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cohorts, the newly-discovered wisdom of designing cities for people and not cars has come much too late and has been replaced by a new and equally pernicious monetization of our lives.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.

Raleigh’s Plans were developed to handle anticipated growth

Raleigh’s Plans were developed to handle anticipated growth

by | Sep 9, 2026 |

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.

A City We Build Together

A City We Build Together

by | Aug 5, 2026 |

A City We Build Together: How one citizen and one mayor showed what local government is supposed to be.

A ZONING SCAM

A ZONING SCAM

by | Jun 18, 2026 |

Some might say we want density on the bus line. But that is a joke!! Nobody who is paying half a million dollars for a condo will ever set foot on the bus! They will get in their car, which is parked in the parking garage in the building! I’ll bet even the people in the two tiny units making 60K a year won’t ride the bus. The City is using the excuse of a bus line to allow developers to knock down our neighborhoods.

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.