Blogs

I'm a little late in posting about this, but I wanted to make sure that everyone saw Fiona Morgan's excellent report published by the New America Foundation about the Triangle's media (released in September).

Fiona used to be a staff writer for The Independent Weekly, and frequently covered new and emerging media as well as the on-going demise of the old media dinosaurs, so she had a head start when she set out to explore and evaluate the state of our information ecosystem.  I recommend reading the entire report - it's 45 pages, not including references (download the PDF) but here's her summarized conclusion:

 While the Triangle has weathered the economic downturn better than much of the country, cutbacks at the region's major newspaper have led to shrinking coverage of suburban and small-town communities just as the population of those communities continues to grow. As a result, the number of boots on the ground providing accountability coverage of the dozens of local government bodies, regional planning issues and impact of state government politics on local communities has diminished.

Orange County is proposing to create a new Unified Development Ordinance which would combine and replace all of their existing laws about zoning and property development.  At the some time some changes are being proposed to several long-range planning tools. This document was posted on the County Web page in November and is pretty massive in size, close to 800 pages.

Currently, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the County have a rural buffer which limits sprawl at the edges of our towns. I'm concerned about how the UDO might affect the buffer, so I've taken a few steps to prompt some discussion of the matter.