Raleigh expects to have grown to a million residents by the year 2030, and it is undertaking a proactive planning effort to be ready to face the challenges that come with growth.

As Preservation North Carolina’s Director of Urban Issues and liaison to the city of Raleigh, I attended several workshops about the comprehensive planning process, read the draft of Planning Raleigh 2030 when it was released in December 2008, and prepared comments on behalf of PNC.

Since the challenges facing Raleigh are also being seen in several North Carolina cities, our perspective on Raleigh’s planning effort could be useful to communities across the state.

First, we commended the draft for having a whole section devoted to historic preservation and for recognizing that historic resources are a valuable cultural and economic asset for the city. The city acknowledged that preservation was interwoven into all the elements in the plan, whether sustainability, housing, transportation, or arts and culture. While the plan did specify the need to consider a site’s National Register or local landmark status in city approvals, we urged equal attention for historic districts because seemingly small approvals can have a larger, ripple effect. Likewise, historic sites and districts need to be included on the city’s planning and zoning maps, and data on National Register districts needs to be included in the city’s GIS system.

Second, we urged the development of guidelines for infill development based on context and scale. Not every neighborhood will seek a conservation district to ensure that infill development is in proportion to the existing buildings, but they all have a need for such protection. Despite the cooling of the real estate market, out-of-scale development continues to be a problem in Raleigh’s neighborhoods. In addition, we expressed concerns about the transition areas between high-density downtown and the surrounding lower-density historic neighborhoods. We asked for more specifics about how density in building forms, use and transit would transition from one area to another.

Third, the city is making a commendable effort at keeping sustainability issues in the foreground of the planning effort. The draft plan discussed requiring new public and public-private projects to meet the US Green Building Council’s LEED certification standards. The conflict between qualifying for LEED certification and meeting certified historic rehabilitation standards is well documented. We pointed out this potential conflict and encouraged the city to ensure that quality rehabilitation and adaptive reuse projects, which are elsewhere encouraged in the plan, are not set aside for the sake of new green technologies. We reminded the city that the greenest building is the one already built.

These three broad points recur again and again in urban planning discussions, and PNC is doing our part to keep preservation at the planning table. Please let us know if we can help with the discussion in your city. 

More information about Raleigh’s Comprehensive Plan update can be found at www.PlanningRaleigh2030.com.

Elizabeth Sappenfield is the Urban Issues Director for Preservation North Carolina.