Highlights from November 4 meetings
When Will City Planners & City Councilors Learn From Their Mistakes?
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cohorts, the newly-discovered wisdom of designing cities for people and not cars has come much too late and has been replaced by a new and equally pernicious monetization of our lives.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.
Don’t Let Kane Realty Trash Midtown Raleigh!
When you’re a billionaire developer and want something from the public, why bother with obeying the law and showing due respect for your neighbors when it’s easier and more profitable to dispense with public review and successfully lobby the General Assembly to change the law? This is a story about a betrayal of our Midtown neighborhoods, but there is a message here for all our neighbors in Raleigh. I urge all residents of all the diverse communities within the City to read and take note.
City Council Meetings October 6, 2026
Highlights from October 6 Raleigh City Council meetings
Offsides: is this development getting ahead of infrastructure?
Before approving Z-43-25, I respectfully ask Council to require a meaningful examination of emergency access, overflow parking, Johnsdale Road capacity, school-event traffic, pedestrian movement and evacuation conditions. The question is not simply whether the proposed development can accommodate its own residents under normal conditions.
Raleigh: Asphalt Jungle?
The issue of persistent toxic pollution at abandoned industrial sites is not a site design problem. There is simply no way that rezoning for high-density residential development – of any type or design – should be allowed on asphalt plant sites until probable threats have been scientifically assessed and addressed, using modern methods.
PROTECT THE SCALE OF SOUTH PARK – PUBLIC HEARING
South Park neighbors deserve to know what we are being asked to give up before we know exactly what will replace it. Removing the overlay first – without a specific development plan showing our neighbors what will actually be built – asks our community to surrender protections now and evaluate the consequences later.
Stay Off the Thin Ice of Spot Zoning
honor the process, honor the public plan. Protect our publicly identified Historic and Neighborhood Character districts. Stay off of the thin ice of spot zoning.
September 15 City Council Meetings
Highlights from September 15 Work Session and Afternoon Session
Raleigh’s Plans were developed to handle anticipated growth
Raleigh’s Comprehensive Plan is designed to handle growth from 450,000 in 2015 to 580,000 by 2030. We may get to a population of 530,000 by 2030. There is no urgent need to upzone properties. We can handle the growth if you encourage development where you planned for it.