God, Indy is so bad. Just a parody of Boomer/GenX middle class liberal politics.
Like yes, let’s put the YIMBY lady in a poll with Mark Robinson, Thom Tillis, and Phil Berger. Tall buildings within sight are clearly worse than racism and transphobia.
I know right like they don’t even live downtown give me a break real go to Greensboro I would literally buy a NIMBY bus and drive them to Greensboro.
WOW. What HAPPENED to IndyWeek? I’ve never agreed with them 100% but they were the publication that used to absolutely destroy the Council of No, and now they’re championing the Council of No and their astroturf groups. I understand the scales might have been tipped somewhat on affordability and equity but in my opinion that was baked in when the Council of No made growth stagnate for two years just before a pandemic and construction crunch. It’s a complete 180 from what they were saying three years ago. Maybe I’m answering my own question here, but they just seem to be contrarian. Now that a pro-growth Council is in power, they want to slow stuff down? I have no idea.
The Indy endorsed the whole “council of no”. Something they admit was a bit of a mistake, but their priorities center communication and engagement with citizens, especially the marginalized, and especially the perception of engagement above all. So, getting rid of the CACs (even when they marginalized people in their own special way) was pretty much the worst possible action the city could do in their eyes.
The messaging that everyone needs to be heard is a defacto way to just grind everything to a halt. I have to believe that the current council knows that a backlash is coming and that they are setting up development for years to come with all of their rezonings.
I hate to keep going back to this topic, but the mayor and the council have a fiduciary responsibility that is fundamentally at odds with relying on full community agreement to changes in our city. This is because people generally resist change and are most comfortable with the status quo. The trouble for a city like Raleigh is that maintaining the status quo becomes VERY expensive as infrastructure nears its end of life, and Raleigh faces a lot of that in years to come. The lens through which people want to see this is through feel good topics like affordable housing, quality of life, environmental stewardship, etc., but running a successful city always comes down to dollars. If we don’t have enough of them, we either have to substantially raise taxes, curtail services, or some combination of both. Without new development that doesn’t exponentially expand our infrastructure as a result, we risk both higher taxes and loss of service in the future. Sure everyone would like to keep everything just the way it is and has been, but it’s not a realistic future.
The Indy seems to be a publication that rightfully champions the feel good topics of housing affordability, quality of life, environmental stewardship, social justice, voices heard, etc., but those functionally cannot exist in a vacuum or without context.
As for the survey, it seems as if the survey is purposely teeing up the answer (winner) that they may want by splitting the votes of one group of thinking while isolating the other into a single camp of votes. Having Cox and MaryAnn Baldwin in their categories with the others almost assures that each of them will “win” their category.
Yes, I agree with this entirely. I will say though, the Indy uses reader suggestions for the poll options, I believe. They didn’t intentionally use Baldwin and Cox that way. This survey is more a look at their readers than the publication itself.
Reader suggestions notwithstanding, The Indy has editorial freedom to shape the survey based on their community of readers and any biases. I am not convinced that survey choices are completely objectively derived.
Are the Mayor and Council’s goals fundamentally at odds with community agreement -or with community ignorance and convenience?
If you:
tend to be poorly engaged in local issues;
only have a surface-level understanding of how things get built, and;
react to activists hashtags or mass public outrage because that’s the first time you’re suddenly made aware of big, scary changes (without even learning about their benefits)
…then I think you’d act in a reactionary, anti-development way even if you don’t have fundamentally anti-development views. After all, your own little corner of the world feels like a safe and familiar bubble, and any change to your hard-earned status quo feels threatening and scary because you don’t know any better.
I think it’s dumb and counterproductive to scapegoat reactionary NIMBYism as a reason to discredit public outreach and direct democracy -especially if it’s a symptom for deeper problems with the quality and depth of public discourse in our society. If we allow for (and enable in the first place) people to have richer conversations and investigations of things that matter, that can build a level of consensus towards change and progress even if it’s not unanimous. After all, that’s the premise of @dtraleigh’s blog and this community, right? So long as that’s true, I think it’s wrong to say that it’s fundamentally impossible. There’s a middle man (a lack of meaningful public debate) that’s hard to tackle, but I don’t think that gives us permission to skip that step and wholly discount public outreach and engagement.
TL/DR: if you get rid of community consensus because you’re scared of status quo defenders, I think all you’re doing is giving angry naysayers a reason to band together.
Well, even beyond what’s happening locally, there is an alarming (in my opinion) number of people being elected nationwide who have no clue how to do the actual work of their elected office. It’s as if being professional, knowledgeable, and understanding the work itself are somehow liabilities.
That’s true. Politicians, now more than ever, are incentivized to rally their base and provoke political opponents as if politics is a sport rather than a space for compromise and progress.
What I meant was that I think the way voters and leaders are bad at deliberating and gathering consensus is not the cause of reactionary NIMBYism, but a symptom of deeper issues like what you just mentioned. Just wanted to make sure we’re pointing out the correct problem.
I’d like to pull in this excellent piece from strong towns: Best of 2020: Stop Asking the Public What They Want
And luckily, this being the survey topic, it’s relevant:
As a rule, your average Joe Citizen is an expert in the ways they use and experience the public realm. Residents can easily and meaningfully answer questions like these:
- Where is it scary to walk or dangerous to cross the street?
- Where is there insufficient lighting at night?
- What recreational opportunities do you wish you didn’t have to leave your neighborhood for?
- What is the thing you would be most excited to show an out-of-town visitor about your neighborhood?
- What is the thing you would be most ashamed to show them?
As a rule, your average Joe Citizen is not an expert in the design or economics of the built environment. Residents who aren’t built-environment professionals are not well suited to answering questions like these:
- Does this street require an additional travel lane?
- Should the travel lanes be 10 or 12 feet wide?
- Has a sufficient amount of affordable housing been built in our community in the past few years?
- Would a grocery store likely succeed if it opened at this intersection?
- Does the proposed apartment complex have enough parking?
I don’t think gathering consensus is necessary or even ideal. What matters is the city doing things that positively impact people in their community. 50k people voted for mayor in 2019. That’s 12% of the city’s population, and many of those likely only do a little research just before the election and then wait till the next one. There is no “mass public outrage”, because the majority of the public simply doesn’t care at all and just waits to see what will happen. And I don’t think that’s wrong. Caring about politics and urbanism to the extent that many of us do is a privilege, not a requirement.
I understand that there is a difference of philosophy here, and that some of it can sound elitist. But I think having experts is a good thing. Educating people with resources like Strong Towns, NotJustBikes, etc. is great if they’re interested, and showing people what “could be” is important. But most people are either happy with letting others vote for them, and trusting democracy to yield a good result, or a small minority vote, trust the officials they voted to make the best decisions for the city, and move on with their lives, ignoring essentially everything else. And as much as I operate differently, I don’t think that’s wrong for them.
Some people don’t vote so that they can complain about the politicians and not feel accountable.
Downtown Raleigh Alliance annual survey:
Thanks for sharing. I don’t live or work downtown, but I’m a Raleigh native and I support growth and improvement in that area. Happy to put in my 2 cents worth.
Took the survey. Thanks for sharing it.
Do you have the link to the page from the site that has the survey?
That SurveyMonkey URL is the direct link to the survey. The first page with the map of downtown Raleigh’s just a prompt without any inputs, but it’s still a legit part of the survey; you have to click “next” to see the actual questions.
I got it from their newsletter.
some jobs i had in raleigh in the early 2000s were a commute from near north ridge shopping center to Gresham lake road near capital blvd. approx 4 miles. biking at the time would (to me) have been a bit hairy with traffic mingling for my taste. new market way to spring forest to rainwater to gresham lake road to then hop in a van and drive all over the triangle delivering wheelchairs and oxygen supplies. if bike lanes were on all these roads at the time…sure, some days i would have biked. but i have a feeling most would not have biked. traffic insignificance. after that i commuted from the same locale to apex by car…impossible by bike with any level of infrastructure. and transit would have been impossible due to my shift time. if its true downtown raleigh is at 6500 people per sq mile get more r-lines operating and more cheap used car lots.