H-S, TDN op-eds frame the development review debate: the how's vs. the what's

A newcomer to the Bull City might scratch their heads over the ongoing mention of the "development review process" in the local papers, and here at BCR, and on other blogs, and neighborhood listservs, and so forth.

It's a complicated subject, and one that gets very quickly into detailed discussions of land use practices and policies. Heck, even the City Council is taking its sweet time with the subject, with Ted Voorhees spoon-feeding pieces of the recommended development review streamlining a month at a time until January.

But if you want an introduction to what is, I suspect, the subtext behind the debate, you could do a lot worse than to closely read and contrast the perspectives in two separate guest columns last week: a Wednesday op-ed in the Herald-Sun supporting development review streamlining, and a guest column in Saturday's The Durham News raising caution about growth.

First, the H-S column, from Durham Chamber of Commerce vice-chair (and former Board of Adjustment chair) Bill Brian and Durham Capital Program Advisory Committee chair Patrick Byker, both of whom are active in local development circles:

[T]here are two parts to the development process. The first is zoning, which is a legislative decision that only our city or county elected officials can make, with plenty of notice provided to any potentially affected citizens. The zoning determines what use (retail, office, industrial or residential) can be developed in a particular spot, and at what density.

The second phase is the site plan, which shows how the project actually will be built to comply with technical requirements of existing law. The site plan is an administrative approval, based on reviews of plans by numerous city and county departments.

For both the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and the Capital Program Advisory Committee (CPAC), the focus on streamlining the development review process has been directed at the site plan stage. Too often, unnecessary conflicts between departments and arbitrary decisions within Durham's government can slow this process to a crawl. According to MWH Global, the city's own consultant for speeding up delivery of bond-funded projects, the site plan process in Durham takes months, while in similar cities, such approvals take only weeks.

If the Brian/Byker piece speaks to the "how" of development -- that is, the technical process by which development moves forward or, more frequently, becomes caught in the cog of local governance -- the Rev. Carl Kenney addresses the "what" of development, or what kind of growth is or is not good for the Bull City in his view, in his The Durham News column this week:

Slow the massive growth. Take a look at how Durham is beginning to look and feel like -- someone hold my hand -- Raleigh. There's nothing wrong with Raleigh. It's a nice place with wonderful people. Some of my best friends live in Raleigh. According to many of the national lists, it is one of the best places to live in America. I celebrate that, but I don't want to live in Raleigh....

[Durham has] homegrown businesses in an area with an idiosyncratic appeal. I get tired of the same ole, same ole that can be found in typical city, U.S. of A. I don't want a Wal-Mart and Target on every corner surrounded by the normal cast of national chains. I'd rather buy my books at the Regulator versus adding to the Barnes & Noble fortune....

Growth and change can be good. But they also can be the catalyst that slowly confiscates that special brand that makes places like Durham so special. Our quest to become bigger and better could ultimately deprive us of the things we love most about our community.

Of course, Kenney isn't speaking directly to the same issue as Brian/Byker; there's nary a mention of the development review process in his column, which is focused intently on the character of growth and fears over what growth brings to a community.

Yet at its heart, I suspect Kenney's piece reflects the concerns that many have raised about the proposals to streamline Durham's development review process. (I'd also be shocked if the recent focus on the subject hasn't motivated this and other discussions of the topic.)

It doesn't help matters, of course, that the proposal to remove the ability of the Planning Commission to defer cases for one or more cycles has been at the top of the batting order on this discussion, whereas the bulk of the review topics to be discussed in the coming months by Council are focused much more intensely on the site plan and project technical review stages.

All of which has helped to bring this down to a discussion of growth's merits, not technical process. And which has helped to reframe this as a discussion on whether or not Durham should grow, not how it handles approved growth.

In some ways, the whole situation reminds me of the debate last year over building apartments off Garrett Rd. at US 15-501, at the old Garrett Farms. Citizens groups raised an objection to the apartment complex that focused on macro-level issues: growth, sprawl, traffic, water, the environment, historic preservation. Many of which essentially boiled down to, "We don't need to fill Durham's landscape with more apartment complexes."

On the other side was the argument that Diane Catotti made during the project hearing: the site in question is immediately adjacent to a major future transit corridor, and is precisely the place where one wants to add density. If you're not going to add dense development here, right along the route of a future light-rail or bus-rapid-transit line, where are you going to support population growth?

The unsaid response one can feel in the room on the part of residents often seems to be, "Why support population growth at all?"

Which leads me to what I'll call The BCR Cardinal Rule of Development: No one moves to a place because of what it will be. They move there because of what it is.

That is, many people who've moved to Durham did so because they liked its size -- a small city with the cultural offerings and academic resources of a larger place, but small enough to be manageable and accessible -- but might not have liked it if it were the size of Raleigh or Charlotte, or of Chapel Hill.

No one moves to a neighborhood looking forward to how the area will look when that apartment complex is built ten years later, or that new road goes by in a few years, or construction starts on a shopping center. "If I wanted those things," they might say, "I'd move to a place that had them!"

Which is not precisely the argument Kenney is making, of course, and I don't want to trivialize his thesis, centered on preserving Durham's funky, unique character. Still, whatever conception of Durham you want to maintain -- be it the gritty charm of central Durham, or the rural character of North Durham, or the wooded forestry of West Durham -- you probably moved where you are because you like it there.

...

The problem with a debate centered around these two points, of course, is that they are, in fact, talking about very different things. Whether and how Durham ought to grow is a very different question than how to make approved growth become executed as effectively as possible.

While the business and development community have seemingly focused on the latter, neighborhoods as a whole have fixated on the former. Kenney's description of the "massive growth" of the Durham area is something that I believe many Durhamites would agree with.

(Leaving aside, of course, the fact that Durham's long-term growth rate averages only about 2% per year, a far lower rate than in other Triangle communities, and a rate that's fairly in line with the general national population growth rate. Or the dangers of linking the word "sprawl" to Durham's growth, when Durham's at the heart of the region's employment center, Research Triangle Park. If anything, our neighbors in Wake and Johnston County have been overabsorbing growth in recent decades, with many of these new residents driving all the way from places like Garner and Clayton and Knightdale to jobs in the park. If that's not sprawl, I don't know what is.)

Still, whether or not the question of "massive growth" is more of a case of perception or of reality, the fact is, it highlights the fact that this debate is really two conversations talking past each other.

For many folks who've watched Durham struggle as the "underdog" of the Triangle region for years, who remember the days when the region's development community thought the folks building Woodcroft were crazy (I mean, who would want to live in Durham?), the last decade's growth has been a long-overdue recognition of the real embarrassment of riches our city enjoys.

At the same time, there's a very real and contrary concept evident in the conversation that Kenney's column illuminates -- the conceit of what we might call "salutary neglect," a term more usually applied to the American colonies' sociopolitical development during their decades of being ignored by the British, and one which has meaning here.

To a certain extent, many of the very uniquely Durham institutions that we love and celebrate so much did, in fact, grow up and become nurtured in a town where there wasn't the economic pressure and competition from hordes of national chain businesses, where local institutions could thrive in a welcoming environment.

Will development drive out these institutions? Unlikely, I'd argue, particularly since so much of the growth is occurring at Durham's periphery, in precisely those areas where local businesses aren't all that extant in the first place. Additionally, while Durham's image has repaired itself a great deal in the two decades since Woodcroft, the fact is that the unfair portrait of the Bull City that exists in the mass media and in water-cooler buzz about Durham tends to bring a self-selecting type of new resident to our city -- the kind of resident who rejoices in our unique, special, local institutions.

Still, this axis is just one of many surrounding the idea of growth in Durham, be it the loss of local businesses,  the recent drought, stormwater clean-up costs, the housing crisis, and the perceived loss of open space.

Ultimately, this fear underpins the challenge supporters of development review have in the months to come: how to frame this as something other than a referendum on whether growth is good?

Brian and Byker make a good start to that discourse with their discussion of the economics of growth, and while some listserv participants have quibbled with the question of whether residential growth "pays for itself" (a false threshold, for reasons too tangential to go into here), Durham remains a city with a challenged tax base.

Non-taxable institutions like Duke, entrenched poverty in some central Durham neighborhoods, and the significant tax breaks enjoyed by companies in Research Triangle Park mean that Durham faces the expenses of a large, urban county without the commensurate tax base to support it.

It's a logical argument in addressing the benefits of growth.

But logical arguments over growth are fixing to square off against heartfelt, emotional arguments over growth -- the latter of which spurred by visually powerful symbols such as the removal of trees in South Durham to support new shopping centers, or the visuals of empty reservoirs last year.

At the end of the day, I suspect supporters of changes in the way Durham reviews site plans and development projects aren't looking for this to become a public debate on whether growth is good. But it looks like the discussion is walking into that very perfect storm.

Comments

[seth vidal]

I know it seems hard to believe but it is not unheard of for a city to ban the typical generica and chains from w/i city limits entirely. I see more and more people worried about durham ending up looking entirely like the 15-501 corridor of cheap-plastic-crap. If we're serious about it then we should consider proposing controls on it. Montpelier, VT did so and it has helped maintain the character of their city.

And more to the point, there's nothing wrong with discouraging growth. As more people will come to realize, growing w/o bound is most often referred to as cancer, this includes the economic and population arenas, too.

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

Thanks for another well-reasoned analysis of the merits of growth. I might suggest that there is a "third way" between the no-growth activists and the more conservative / Republican types: simply reduce the corporate welfare handed out to development interests.

I am reminded of a town in northwest NJ, who simply stopped providing city sewer as a means of controlling growth (new residents have to dig their own wells). While this is a drastic scheme unlikely to work in an urban environment, the city of Durham could stop a lot of growth by refusing to bend over backwards in providing new streets, schools, developer kickbacks in the form of tax exemptions, etc. The money could be returned to taxpayers, which in itself would stimulate growth (or reduce hunger, or reduce demolition due to unpaid tax bills, depending on your point of view).

Diane Catotti makes a great point about high-density development along transit corridors. While I prefer to shop at the Regulator, I appreciate having a giant bookstore within an easy drive of downtown. Let southern Durham continue to grow into soulless suburbia (and grow our tax base), and the more hardy types will continue to come downtown.

[Chris Ketchel]

hmmm... a lot to think about... and even more...
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_01cities#
Sorry - BCR Cardinal Rule - "I moved here for what it will become!"
I believe MORE macro vision, or "Real4Site" is needed in the planning biz.
"the future's so bright I need to wear shades"

[Michael Bacon]

Pretty good post in general, Kevin, but there was one little parenthetical paragraph in there that, had I been eating something, probably would have made me choke on it:

"Leaving aside, of course, the fact that Durham's long-term growth rate averages only about 2% per year, a far lower rate than in other Triangle communities, and a rate that's fairly in line with the general national population growth rate."

Where in the world did you get that comparison? All of the data I can find suggests that the US population growth rate has been less than 1% annually for the past 10-15 years, and if this site (http://www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm) is accurate, has only very rarely gotten up in the 2% range. That means Durham is growing at over twice the national average, and remember, this is an exponential growth term, so the disparity becomes much more dramatic over time. How on earth did you justify that as "fairly in line" with the national rate?

Aside from that, saying that it's "far lower than in other Triangle communities," well, I can only presume you're comparing us to Wake and Johnston Counties. Johnston has a high growth rate, but is still a far smaller county than Durham. As for Wake County, well, according to this list (http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/15/real_estate/fastest_growing_US_counties/) of the nation's 100 fastest growing counties between '04 and '05, of counties with over 400,000 people in them, only seven other counties in the entire country grew at a faster rate (Wake was at 4.0% annually). Hell, even Mecklenburg County, widely acknowledged as a booming metropolis, only registered an annual 2.7% between 2003 and 2005. If Durham's growth looks cool next to its neighbors, it's only because we're sitting next to a supernova.

Let me be clear -- I am fully in favor of a healthy growth rate for Durham. I want more development, and I want more residents. But, I want that growth to be in the urban core, which actually significantly lost population for decades, and frankly could probably absorb 20-30k people without too much difficulty and while only enhancing the character of the town that we love so much. (My neighborhood alone could easily handle another 1-2k, if built in the right place.) That will only happen, though, if we actually improve our public transportation, to make it possible to live in town without turning every central city road into an unholy mess of traffic.

[Jay Zenner]

As usual, your piece is an excellent review of the issues surrounding this debate. However, there may be one perspective that is missed, that is, individual property owners. These folks are sometimes mistakenly lumped with "developers/business owners."

Small example...on the short three block street where I live three years ago there were a half dozen small lots either considered too trashy to build on or held as buffers by their original owners. A builder came along and started buying the lots and building small houses. One lot required a hearing to get a minor adjustment to a setback requirement that delayed construction for several months. Some neighbors felt a little betrayed that the owners would sell these lots. Justified? I don't think so. The homes are nice and brought us some nice new nieghbors and probably helped everybody's values.

Bigger example...a larger tract in the path of rampant growth within the city that has been in the same family for years and was originally farmed. There is pressure from one side to increase its assessment value and taxes but it cannot be sold for its full value unless the family undertakes an effort to get part of the property rezoned that will be expensive, lengthly and uncertain. Fair to them? I don't think so.

When I-40 was opened from Raleigh to the coast, commuting from some of our rural counties to Raleigh or Wilmington became a possibility. People looking for five acres of heaven to build their dream homes where often able to find farmers that were willing to sell a corner off their farms to do that. Conflicts arose as raising hogs displaced tobacco as North Carolina's chief agricultural crop and the farmer's deeply held feeling that he had the right to use his land to support his family in the best way he could was challenged. Strong agricultural smells where not what the newbies had expected and pressure was created to establish zoning where there had never been any before. So whose indignation is justified?

People do choose where to live for what it is and not what it will be later. Durham does have a texture that is complemented by some development, especially what is going on downtown. It is what distinguishes Durham from dozens of other cities in the Southeast including Raleigh.

But is is naive to think that this can be preserved perfectly and will never change. The process for approving development will never satisfy everybody no matter how much we tinker with it. For it to work, it is just as important to put the process in the hands of people with integrity, good judgement, and especially wisdom.

[Geoff Green]

Interesting piece, but I have to disagree with this:

"No one moves to a neighborhood looking forward to how the area will look when that apartment complex is built ten years later, or that new road goes by in a few years, or construction starts on a shopping center. "If I wanted those things," they might say, "I'd move to a place that had them!"

For someone like me, that's definitely true. For my family and most of my friends, who look for houses with a bit of history in them, that's true as well. But for an awful lot of people, they put a priority on price per square foot and what their community will look like in the future. Think of all those people who purchase houses in brand-new developments, where the majority of the houses are under construction or are just empty plots of land. Or all those folks out in Maricopa, Arizona, recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine, where folks bought because they could buy houses that were cheap on a per-square-foot basis even though the place was hours from their workplaces in Phoenix. And look at the City-Data Raleigh forums, where folks tout new developments because there's going to be a Target or a Wal-Mart right down the road that's easy to reach by car.

[chris]

Kevin - You wrote a whole lot of words, but it seems to be in an effort to justify a fundamentally illogical position. As far as I can tell, you are saying:

Premise 1: Growth/Development is good.
Premise 2: Growth/Development is inevitable
Conclusion: We should encourage Growth/Development.

My position (which I believe is held by many in Durham) is:

Premise 1: Growth/Development is bad.
Premise 2: Growth/Development is inevitable.
Conclusion: We should not encourage Growth/Development.

After reading your blog for some time, I think that you (and many others) have some sort of romantic feeling for growth that is full of contradictions. You seem to like the idea of a vibrant, dense downtown area, but there are plenty of places like that in this country where you could choose live. Why don't you live in those existing urban areas? High taxes? High property values? Traffic congestion?

These conditions are probably inevitable, but I see absolutely no logical reason to ENCOURAGE the process of growth and development. I believe that a slower growth rate relative to the rest of the triangle has actually increased Durham's competitive advantages, and made it a nicer place to live. If people think Durham is a lousy place, and won't move here, then that's great!

If you pro-development guys get your way, then I sell my house, make a bunch of money, and move to the next up-and-coming area in this country. If the development happens at a more pleasant slow pace, then I stick around longer and continue to enjoy having a great job without having to live in a big city.

[David Rollins]

I just wanted to point out to Chris that my position neither encourages nor discourages development (the "third way"), and also that Kevin does in fact live in a vibrant, dense downtown area.

[Masshole]

It should probably be pointed out that Patrick Byker, as an attorney, makes an awful lot of money representing developers going through the zoning/development process in Durham. As such, he can hardly be considered unbiased in all of this.

[Kevin Davis]

Hi all,

This is what I love about the blog (and everyone who reads it) -- getting to come home from work to a vigorous debate and interesting reading.

Quick disclaimer: A challenge for me or any placeblogger lies in trying to balance being informational and analytical with sharing my opinions. I try to lean towards the former but it's only natural to share my biases, which I try to do transparently so it's clear where I'm coming from. I would consider myself "moderate" on growth. Believe me, I grew up in a city (Orlando) that has overgrown and has ravaged itself with poor planning and poor development standards. On the other hand, I've lived in places where development rules were so stringent as to create economic discrimination and force many residents to either live in a less-than-desirable housing stock or to "drive till they qualified." (This would be metro Boston, where communities got away for years with requiring large lots, single-family-only development, and school growth restrictions as a way of boosting local property values -- and turning much of the Route 128/I-495 belt into economically exclusive suburbs. There are a number of cities and towns in Wake Co. right now trying to follow EXACTLY the same path.)

@Michael: Darn it, you went and made me pull the Census dataset. I will grant you that the annual US population growth may be less than the 2% level I quoted. On the other hand, some interesting data (drawn from http://www.census.gov/popest/counties/files/CO-EST2007-ALLDATA.csv)--

1) Across all US counties, from 2000-2007 the average total population growth, for those counties with populations over 150,000 which did not experience population loss, is 11.27%.

2) If we look at counties with populations over 150,000 with positive population growth, it looks like Durham ranked right at #100 between 2000 and 2007. Our cumulative growth rate during the period was 14.18%.

3) The annual average growth rate of counties in item (1) above is 1.54% per annum. Durham's is 1.91% per annum in these other counties.

I've limited this analysis to counties experiencing growth because, facing facts, the Sunbelt and West are the growing regions of the country, and it seems fair to compare like with like.

As I've noted on another post, I'd be thrilled to see local government set a target annual growth rate and approve no more residential developments in a year than would fulfill that growth target. (You'd need to make some kind of market for this, such that projects that go belly-up have a way of transferring the right to build to another developer. Of course, I'm sure there's some legal construct that blocks this from taking place.)

No disagreement on wanting to see more growth in the core. Though worth noting that if you want to see a political bloodbath, look for this issue ten years from now. (We saw it in a very small way in Denise Hester's very public concerns over the idea of dense development around transit stations in East Durham bringing in condos and forcing out long-time residents.)

@Chris: My wife and I did live in Boston for many years. Yes, we like dense, urban places. There is, however, a level of density we like, and a level that's greater than we like. For me, Boston was *too* dense and urban. I wanted a smaller city, with the amenities of an urban area, where we could live close to downtown and have access to those elements, while actually getting to know neighbors. For us, Durham fit the bill perfectly.

I would, as noted above, push back on the "pro-development" label. I hope it's clarified where I'm coming from. I'd also note that, given watershed restrictions and the small size of the county, plus the amount of land reserved for RTP and industrial use, there's little chance of Durham becoming a really "big city" -- though I'm not qualified to take a wag at eventual carrying capacity, I don't see how it could be that high.

@Geoff: Good point. I would note that the families moving to these subdivisions still are basing their moves in part on the future they _expect_ to happen, but I concede the need to be more precise in my phrasiology. :)

[Michael Bacon]

Kevin,

I should be clear that I don't think 2% counts as runaway growth or something, just that I'd really rather not see it go any higher. (And the fact that I'd also rather see the growth concentrated in the core, but we covered that...)

Since we're getting into the hypotheticals about the eventual size of Durham, I'll just point out again that the city covers less than half the area of the county. Even taking out RTP and the bits of Chapel Hill, were urbanized Durham to grow to the size of the county boundaries, and actually fill up at "big city" population densities, it would have plenty of room for 600-700k people. Not that I want this, but I hardly think the county size is a restricter here.

[chris]

Kevin - Your response is evasive. Common sense dictates that city sizes can be described as a continuum with small towns on one end, and large urban cities on the other. It's obvious from reading your blog that you want to see Durham move closer towards the large city side of things. I can cite your own words if you want.

Here's the point. I'm asserting that increases in growth/development over time will lead to increases in in property taxes and increases in traffic congestion. Can you point to examples where urbanization of an area has prompted decreases in property taxes? Has growth ever NOT led to serious traffic issues? I'm not an expert, but it seems naive to suggest that Durham is miraculously go through this process in a different way.

As far as I can tell, the only compelling reasons to support growth and development are selfish reasons. It really is good for me personally. It will increase my property value and give me pleasant ways to spend my disposable income downtown. But there really isn't any noble reason to support the growth. It isn't going to remedy any social ills, and could quite possibly make things worse.

I can foresee a time in the not-so-distant future where people like you are going to say: "How were we supposed to know that things were going to turn out like this?" Don't worry. You can just move on with a clean conscience in typical American style.

[KH]

People who are moving downtown are definitely looking at the future...people who moved to Southpoint while it was under construction were looking at the future...the real estate agent who was trying to get me to move off of Capital Blvd. (because 540 was coming) even though I worked in the Park, was looking at the future.

Michael - I think you just bulldozed half of Durham and its drinking water protection areas in Northern Durham County. I wouldn't mind growing a little faster as long as it was in transit-oriented developments close to our job centers.

I'm not sure if we would be able to have stagnant growth. Either people want to live here or they don't. The industrial cities are full of the latter where there are thousands of vacant properties due to not only suburban flight but sunbelt and job flight also.

Somewhere we have to strike the balance between unnecessary bureaucracy and quality development...

[David Rollins]

Chris wanted to know of areas where urbanization has not led to increases in property tax rates. In general, these places have adopted a somewhat libertarian approach to growth: a resistance to annexation, which forces growing communities to fund their own schools and relieves the burden on the urban core, and a more laissez faire approach to zoning, which allows for denser infill development.

Pasadena, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Portsmouth, NH; Houston, TX.

[Michael Bacon]

Chris,

It's interesting that you seem to be setting up a dichotomy between two extremes: a big city version of Durham, and the current version of Durham. The problem with this is that the current version of Durham (and the one that has existed for 40 years) is a steadily growing Durham. The growth itself is as much a part of the character of the town as anything else is, and frankly has been more constant than most other aspects of the city.

If you want to keep Durham from growing, that means you'll need to change something. I want Durham to grow in a different way, so I advocate for ways that I think that would work well. But even this is essentially a constant -- the Durham that exists today is shaped over the past decades by thousands of people advocating for how they want the city to look. Even if you declare that you want it to stay just like it is, that's an active position, not a passive one. Nor is David's position a neutral one -- he wants to actively reduce government intervention in the shape of growth, which again, would be a change from the current state.

It doesn't matter whether we want to or not, we're inevitably involved in the creating and shaping of what the city will look like in the future. There is no purely passive option here.

(KH -- again, I wasn't advocating for a giant city, but there are massive amounts of developable land in the east and northwest of the county that don't lie in sourcewater protection areas. I bring this up not to point out an opportunity, but to note that we can't just assume they'll never be developed.)

[chris]

Michael,

If you take a look at my earlier post, my message is pretty clear. Let me repeat it for you:

Premise 1: Growth/Development is bad.
Premise 2: Growth/Development is inevitable.
Conclusion: We should not encourage Growth/Development.

It's very simple. I concede that growth/development is inevitable, but since the tangible side-effects of the growth are generally negative, I see no reason to encourage it. Given the current debate over making the development process easier for developers, the simple logic seems relevant.

The contradiction I see is when people like Kevin try to make arguments that growth/development is somehow "good" for Durham. It's beneficial to many of us for purely personal reasons, but I don't think that there are any convincing arguments that it's good for Durham as a whole. What problems is growth/development going to solve?

My contention is that people who support growth and development in Durham are just looking out for their own self-interest. They might like to patronize nice restaurants and shops. They might want to increase their wealth through rising property values. Or perhaps the prestige of living in a fashionable Durham will feed their ego in some way.

Growth probably is inevitable in Durham, but it seems slightly objectionable to have a blog like this one actually celebrate the growth. This is a problem that we have to deal with, not something to celebrate.

[Bull City Rising]

@Chris: I don't think we're going to find room to agree on this. I respectfully disagree with your assertion that "self-interest" is somehow a factor here, or that I'm somehow trying to increase my wealth through increasing the property value of my (quite modest little) home.

If I take umbrage to any particular element of your comment, it's the idea that it's "slightly objectionable" to have a blog that dares mention the positive aspects of growth.

We don't all share the same worldview. And that's OK. You can have yours, I can have mine, and that's all fine and well and good.

In fact, the great thing about blogs is, anyone can start them! You might well want to consider that as an outlet for your thoughts and views, which I know you believe in passionately, even if I don't always agree with them. (Heck, I'd certainly read it.)

However, there's something slightly creepy about the assertion that civically-oriented content can be "slightly objectionable" simply because it has content that doesn't match your particular worldview.

It's OK to have different opinions, and to express them, you know?

[chris]

Kevin - I encourage you to read the response you just posted again. Aren't you just being dogmatic?

I said that your blog was "slightly objectionable" because it's dedicated to supporting something that produces bad consequences. It shouldn't be hard to respond. Just tell me all of the good things that growth is going to do for society. I have an open mind. I want to understand the underpinnings of this philosophy. I hope it's something more than: "I think urban environments are cool."

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

@Chris: Can we at least agree that your philosophy represents a change from the current development stance, as Michael mentions above?

Personally, I don't see Kevin's positions as advocating a substantial change from the current position, which I would best describe as "managed growth". I don't happen to believe in it, as I think the deck is stacked in favor of the rich, but I think your claim of Kevin being a civic booster is a bit absurd given the similarities between his position and the city government's.

[chris]

David - I don't think you understand what I am saying, so I will try to explain further. I view growth to be inevitable in Durham. Property owners have some rights to develop their land, so from a practical perspective, we just need to manage that growth in certain ways. I probably hold the same views as many who view this blog when we are speaking from a practical perspective.

A crucial distinction has been revealed, however, during this current debate over changing development procedures. In my opinion, some people, like Kevin, have become a bit too overzealous about all the development occurring in Durham, and have confused the fact that "growth is inevitable" with the false premise that "growth is good."

I am confident that I will win a debate with anyone who tries to argue the virtues of growth and development. My opponent would have the hopeless task of trying to defend a stance that makes no logical sense.

I think that Kevin is an intelligent individual, and he occasionally writes long blog posts attempting to explain the moral virtues of the development that is taking place in Durham. I'm just here to tell you that it doesn't exist. Growth is inevitable. The negative effects will far outweigh the positive for our community as a whole. We need to manage it. But there ain't nothing to celebrate here.

[Michael Bacon]

Chris,

I tried to respond with some degree of good faith, but as is typical, you keep brushing it off and repeating yourself. I think everyone here gets what you're saying, as it's pretty numbing in its simplicity. It also happens to be largely delusional and disconnected from reality.

You keep claiming Kevin is reflexively pro-growth, in what appears to be an attempt to dress him up as the straw man you so desperately want to argue with. The reality is that the issues up for debate here are very tricky and complex, and relate to the actual rate and result of growth only tangentially. We're talking about the process by which projects get reviewed and approved in Durham, which is currently Byzantine and convoluted. Now, I'll grant you, that has to some degree served as a deterrent to growth, just because developers don't want to mess with it. But it hasn't stopped growth, nor has it stopped us from getting some pretty bad projects built.

Kevin's position, which you keep missing, is that streamlining this process may not necessarily accelerate growth, but may instead may help make it more sane (and to be clear about the space between us, I'm willing to hear more, but am not quite as sanguine about this as he is). This is quite apart from your sophomoric summary, "growth is good." Not to put words in Kevin's mouth, but my take at least is that growth can be very, very bad, and it can also be good. I'd be happy to elaborate on this, except that, well, this isn't the first time we've disagreed on electronic forums, and what's happened about a half-dozen times now is that about the time I put two hours into fully explaining myself, after your insistence that I haven't really thought things through, you storm off in a huff, saying that you're done writing to electronic lists, or blogs, or whatever in Durham, because they're just inevitably stacked against what you think is right, or some other nonsense.

So forgive me if I'm not eager to launch into a treatise on the philosophy of urban geography as both a produced and a contested space, or to get into the economics of residential growth and decay, or varying paradigms of how to manage the built environment. Because my strong suspicion is, despite your claim of being ready to debate, as soon as you start to get over your head, rather than redressing the dialog critically, you'll just storm off again.

[chris]

Michael - I'm still here, so feel free to explain yourself. I will say that I find your response fundamentally flawed. You point to a specific position that Kevin takes on changes to the development review process, and say that based on that specific position, I can't derive: "Kevin thinks growth is good."

Is it really necessary for me to prove that statement? The title of this blog is "Bull City Rising." Since I have read it, it seems to describe the new development in Durham in a relatively favorable light. Of course, some new development is deemed to be "bad", but I'm sure you can admit that the general drift is that general growth, or even accelerated "good" growth, are a positive thing.

So, suppose you guys guys are successful, and we have lots of development in Durham that you deem to be "good," and will be good for our society in general. What is the end game? Of course you will say that there will be lots of affordable housing in the urban areas, there will be a terrific public transit system to offset the traffic created by the increased population, the new jobs will greatly help the more disadvantaged in Durham's citizenry, etc. I would truly like for you to describe this future Durham, and all of the social benefits it will bring to society. If you described it in detail, I think the average citizen would think that you were describing Fantasyland, and not Durham. (and I would agree with them)

There seems to be a real danger of being myopic when looking at this issue. You can say this particular new development is "good", and that particular new development is "good," but all these "good" developments put together could create a big mess. That's why I think it's important to look at the big picture and ask ourselves how all these individual events are realistically going to lead to a "good" outcome.

And let me reiterate, I think all this "good" development is "good" for people like us with plenty of disposable income. That's what leads me to question the motives of those that support the new growth and development so enthusiastically.

[Toby]

Hi Kevin -

Regarding "the BCR Cardinal Rule of Development: No one moves to a place because of what it will be. They move there because of what it is." I too beg to differ. We moved to Durham, and located near downtown, both for what is was what I hope it will be. The amazing sense of momentum we sensed in the rapidly redeveloping downtown, combined with the existing dense-but-green neighborhoods nearby, is why we're here! And I tend to agree with David -- that while I didn't choose to live right near the big-box stores, it ain't so bad to have them available from time to time.