Planning & Transportation
At 7:00 pm on Tuesday night, at the Southern Orange Human Services center at 2501 Homestead Rd in Chapel Hill, the Orange County Comissioners will discuss the Orange County Public Library Draft Strategic Plan for 2013 - 2016. The draft plan can be found in the Work Session agenda (PDF) on the county website.
The last time the library was discussed at the BOCC, the county staff suggested that the plan, which is being written up by Dr. Anthony Chow, an assistant professor in the Department of Library Science at UNC-Greensboro, would be critical to informing the site selection of the Southern Branch of the Orange County Library. The plan begins on page 29 of the PDF after Dr. Chow's Curriculum Vitae.
Appendix A provides a link to a Library Needs Assessment with a completion date of January 2, 2013, which seems to be much more substantive, containing significant amounts of qualitative and quantitative data.
http://orangecountync.gov/library/documents/ocpl_community_needs_analysis_2013.pdf
On Wednesday, I attended the meeting assessing the pedestrian traffic issues along Country Club Rd. The primary area of focus was between the Laurel Hill and Ridge Rd intersections. The Ridge Rd intersection currently has right-of-way for Country Club Rd traffic and a stop sign for Ridge Rd traffic; however, there is much more vehicle traffic coming from Ridge Rd than Country Club. The Laurel Hill intersection has neglible traffic apart from local neighborhood travel.
Vishaan Chakrabarti - A Country of Cities
April 18 @ 7:00 PM (Reception starts @ 5:30)
G-100 Genomic Sciences Building (campus
location - free parking next door)
One
of America's foremost urbanists, Vishaan Chakrabarti is a planner,
architect, real estate developer and educator who-though still in his
40s-has already left
an indelible mark on New York City's built environment. Currently
Holliday Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Real Estate
(CURE) at Columbia University, Chakrabarti is also a principal of SHoP
Architects, whose project portfolio includes the Barclay's
Center in Brooklyn, The Seaport at Pier 17, and master plans for
Governor's Island and the Domino Sugar redevelopment in Williamsburg. He
also advises The Related Companies on design and planning operations
for the vast Moynihan Station and Hudson Rail Yards
projects.
Chakrabarti
was previously Director of the Manhattan Office of the New York City
Department of City Planning, where he played a key role in the
reconstruction of
Lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11, the expansion of Columbia
University, the makeover of Lincoln Center, the extension of the #7
subway line to Manhattan's far West Side, and the transformation of the
High Line into the city's most innovative new park. Earlier
in his career he was director of urban design for the New York office of
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and a transportation planner with the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
A
licensed architect, Chakrabarti studied engineering and art history at
Cornell University, and holds an MCP from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and
an M.Arch. from the University of California at Berkeley. He serves on
the Board of Directors of the Architectural League of New York, and is a
trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission and emeritus board member of
Friends of the High Line. He is also a member
of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Council on US-China
Relations. Metropolis magazine named Chakrabarti one of the top 12 Game
Changers for 2012. He is a David Rockefeller Fellow and was a Crain's
"40 under 40" in 2000.
In
this year's Robert and Helen Siler Lecture, Chakrabarti will speak on
the subject of his forthcoming book, A Country of Cities (Metropolis
Books, May 2013),
in which he argues that dense, well-designed cities are the key to
solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation,
unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health
costs and decreasing social mobility. A County of
Cities presents a wealth of compelling information about cities, suburbs
and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and
their roles in enabling prosperity and globalization, sustainability and
resilience, and heath and joy. In the book Chakrabarti
shows how American cities today are growing faster than their suburban
counterparts for the first time since the 1920s, and that strategically
increasing the density of our cities-and building the transit systems,
schools, parks and other infrastructure to
support them-will both improve job opportunities and put environmental
sustainability within reach. The book closes with a manifesto rallying
us to imagine a new urban America-to build "a country of cities" and
turn a nation of highways, houses and hedges one
of towers, trains and trees.
A selection of Chakrabarti's writings for Urban Omnibus are available here:
http://urbanomnibus.net/author/vishaan/
Date:
Thursday, April 18, 2013 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location:
G-100 Genomic Sciences Building - UNC Campus (free parking)
Orange
County Public Transportation is inviting residents to attend a half-day
workshop for the Triangle Area Rural Planning Organization (TARPO)
Locally Coordinated Human Service Public Transportation Plan. The
workshop will take place from 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. on Friday, April
26, at the County's Southern Human Services Center in Chapel Hill. The
workshop will focus on the needs of rural Chatham and Orange Counties
as a part of the larger TARPO region, and will be facilitated by RPO
staff with assistance from the North Carolina Department of
Transportation (NCDOT) and the local transit service agencies.
This plan will not
focus on the urban transit services provided by Chapel Hill Transit or
Triangle Transit, but will instead be focused on the more rural services
provided by Chatham Transit Network and Orange Public Transportation.
The
recommendations that come out of this workshop will be incorporated
into the Locally Coordinated Human Service Public Transportation Plan
for the region and will identify the specific areas of need for
individuals with disabilities, older adults, and persons with low
incomes; to propose strategies for meeting these needs; and to
prioritize public transportation services to meet these needs.
The
public is invited to complete a survey that will be used to provide
information for the Locally Coordinated Plan. The survey is available
online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9N3SNYF or at http://www.tarpo.org/topics/lcp.shtml
For more information, please call Matt Day, TARPO senior planner, at 919.558.9397 or send an e-mail to mday@tjcog.org
Date:
Friday, April 26, 2013 - 9:00am to 12:00pm
Location:
Southern Human Services Center, 2501 Homestead Road, Chapel Hill
The 1/2% transit sales tax in Durham and Orange Counties taxes becomes effective Monday April 1, so if you are imbibing out past midnight on Sunday, tip your glass to regional transit.
The $7 county vehicle registration fee for transit takes effect a bit later, July 1 in Orange and September 1 in Durham. The $3 TTA Durham/Orange regional fee surcharge is still plodding through the approval process.
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