Unsprawling Carrboro
Sprawl is becoming recognized as a major problem for regions and we need to tame it here locally.
Sprawl generally takes the form of low-density single-family home developments and their attendant strip malls. Sprawl increases commuting and car use, it increases parking requirements, and it often alienates those lured to the suburban life it offers. Sprawl is a destroyer of communities.
Carrboro is very much a bedroom community from which most residents leave in the morning to return in the evening. And it will always be a bedroom community, nothing wrong with that. And it is a growing residential community, a naturally sprawling one that portends ill for the future.
But that scenario need not arise, for there is an alternative. This takes the form of the village mixed-use community, in which dwellings and shops and amenities are clustered together in a compact neighborhood that is walkable and lively. Meadowmont and Southern Village are two nearby examples of such communities. The closest we come to these in Carrboro, apart form the old central neighborhoods, are perhaps our Arcadia and Pacifica cohousing communities, as well as the recently started Winmore development off of Homestead Road.
So what are we to do about sprawl? If we do nothing, Carrboro will continue to develop as just another suburban town that adds to our environmental and health woes and further divides us. Or we can take this in hand and put a stop to it by enacting creative new zoning rules for future development in town.
We can insist on livable suburban neighborhoods in all future development. We can encourage developers to adopt the principles of New Town Development to eradicate sprawl. We can insist on mixed-use in zoning for all new developments, as well as on inclusive communities. And we can encourage high-density car-boundary communities [in the style of co-housing communities].
We simply need to insist future developments are not car-centered, but become genuine people-friendly neighborhoods. The principles for doing that are readily available in the manuals of the New Urbanism movement. We as a town have the power to orient future development.
We can do so boldly, by redefining our zoning rules to enact the livability principles involved. Or we can do so more timidly, by favoring this form of development over the traditional one. To my mind, there is no reason why we should not be bold.
Sprawl has done enough damage to the land already and to the fabric of community. It continues day in, day out to poison our lives. Time has come for us to take our town’s future in our hands and not leave it in the uncertain hands of pure market forces bound to tradition.
If we value our community, if we mean something by Carrboro being somewhat special, then boldness is most certainly welcome. It is time to ask our politicians for action on sprawl.
Philip Duchastel, Carrboro