ATTACHMENT 1
2.2 MAJOR THEMES
The major themes (not listed in order of priority) are:
- Maintain the Urban
Services/Rural Buffer Boundary:
This policy was established in 1986 and has helped the community avoid the
patterns of sprawl that characterize many high-growth areas. Maintaining the
integrity of this boundary is of paramount importance and sets the context for
the rest of the plan.
- Participate in the regional
planning process: Because of the
growth of the region and its inevitable impact on Chapel Hill, the Town cannot
afford to plan for its future in isolation from the region as a whole. Instead,
the community needs to be actively represented in planning and decision-making
at the regional level.
- Conserve and protect
existing neighborhoods: Some residential
neighborhoods will face pressures for infill development and redevelopment.
This is especially true for neighborhoods immediately surrounding downtown and
the main campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).[1]
The character of these neighborhoods needs to be conserved.
- Conserve and protect the
natural setting of Chapel Hill: The
Town’s beautiful natural environment, including open spaces, meadows, forested
areas, scenic vistas, wildlife habitat, and creeks, lakes, and wetlands, is a
key component of community character. While some of these areas are identified
and protected, others need to be inventoried and guidelines established for
their conservation.
- Identify areas where there
are creative development opportunities: Conversely, there are areas of Chapel Hill that represent
opportunities for growth and/or redevelopment that support community
objectives. Identification of these areas and consideration of creative new
development forms, such as “mixed-use” and “conservation” developments, is an
important part of achieving a positive future for Chapel Hill, in a manner that
meets the needs of current and future residents and enhances community life.
- Encourage desirable forms of
non-residential development. Maintaining
a mix of private, non-residential uses (e.g., office, retail, and service
establishments) is important to the future health and economic vitality of the
community. In addition to augmenting the tax base, appropriate forms of
non-residential development can help achieve such objectives as making it
easier for people to live and work in Chapel Hill, increasing local shopping
opportunities, and supporting mixed-use development forms.
- Create and preserve
affordable housing opportunities:
The historic and valued diversity of Chapel Hill is threatened by a robust
housing market that results in high housing costs. Aggressive intervention
tactics can help ensure that some segments of Chapel Hill’s housing stock will
remain affordable to low, moderate, and middle income families in the future.
By emphasizing affordable housing, the Town can help maintain Chapel Hill’s
traditional socio-economic diversity.
- Cooperatively plan with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: The
fulfillment of the missions of UNC and the UNC Health Care System will be
accompanied by growth of those institutions. Good communication and cooperative
planning are critical to assuring that this growth can be absorbed by and
integrated into the surrounding community.
- Work toward a balanced transportation
system: This plan suggests an
aggressive, new approach to transportation. This approach shifts the emphasis
from the automobile to other means of travel – walking, biking, transit, and
park-and-ride – in order to achieve a community-wide, multi-modal
transportation system. One positive result of efforts in this direction should
be increased use of non-automobile forms of transportation. However, another
result is likely to be increased levels of traffic congestion, as the emphasis
shifts away from widening streets and accommodating automobiles as the top
transportation priority.
- Complete the
bikeway/greenway/sidewalk systems:
A major component of the new transportation approach is an aggressive program
to complete Chapel Hill’s town-wide network of sidewalks, bikeways, and
greenways.
- Provide quality
community facilities and services: With the continued growth of Chapel Hill and UNC, parts of the
Town are developing a more urban character and form. This growth creates the
need to develop or upgrade community facilities and services in order to
provide the level of quality that citizens expect.
- Develop strategies to
address fiscal issues: Many of
the recommendations of this plan require sound funding programs to ensure
implementation. This fact, combined with a desire to maintain and improve the
fiscal health of the community, suggests the need to develop specific
strategies to allow us to identify how we will pay for what we want.