Somebody hates constructive criticism, don’t they?
Repeatedly ranting that “Charlotte has all these things and I want them here, because we suck here until we are Charlotte” to a bunch of innocent bystanders isn’t really “constructive.”
🫠
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Living in RVA was fun, but I don’t regret the decision to move South to Raleigh. At the time, Richmond had really high crime, and parts of the city were pretty scary. I DO miss all the unique neighborhoods all around Richmond (The Fan, Church Hill, Shockoe Slip, Shockoe Bottom, Carytown, Lakeside, etc). The James is by far Richmond’s best feature. 
I also really miss the history (some good, some not-so-much) that happened in that city dating back to the colonial days. I will say that having lived in RVA for a period, we were always second fiddle to DC and the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area. (Think Fayetteville vs Raleigh…) It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, hence why we decided to leave.
We still go back up every year or so to see friends and run the Richmond Marathon.
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Oh yes, it is definitely still grittier than Raleigh, even if crime in the central districts has gone way down. Some of that actually is kind of fun (lots of artists and hipster-y types and cheap urban space for independent businesses), lots of that is obviously negative.
In general, I didn’t dwell on the negatives, because what’s the fun in that? To your point @GucciLittlePig , I’d still rather live in Raleigh!
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I feel something like these could be at home in either Five Points or Person street. I don’t think Hillsborough street quite knows what it’s trying to be yet. Is it geared towards college kids? Is it downtown? Is it something in between?
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While I can appreciate all of the things that an older city (that was larger at the time) than Raleigh, it’s sort of pointless to try to aspire to mimic them if we do not have the ability to become them. Our history and context is what it is, and we don’t have a river and we don’t have a large legacy urban fabric. What we can do is focus on the sort of experiences that are enabled by their context and do our best to interpret them for our city in a new and modern way that makes sense for us. We should also ask ourselves how we can be creative and bring new experiences to the city in fresh and unexpected ways.
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For sure. I was trying to pick out things Raleigh could emulate in its own way that aren’t dependent on being old or next to a water feature.
We can take the bones of a highly-walkable urban shopping zone with lots of independent shops/bars/restaurants, neighborhoods at a density in between skyscrapers and suburbs with corner stores and restaurants, and a connected zone of breweries, apartments, and activities at a warehouse scale without doing them exactly the way Richmond has. And I think we have areas that are starting to do those things!
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While North Hills is the 500 pound gorilla that sucks all the attention in our city, the real opportunities (IMO) lay elsewhere. Here are some of my thoughts:
*While we don’t have a dense walkable residential district like The Fan, we do have a grid that moves eastward from downtown that could become much denser and more active.
*The Village District provides a very unique opportunity for Raleigh to create an even more dynamic live/work/shop/play neighborhood that can still be much more than it currently is.
*The city should really do everything it can to further encourage Hillsborough St. densification and activity, with a focus on bridging to the west side of downtown through the Morgan St. corridor where the most opportunity is. The road changes/improvements a few years back have given the city a terrific platform onto which this can happen.
*Iron District. This entire area should be a huge focus for the city. It’s an opportunity to take a generally neglected area and establish a new fun and funky mixed use neighborhood.
*Lake Wheeler/S Saunders: I may be in the minority here, but I see this as more important than Downtown South. This corridor can more easily connect to downtown proper and connect one of the city’s most important resources (Dix) to the very center of the city. Like the Iron District, the possibilities of this district are enormous.
The good news is that all of these areas are seeing action today, and all of them will contribute to what Raleigh will become tomorrow.
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Charlotte’s downtown is low key less engaging to walk around than Raleigh’s. NoDa is two blocks, and South End is dense but not really walkable outside small chunks and not very cohesive. Weak for a city its size. Charlotte should be punching up and it is very telling that they pick fights with cities half their size.
I enjoy visiting the place and I envy the proximity to the mountains and the light rail. The attitude and sterile culture of the place is not something I envy.
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These are all great.
Couple different recent posts I want to respond to, the first to @jdb820, being that Raleigh and Durham both benefit from their proximity to the region’s biggest economic driver, but that also means that Raleigh will have some things that are signifiers of a “big city” (larger skyline, more white collar jobs, distinct shopping and dining districts) and Durham will have some as well (arty vibe, downtown baseball stadium, repurposed industrial buildings). Combine DTR and DTD and situate them right next to each other and nobody is complaining about how we measure up against Charlotte. In fact, if you combine the pre-war neighborhoods of Raleigh and Durham, the region ends up having quite a bit of traditional urban fabric with a street grid, older homes, and interspersed retail/commercial that punches at or above its weight for the South.
The fact that we can’t do that is part of the cost of being in a polycentric region. There is no getting around that. I know this won’t be the final word on this because we end up talking about this every time someone brings up the word Charlotte, but you’re never going to get everything you want in either downtown, and comparing it to Charlotte is pointless (note that this does not and should not preclude finding ways to make our regional downtowns more interconnected through things like commuter rail).
As for Richmond, it’s traditional urban fabric is exceptional for the south, even though downtown is a big fat dead zone (I gotta imagine WFH has made it even worse). However, pursuant to my point above, I think you’d find that Raleigh and Durham side-by-side have more of that urban fabric than we realize when looking at them both in a vacuum.
Can’t do much about that river, though!
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Here’s a context metric that’s important to understand.
Richmond 1910 Census: 127,628
Raleigh 1910 Census: 19,218
Raleigh didn’t cross 127,628 until 1972.
1910 represents the built environment before cars were widespread. Heck, they weren’t even widely used until after WW1. Richmond’s 1920 population was over 170,000. That’s a threshold that Raleigh didn’t reach until 1984.
We aren’t working with much history in Raleigh. This is why there’s so much desire by so many who are either Raleigh natives or long time residents to preserve what we do have. Even many of the ITB neighborhoods up Glenwood aren’t yet 100 years old.
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I applaud @John for the consistent context in exposing this area of the push / pull as Raleigh evolves
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And the Artery plays a role in connecting nearly all of these for ped/bike.
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Just looking at the UP page for RVA and noticed this…
Nice to see that someone else has a little Raleigh envy and didn’t call out the town (yes I did) on the other side of NC.
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When I lived there for a short time in the mid 1980’s, they gave a “murder count” every day on the radio. I loved how the city layout actually made sense so getting around was a breeze. Lots of cool neighborhoods and lots of character. Gritty, yes but still interesting. The high crime rate was just a little more than was comfortable for me at the time.
Two of the four years I lived there we were ranked at #4 and #5 as the highest murder rate in the US. Not the kind of place we wanted to raise kidos, so we decided our stay in RVA would be limited and we left shortly after my wife graduated from VCU.
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This building sounds terrifying to be in, just saying.
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Nope. Not really scared of heights but, nope.
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I hate all those new super skinny, super tall “pencil” looking buildings that stick out and tower above NY’s skyline now. They stick out like a sore thumb and just look… GOOFY.
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