I wanna be friends with the people buying $10M condos in Raleigh!
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This Tuesday Oct 1st , Council will discuss rezoning request for 200 , 206 , 210 , S. West St. from
12 stories to 40 stories .
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opps ==== My Bad thatās S not N
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200 S. West St. is the corner of Hargett St . / West St .
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Thanks for the heads up, @nipper.dwight!
Seems the Public Hearing for this is closed and this will be discussed in the 1p session (not 7p). See agenda here: https://go.boarddocs.com/nc/raleigh/Board.nsf/Public (if the link works)
I blocked this off on my calendar to go and watch. BTW, when I talked to the law firm working this rezoning request for Go Triangle they suggested this was the expected vote date for City Council. It will be interesting to see if our Council of No votes yes this close to their re-election attempts. If they vote down affordable housing this close to the vote could be very interesting firepower for YIMBYs.
If anybody else is able to join, let me know.
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Watching the transition of single family units to apartment blocks in Raleigh, Iām always reminded of mid-level development like one would see in Parisā 9th Arrondissement. Pleasant, walkable, and transit-oriented.
(One could hallucinate a district of Texas Doughnuts looking the same way.)
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You can make a very dense city with just seven story apartment blocks.
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Buildings were built to last Centuries, with timeless style.
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Most famous European cities didnāt really get big until the 1800ās. City of London and what we now call Greater London Metropolitan Area in 1670 was less than 5% the size of the current area London metro now occupies.
Raleigh was founded in 1792 only a 120-ish years after this map of London was made.
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Agreed. Although, the layout of Paris is dictated by centuries old street layouts, the end effect is still pretty classy for being relatively low-rise.
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The core of Rome is the same way. In part heights are do to the limitation of how many flights up people would walk for the many centuries with out elevators. Seems to that is the 5-7 story range. If we built by that standard today, There would be nothing over 2 stories, lol.
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Todays Paris was build in 1850ās to 1870ās and vast majority of what was there before was demolished.
From Wikepedia
" Haussmannās renovation of Paris was a vast public works program commissioned by Emperor [NapolĆ©on III]) and directed by his [prefect] of the [Seine], [Georges-EugĆØne Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of medieval neighborhoods that were deemed overcrowded and unhealthy by officials at the time; the building of wide avenues; new parks and squares"
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Elevators werenāt widely used until the 20th Century. Iām sure that the 7 floors of Paris were most likely due to the number of flights that people were willing and able to consistently walk in their daily lives.
Interesting tid-bit, the wealthy in cities like Paris occupied the lower floors of buildings because they were easier to reach. The same was true for hotels. The nicest and most expensive rooms were on the lower floors.
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The old streets were narrow and good for blocking by throwing up a barricade. Some arguments are out there that Napoleon the 3rd rebuilt them so that his army could sweep out any would be revolutionaries. There is a really good podcast called https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ which covers the original french revolution, and then the general revolutions going on in the 1800s in Europe. He talks about the tearing down and rebuilding on Paris in there.
Barcelonaās set up with the Super Blocks is another good example of that midrise density.
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Vox has a good video on this. Donāt have the link, will find it laterā¦
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Probably could! But with the donuts come all the space taken up for parking decks, make it less population-dense, which means less foot traffic, which means the ground-level retail has a harder time making a profit. Plus, thereās usually large sections of the faces of these donuts that are dedicated for garage entry/exits. Less close retail options means you have to drive more to get the things you need. All the residents using their cars more means you need more lanes, which makes everything even less dense. And the positive feedback cycle continues.
To get the same density while including all that parking you need to build a lot taller, which then becomes much more expensive. I believe thereās a reason that car ownership is so much lower in Europe; itās just hard to build walkable human-scale cities and that can also support very high levels of car ownership.
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The Planning Commission Agenda for Tuesday November 12th includes changing height in feet for all projects 7 stories to 40 stories to unlimited # of feet !
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Approved by the Planning Commission
āOne thing I get excited about this [height limit removal] that we might not have an entire skyline of just flat buildingsā ā Planning Commission Member
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Is this through now or will it go in front of CC next?
I hope this isnāt too late affect some of the projects already under development! It would be great to see some extended crowns on Nexus for example.
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