I had a really nice conversation with Philip Miller of Renew Raleigh this afternoon. He shared with me some great information about Renew Raleigh and what they believe in and what they want to accomplish. I wanted to take this chance to correct something in an earlier post about the group. I mis-labeled Renew Raleigh as a “development community” when in fact, it was explained to me that they are a mixture of homeowners, property owners, and businesses. And there probably are members of the development community included in the business part of it, but I wanted to make sure that readers are aware that homeowners are also part of the group.
We talked a lot about the infill issue that is facing the City of Raleigh. We talked about the perception that when someone moves into a house, they have this imagination that the neighborhood will always be the way it was on move in day. Can we account that things can change? The really cool part about it, is that even though our views were different in some areas, we shared our opinions, even some observations that we’ve made, and we listened to each other in a very calm manner. I got the impression that perhaps people on both sides of the issue are not calm and collective when they “discuss” infill.
And that is understandable to a point. People are passionate about this. It impacts someone’s bottom line or neighborhood. But sometimes, emotions prevent a difference of opinion from getting resolved. This may be the bigger problem around the infill issue in Raleigh. Everyone is screaming at City Council or each other and no one is having a conversation. Is anyone listening to the arguments from each side and providing analysis on the potential impacts? Perhaps that is how we get past this. We have a conversation.