1999 Grant Recipient Information
North Carolina

Regional Development & Mobility Principles
Research Triangle Region, North Carolina

Abstract

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will develop strategies to change the 6-county Research Triangle region's current pattern of development from a conventional suburban expansion model to one based more on principles supportive of compact urban form with walkable neighborhoods, transit orientation, and greenspace and environmental conservation. The project builds on an extensive effort to examine regional development choices that is culminating in the selection of a preferred development pattern. The project covers a 3,500 square mile metropolitan region with a range of urban, suburban, rural, and natural areas that is home to more than 1 million people.

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will have four major elements:

A detailed description and analysis comparing the land use, transportation, fiscal and environmental implications of the preferred regional development pattern to the current development pattern.

A comprehensive set of strategies composed of design and development standards, infrastructure policies, fiscal tools, and legislative authority needed to achieve the preferred development pattern.

A set of computer visualizations and supporting explanatory material showing how places within the region could develop differently under the preferred pattern or under the current pattern.

A community outreach and feedback effort to explain the project's work, monitor communities' views of the work, and revise the work to address community concerns.

The project can help show other regions that examine different development patterns to implement their preferred pattern. Completion of the project and its evaluation plan will enable other rapidly growing regions with a history of fragmented regional planning authority:

• develop more successful regional visioning and planning processes,
• establish more extensive regional planning partnerships,
• develop better-informed and more realistic sets of implementation strategies, and undertake more effective community education and outreach efforts.

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