Process Background
Process Overview
The Planning Process leading up to the release of the Public Hearing Draft has involved nine citywide Public Workshops, two downtown-focused workshops, 24 community meetings and roundtables, and two special events: Kid's City and Big Ideas Week. In addition, the process also included technical background studies (summarized in the Community Inventory Report), which provide the factual and analytical foundation for the Plan.
Why are we updating the Comprehensive Plan?
A new plan is needed to ensure that Raleigh's quality of life continues to be protected as the City grows, emphasizing neighborhood preservation, a strong economy, ample parks and recreation, improved mobility for all modes of transportation, and the protection of the City and region's natural resources and environmental quality. The Plan will serve as the policy framework for a wide range of decisions concerning land use, development, design, and public investment priorities. An extensive public input and outreach effort is underway that will serve, in combination with technical studies, as the foundation for the Plan's policies.
Who is doing the update?
The lead agency for the update to the Comprehensive Plan is the Department of City Planning (DCP). DCP is also coordinating the work and input of multiple departments throughout the City, including a core group comprised of Administrative Services, Community Development, Community Services, Information Technology, Parks and Recreation, Public Utilities, Public Works, and Solid Waste Services. The City Planning Commission and City Council have convened for work sessions at key points during the process and will participate in refining the Plan during the adoption process. A multi-disciplinary consulting team led by HNTB Corporation is assisting the City with the planning effort.
Project Timeline
The project kicked off internally on August 1, 2007, and publicly on October 25, 2007. The project is divided into five phases: Researching, Defining, Developing, Refining, and Adopting the Plan. Major milestones include citywide public workshops in November 2007, March 2008 and January 2009; completion of the background studies in March, 2008; and the release of a public review draft of the Plan in December 2008. A finalized draft will be presented to the City Council at a public hearing on March 19, 2009. The project is currently on schedule.
Technical Analysis
The updated Plan is firmly grounded in technical analysis. Detailed background studies were undertaken for topics related to each Plan element. These studies were compiled into a Community Inventory Report that identified key issues arising from the analysis, as well as potential strategies which were used to identify policy responses. To ensure that relevant policies were not left behind in the update process, a Policy Audit was undertaken to evaluate more than 5,500 adopted policies contained in the 1989 Comprehensive Plan and other adopted policy documents. The draft Comprehensive Plan was also subjected to an impact analysis to identify how the Plan would affect traffic and transit, water and sewer infrastructure, and the City’s environmental quality.
Public Input
Public involvement has been central to the planning process from the earliest stages, and continues to be so as the process moves into the stage of presenting a draft document for review and comment. The Civic Engagement strategy has sought input in a wide variety of forums, from large-scale public workshops, to community meetings, to issue-focused small group discussions, to web-based input tools. The following is a summary of major milestones:
- The public Kick-off Celebration (photos) of the Comprehensive Plan was on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
- Three visioning workshops, were held in different parts of the city on November 13, 14 and 15. The purpose of those workshops was to define a vision for Raleigh's future. A summary of the public comments from the workshops is now available. Close to 400 members of the community participated in the workshops, responding and reacting to an overview of existing conditions and an assessment of the “State of the City” in small group sessions. More than 150 people participated on-line in this round.
- Round Two of Public Workshops on the Comprehensive Plan were held on March 25 - 27, 2008. These workshops affirmed the Vision Statement as revised based on the November workshops, and explored different policy options related to six key plan goals. A summary of the public comments from the workshops is now available. Approximately 250 people attended and participated in these workshops, and another 30 completed the surveys online.
- A release event was held to launch the Public Review Draft of the Comprehensive Plan on December 3, 2008 at the Convention Center. The event was attended by more than 400 people.
- Round Three of Public Workshops on the Comprehensive Plan was held on January 13 - 15, 2009. These workshops included a presentation providing an overview of the Public Review Draft of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan, followed by an open-house. Summaries of key elements of the draft Comprehensive Plan update were available. Important policy maps from the Plan were on display, including a new land use plan. During the open house, subject matter experts answered questions at tables dedicated to each element of the Plan. Comments have been collected and compiled for the public record, and a report summarizing those comments is available.
- Also as part of the review period of the Public Review Draft, a total of 14 public briefing sessions were held on the draft Plan, including three open evening briefings and 11 briefings of appointed boards and commissions.
- The City held two workshops on the downtown element of the Comprehensive Plan update on June 4 and June 11. The results of these workshops are summarized in the Community Outreach Compendium.
- Kids City was held in May 2008. Approximately 600 people (children 10 and under with supervising adults) participated in constructing a city. The children used recycled boxes, construction paper, string, tape, crayons, markers and other creative tools to construct their ideal city on a grid that spread out over the museum’s first floor. Over the course of the day, Raleigh grew from a small 18th century ‘planned’ capital city to a 21st century metro area.
- Big Ideas Week was held in April 2008 in venues ranging from a tavern at Moore Square to Marbles Kid’s Museum. Approximately 125 total people were involved, and came up with creative and transformative ideas at brainstorming sessions about topics such as a World-Class Welcome, City Places for People, Transit for All, Capital Boulevard Redesigned for Living, and Downtown 24/7. The report can be downloaded here.
- In addition, small group discussions, or roundtables, for topic- and issue-focused stakeholders have also been held throughout the process to address specific issues and opportunities facing the City. Fourteen such forums were held. A record of these roundtables can be found in the Community Outreach Compendium.
- The City held community meetings and input sessions with Citizens Advisory Councils at their invitation. A total of six such sessions were held, the largest being a joint meeting involving the partnership of the five CACs comprising the Southeast quadrant of Raleigh, which drew about 150 participants. The record for these meetings can be found in the Community Outreach Compendium.
- In addition, the City developed an interactive website for the plan update including a comment functionality allowing participants to enter comments on draft documents online and view others’ comments. Among the documents opened for online review and comment have been the summary reports for the November and March workshops, the City of Raleigh Community Inventory Report, and the public review draft of the Comprehensive Plan.
- A public hearing was held on March 19, 2009, before the Raleigh City Council and the Raleigh Planning Commission. Public input was received at the hearing and will be posted soon.
Interdepartmental Coordination
In addition to the public “outreach” process, the development of the Plan required an extensive “inreach” process to coordinate the input and review of multiple City departments. An interdepartmental working group met to discuss aspects of plan development on a periodic basis throughout the process. Key departments helped to craft Plan narrative and review early drafts. Further, prior to the completion of the Public Review Draft, an Administrative Review Draft was prepared and circulated to every City department, with a special on-line version provided to obtain comments. Over 750 comments were processed from the administrative review cycle, resulting in substantial revisions to the draft Plan. The drafting of the Comprehensive Plan has been a “whole City” effort.
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