will probably happen before long. In fact, to some extent, it's happening already. It's still probably a few years away from a "critical mass" point, but it's getting there.
Last edited by tompope; 08-15-2012 at 10:21 PM..
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, we did a lot of looking in the neighborhoods immediately east of downtown since that was just about the only area it seemed we could afford and still be walkable to downtown. 
