Compulsory Town Logo Shot

With a few days left in a year like none other, I’ve assembled my annual stroll through the site statistics for CityBeautiful21. A few highlights:

• More posts! Last year, Iamented only posting 8 times in 2015. I posted 16 times this year. Improvement!
• Total pageviews this year: about 10,700. 85% more pageviews than last year.
• Average pageviews per post was about 725 in 2015. This year, I reached only 669 per post, but that’s hiding some wide variation. See the popular post item below for the tale of the tape.

Most Popular Posts

1. 4,026 views: Lloyd Farm: What Happens When You Let a Grocery Store Chain Do Urban Design
2. 585 views: Tell the Aldermen: Carrboro Needs The Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path
3. 493 views: Chapel Hill News Describes Very Typical Carrboro Infill Project as “Unusual Density”
4. 367 views: Lloyd Farm Development: Can We Avoid a Missed Opportunity?
5. 292 views: Carrboro Advisory Boards Should Push For Gathering Space at Lloyd Farm

The Lloyd Farm piece at number 1 blew away everything I’ve previously written on this site. It was a read a lot locally for a day or two, but then within the national urbanist blogging scene, it went viral. It got picked up by Reddit’s architecture forum and got put on the front page of The Direct Transfer, and cracked the top three articles the day it was posted. It then got featured on the mega-urban DC blog Greater Greater Washington as well.

Most Common Referring Websites

1. 1,704 from search engines, 95% from Google
2. 1,699 from Facebook.
3. 812 from Twitter.
4. 699 from Reddit
5. 174 from Greater Greater Washington

More Comments!

Most enjoyably, this was the blog’s best year from comments. Ray and BlakeR were among the most frequent, and I’m glad to have their contributions, and those from everyone else who weighs in.

Keeping Up With CityBeautiful21 in 201&

To all of you who read regularly, first and foremost, thank you! I appreciate your readership and your comments, be they on the blog or via email.

If you’re interested in keeping track of new posts when they hit the blog, there are several ways to do so:

1. The Email Blast – the easiest way to ensure you get every post from CityBeautiful21.  Proceed to the Home Page, and look for the Subscribe Link at the upper right! Your email will NEVER be shared with anyone else, for any reason, period.
2. Facebook – You can “Like” CityBeautiful21 on Facebook, where I now post direct links to every new blog post.
3. Twitter – Follow me @CityBeautiful21

What’s coming in 2017? I’m not entirely sure, but Carrboro is likely to face another decision on the ugly property on the corner of N Greensboro and Weaver Streets, and I expect there will be more discussion about the future of the Lloyd Farm property. A new hotel could arrive behind the ArtsCenter, or at least go under construction. Meanwhile, Carrboro still deals with each of these items lacking a comprehensive plan and a zoning code that had its DNA formed in the 1980s, which steers us towards a suburban default in most of our outcomes unless a really progressive developer appears and does something better by working harder.

My biggest hope for 2017 is that the Board of Aldermen will put money in the 2017-2018 budget for a Comprehensive Plan effort that will ultimately replace the current zoning and development ordinance in town with something updated, modern, more predictable, and more urban. You can expect me to talk about this more in the coming months.

As always, drop me a line if you have a story idea or a question.

Best wishes to you all for a healthy and happy 2017,
Patrick