Waynesville, North Carolina Mayor Gavin Brown is forced to give up on pedestrian-friendly design to save potential jobs from Best Buy.
"The town of Waynesville will concede to developers of Best Buy and allow the company to be exempt from parts of the town's land use standards.
After months of wrangling with an awkward site design, Cedarwood Development, Inc., the company in charge of developing Best Buy's 30,000-square-foot structure, told town officials that it simply could not bring the building up to the street it fronts and put parking in back, which is what the town's land-use standards demand.
The requirement's purpose is to create a pedestrian-friendly zone that would connect structures and encourage walking rather than driving.
The final design for the Best Buy building has the side of the structure facing Hyatt Creek Road and a parking lot in front of the building.
The concession on the town's part is relatively minor, and likely will leave many wondering what the big deal is. After all, the small town of Waynesville is lucky enough to get a Best Buy - so what if it can't do everything the town asks?
But the concession marks an about-face for Mayor Gavin Brown in particular, who last month berated Cedarwood developers at a town board meeting for not trying hard enough to conform to the town's land-use plan."
Read the full story: Best Buy won’t follow Waynesville land-use plan
Planning Lessons from an Olympic Beauty Contest
Last week, my home city, Los Angeles, lost out to Chicago for the right to represent the United States in the international competition to host the 2016 Olympics. Since an Olympic city selection represents the ultimate inter-urban beauty contest – dare I say, a kind of urban “International Idol” – what did this process tell us about the state of urban planning in two of America’s largest cities?
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
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Nation's most wind-powered state turns to coal as data centers increase energy demand
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Brightline West’s future may rely on $6 billion federal loan
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FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
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Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
Greater Baltimore Committee
Eagle County Government
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association