Chapel Hill
On Wednesday
and Thursday of this week, the town of Chapel Hill conducted charrette-style Future
Focus sessions designed to understand how town residents would like to see
Chapel Hill grow from the urban design perspective. The overall event was split into three sessions, one on Wednesday evening and two identical sessions on Thursday. The first session included several presentations on town growth and an urban design exercise where participants were asked to rate 50 different images on their favorableness for fitting in downtown. The second and third sessions were map mark-ups for five study areas along key transportation corridors (i.e. MLK, 15-501 and 54).
Yesterday I received a call from a woman who lives in a tent she assembled in the woods east of the railroad tracks near land that Chapel Hill purchased from the estate of Leo Merritt. I have known her for several years and she has been a part of the downtown Carrboro community for a long time. I had mixed emotions about what she had to say. She is moving next month to be with another member of her family in a nearby state. On the one hand, I am happy for her that she will (presumably) have more formal housing arrangements, but on the other hand I will miss seeing her around Carrboro.
Tonight’s theme group meeting took a different form from those past (see my post on the first and second theme group report outs). After the usual introductions and settling down, Rosemary Waldorf, one of the two co-chairs of the 2020 process updated the participants on the timeline and outlined some results of discussions from the Town Council Retreat that took place over the weekend.
As my past
posts have indicated I’ve had a growing frustration with the Chapel Hill 2020
process over the past couple of months. This evening’s transportation Tavern
Talk has at least begun to change my mind. Unlike many other Chapel Hill
2020 events, the night was unstructured. And I think that was part of what made
it such a success.
Race to the Ballot, a statewide campaign to raise awareness of the effects of Amendment One, the current hate campaign against gay and lesbian North Carolinians, will arrive in Chapel Hill on February 16.
Over a five-week period, from January 27 to March 2, 2012, Protect NC Families Communications Director Jen Jones, trailed by a team of campaign organizers, social media street teams, and documentarians, will run 322 miles across the state of North Carolina, from the mountains of Asheville, N.C., to the coastal city of Wilmington, N.C., to raise awareness about the harms of the Amendment.
You and your friends can participate in the race and invest in its success.
Race to the Ballot will support the voter education and registration efforts of the Coalition to Protect NC Families.
Date:
Thursday, February 16, 2012 - 12:00pm to 9:00pm
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