Sold: Raleigh City Council

Overlooking Raleigh's Comprehensive Plan

October, 15, 2008 , by Peter Eichenberger

The City Council’s reflexive, automatic, predictable approval of the Stanhope and Cameron Village towers should be illustrative enough of the meaninglessness of Raleigh’s Comprehensive Plan as to remove it from the serious list. Despite all the grand talk, it is a matter of history that a great majority of our elected officials seem possessed of the vision of a Chihuahua, the backbone of a frankfurter and the ethics of a five dollar road whore. I’m not much of a bettin’ man, but I saw this one coming so far off that there was no sense in keeping up with the news, automatic. I’m not to the level of insouciance of Joe. That’s next.

“I don’t give a shit,” says Joe. “They do what they are told. It don’t mean shit.”

And that part is true. When the big Indians say jump and come across with the campaign bucks, the compliant lick-spittles infesting city “government” never ask how high, they just start hopping until the cookie comes. Predictably disgusting and compliant to the only thing that matters in this obsolete, fading, dusty, backwater empire called the USA – money.

A micro-history to illustrate to y’all just how pro-forma, tedious and repetitive are the fortunes, for instance, of the Clark Avenue/Peace Street corridor. In the post WWII era, Raleigh, somewhat unbelievably had a “comprehensive plan.” Peace Street, where the tatty rundown commercial strip now is segueing into a faux stucco condo mondo, was a residential overlay which was scuttled, obliterated by the snap of a finger by a certain small-town tin-horn Mussolini clutching the fun-bucks. It might be worth noting that one of those businesses that prospered by the micro-imperial edict was Mr. “Drive Friendly,” Avery Upchurch and his Esso filling station at the corner of Glenwood and Peace. Upchurch, the long-time resident may recall,became Raleigh mayor after an intensive stand-up political tutorial consisting of pouring fuel into Willie York’s Lincoln for forty or so years. Shoot, the York Empire moved an entire creek out of its banks to make way for profits, profits, profits by way of the Cameron Village development, creating and exacerbating an erosive, alien watercourse still in Edna Metz Wells Park, where nature never intended. This latest silly shit is nothing close to news.

Look, y’all, allowing money to undercut a carefully and thoughtful consensus-based policy is a transparent knee-jerk management strategy that makes an empty mockery of all the pretty words. The physical reality resulting from this mediocre, hollow method renders to a mere a laughable stage show the hokum of stated intentions. How silly the pompous little blather, serving only to reinforce how important we like to think others see us, when in fact, years later, if you are remembered at all, you are just as chaff, fibers blown on the wind, nothing. All your big words are dross, forgotten when attended by the fading empty, narcotic jolt of a new, big project, celebrated for just its size, not the long-term implications of what and where it is—money, money, money, jobs, jobs, jobs (claimed)—an empty and pathetically thin view of the urban.

“I feel I have a real fiduciary responsibility to the city to make sure we have good development that would help the city as a whole,” Council Nancy McFarlane was quoted, never taking the time to clarify how these two infrastructure burdening turds qualify as “good” development nor how these things are supposed to help the city.

Look, toots, how about an abattoir? What if Smithfield Foods or Perdue got a great price on land and announced plans to build a food processing plant, say, in the Crabtree floodplain? Oh, look at the fiduciary responsibility of all those slaughterhouse jobs. Nancy, you are asking the voters to buy into a view possessed of all the sophistication of a sixth grader. If it’s money, by golly, it must be good. This is the sort of simplistic logic that as gotten the US and world where we are now, via the jolt of the short term bucks and construction jobs which ride in soon to be forgotten amid the sundering of the fabric of neighborhoods brought by these sorts of generational paroxysms of construction/destruction, construction/destruction. There is no view toward the future, just an immediate fix.

In the face of this consistent undercutting, how is Raleigh’s comprehensive plan any more substantive that an addict’s pathetic attempts to make the family feel better with the next gold-plated lie?

“I’m quitting next week, dear.”
“Oh,” she tells her friends, “he’s trying to get well.”
It’s not my fault, says the addict. It’s the dealer, someone, not oneself when in fact Raleigh, like a hardcore addict, is the worst sort of liar, lying to oneself, swapping her soul, the long term and a couple of measly bucks for the next bag of dope. Amid the great public resolve, the lofty talk about amending one’s ways, there you are on the street scrounging for a bag of smack.
“Oh this one little shot won’t hurt. I’m not really a junkie, I’m just ... just ... I’m weak. “

My little town, an adolescent junkie, wrapped up in the immediate thrill—that’s it—no thought about what is going to happen, more and more slow-motion disasters someone else has to deal with twenty, thirty years later ‘cause someone was thinking only about the short-term profits to be made by the consultants, planners, architects, contractors and suppliers. Anyone remember the Fayetteville Street Mall? Yes ma’am: money, money, money, money money. Darlin’, which substantive, reliable entity would want to make a real investment here given Raleigh’s demonstrated absence dependability, consistency and forethought? I submit that as long as this sort of midway razzle-dazzle thinking prevails, evidenced by, for example, the Prison sneak-job or Raleigh’s inability to muster some sort of actual and needed mass transit plan, Raleigh is doomed to be remain bobbing in a back-water pond along with the rest of the third-tier cities, our status displayed by silly shit like our—of necessity—cut-rate convention center, Marbles museum, failed bank headquarter buildings and so forth.

Ptrblt , Other posts by Peter Eichenberger.