When Will City Planners & City Councilors Learn From Their Mistakes?

When Will City Planners & City Councilors Learn From Their Mistakes?

by | Oct 26, 2026 |

The Planners Pledge is a serious document, including a formal apology for the role planners played in creating the most inhospitable elements of our cites, including car dependent sprawl and its host of toxic environmental and health maladies. For those who resisted the legions of planning professionals and their transportation cohorts, the newly-discovered wisdom of designing cities for people and not cars has come much too late and has been replaced by a new and equally pernicious monetization of our lives.

Unfortunately, the planning profession’s old mantra of suburban mobility planning under the influence of the automobile industry has been replaced with a new mantra of density everywhere, under the influence of corporate real estate financialization.

This is the power of Universal Design

This is the power of Universal Design

by | Oct 21, 2026 |

What if Raleigh had an opportunity to become a national leader in accessibility, safety, and inclusion by adopting Universal Design as a citywide policy? The goal is not simply to meet the minimum requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is to create a city where accessibility, safety, and inclusion are considered from the very beginning of every project rather than after problems have already occurred.

Press Pause on Data Centers

Press Pause on Data Centers

by | Aug 27, 2026 |

Livable Raleigh recommends that the Raleigh City Council pause consideration of any new data centers pending a careful study of their benefits and impacts, with public engagement and adoption of a data center review process.

This did not feel like Engagement

This did not feel like Engagement

by | May 12, 2026 |

We told you this would not work. And then you did it anyway. And what you installed was not just dismissive of our concerns, It was incomplete. You placed these bike lanes without clear roadway markings. No clear direction. No clear separation. Just confusion on a street where confusion can cost someone their life. So let’s call this what it is: That’s negligence.

Nicole Bennett, Former Planning Commission Chair – It’s Not Just a Rezoning

Nicole Bennett, Former Planning Commission Chair – It’s Not Just a Rezoning

by | May 4, 2026 |

Why does “the greater good” so often require loss from the same communities? Why are the people who already rely on transit the ones most at risk of being displaced from it? What does it mean to build a transit corridor that the current riders might no longer be able to afford to live near? if the greater good keeps requiring that the same communities lose everything, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what “good” really means.

Raleigh needs an Internal Audit

Raleigh needs an Internal Audit

by | Apr 20, 2026 |

Before any attempt is made to raise taxes you need to have an independent arm’s length audit/efficiency study of all city departments to make sure taxpayer money is being properly spent. Given the financial headwinds the city is facing, not doing an audit would be the height of financial irresponsibility.

Mayor Cowell: “It’s going to take focus, attention and every tool in the toolbox.”

Mayor Cowell: “It’s going to take focus, attention and every tool in the toolbox.”

by | Jan 24, 2025 |

Day two of Council’s annual retreat kicks off on January 25th with a discussion of affordable housing. It will be interesting to see if Mayor Cowell can convince her fellow Councilors to move beyond the kinds of fuzzy math that has concealed the real size and causes of Raleigh’s affordable housing crisis. Effective solutions will be fact-based, data driven and will reform current growth rules that promote the loss of five thousand affordable units each year.

Dear Ned

Dear Ned

by | Apr 17, 2024 |

When elections finally occurred in 2022, Knight was ousted by the voters, and 4 new members of Council were elected, each with Livable Raleigh’s support.

Public Forum: Will New Bern’s Mass Upzoning Revitalize Neighborhoods or Eliminate Them?

Public Forum: Will New Bern’s Mass Upzoning Revitalize Neighborhoods or Eliminate Them?

by | Dec 28, 2023 |

Join us on Sunday, January 21st at 2pm at the Tarboro Road Community Center (121 N. Tarboro Street, Raleigh) to learn how you can help stop the city’s urban renewal of New Bern Avenue. Stand up for Raleigh’s Black history and for revitalizing existing neighborhoods and businesses along the New Bern Avenue Bus Rapid Transit line rather than forcing them out.