It just occurred to me that I never introduced myself here, whoops.
Hey, y’all! I’m Kéita; some of you may know me for my long and source-heavy posts or my elaborate maps/concept sketches on this site. Aside for that, I’m a 23-year old student based in Chapel Hill, where I’ve been living since middle school. I’m usually there or at Duke/Durham, but I’m also occasionally in Raleigh for school, acquaintances, and food/events.
I’m culturally and ethnically Japanese, and I work as a graduate research assistant in UNC/NC State’s Joint Dept. of Biomedical Engineering (but I also moonlight in the entertainment/event-planning industry). I brought those up because I like to think that’s kinda my thing: to look beyond traditional fields, boundaries etc. and bring more of the world and its cool or unusual ideas back to the Triangle. It only seems natural, fair, and inevitable to me that the Triangle (and NC at large) becomes more and more like the gateway between the South and the rest of the world, so I want to ensure we have the most awesome opportunities available to the biggest amount of people.
What does that mean, generally? I’m a fan of smart planning to build a lasting, effective community by having the right backbones like rapid transit, affordable housing, and walkable developments. I’m a fan of regional integration so that improvements to specific businesses or industries don’t just stay there; instead, they’d ideally spread out by better transit/cultural integration with Durham, having more equitable policies on stadiums and other high-risk/high-return developments, and finding more ways to establish the Triangle as a place that matters in the American collective memory.
I love the architecture of the Warehouse District and all the amazing food options around Glenwood Av. and Fayetteville St., and I feel like the development that is happening so far have been exciting but in a smart and responsible way. I’m a huge fan of all that, but I generally feel like Raleigh could do a bit better in some more abstract, hard-to-grasp-but-super-f’ing-important ways.
Like how do you make the lives of the working-class citizens of East Raleigh just as upgraded as what the six-figure-salary-earners are seeing? How do you make downtown, NCSU’s campus, upcoming developments etc. work better for upcoming businesses that want to call Raleigh home? How do you pull that off without letting things sink underwater once flash floods get worse in a few decades? A lot of people think Durham residents are too emotionally impulsive while they think Wake County tends to have lots of backward-minded or antisocial individualists; how do you bridge that gap and get your neighbors to realize we’re trying to be a city that’s not only better to be than Fayetteville or Rockingham, but also Kuala Lumpur and Frankfurt?
That’s why I’m here: because I think we’re at a super important inflection point, and this site seemed like a good place to talk about it 