Two 2024 races will play a key role in Raleigh’s vision and future | Opinion

The Raleigh City Council that will be elected this fall will vote on the city’s next comprehensive plan, a guiding document that was last revised more than a decade ago, before the arrival of more than 100,000 new residents and the pandemic’s effects on downtown.

What the plan anticipates – and especially how it will be drawn – should be the focus of the 2024 city elections.

The familiar issues will arise, of course. Candidates will talk about affordable housing, public safety and mass transit. But redrawing a comprehensive plan that includes those issues and more should be the central concern. How the plan is drawn will shape how Raleigh evolves.

Fortunately, this year’s slate of candidates appears well positioned to have that discussion.

Janet Cowell, a candidate for mayor and a former City Council member, state legislator and state treasurer, said envisioning how Raleigh will grow will be a key task of the new council.

“It has been a decade. We need to revisit the entire comp plan,” she said. This time, she said, there’s no room for Raleigh to expand outward, as it has run up against other municipal borders.

“We’re running out of land,” she said. “The only choice is to go with more density, more multifamily housing.”

Cowell’s most prominent opponents in the mayor’s race, City Council member Corey Branch and N.C. State University professor Terrance Ruth, are also pushing for denser development, but with an emphasis on creating more affordable housing and reducing gentrification.

The race that may have the most influence on the comprehensive plan will unfold in District A, which includes the fast-growing midtown areas along Six Forks and Falls of Neuse roads. District A incumbent Mary Black is being challenged by former Raleigh city planner Mitchell Silver.

“I’m extremely interested in helping that plan,” Silver said. “We want to look 20 or 30 years out. How many people are we going to attract? Where is that growth going to go?”

Russ Stephenson, a former at-large City Council member who worked on the current comprehensive plan in 2008 and 2009, said the new version will need to be developed with an emphasis on public comment.

Stephenson, a member of the neighborhood advocacy group Livable Raleigh, said the council has conducted its business in an insular manner since the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

“I’m hoping the comp plan will be an opportunity to discuss what we really want the city to be and not just what the people in the back rooms want it to be,” he said. “It will depend of the new council whether the comp plan process is one that’s seen as open, transparent and taking everyone’s concerns into account.”

Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, who announced in April that she will not seek reelection to a third term, has focused on Raleigh’s immediate challenges. She guided the city through COVID and has pressed for more housing options as rents and home prices have soared.

To increase housing options, she is also a strong supporter of expanding mass transit, especially the construction of bus rapid transit lines.

Baldwin said changes in the city’s zoning codes have allowed for denser housing at a range of prices. One-third of the building permits issued by the city under the new code, she said, would not have been allowed under the previous code, which favored single-family homes.

That’s a positive change, but it’s a response that can’t fully offset the pressures of population growth that will continue to make housing within the city more expensive.

Raleigh’s next leaders will need to decide whether they want the city to be bigger or whether they want it to be better.

Should Raleigh build up its skyline, lure more companies, attract more conventions and construct more mass transit to encourage high-growth corridors of dense housing?

Or should it invest more in city services, public safety and amenities, such as parks, pools and community centers?

It’s not that all plans need to be scrapped, but certainly big plans launched years ago should be reconsidered and perhaps conceived anew in an open and deliberate process.