The Distribution of Population in Orange County and the Site of the Southern Orange County Library

Posted on September 16, 2013 by patrick

Back in the spring, at an Orange Board of County Commissioners meeting where I and other citizens spoke in favor of building an urban library in Southern Orange County, one of the most common themes from county staff in the discussion was that a significant number of rural residents would be served by this library, and that they would come to the library by car and need a place to park, implying that this criterion should play a primary, and perhaps even decisive role in the siting decision of the library.

For the remainder of this post, let’s put aside the question of whether or not parking is easier for rural residents in an urban or suburban location, and just look at where the population of Southern Orange County is located.

Orange County 2010 Census Population Data

Orange County, in addition to containing all or part of four municipalities (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Mebane) is split into seven townships. These townships are more or less remnants of a briefly operating system of local governance in the post-civil war period that lasted less than 15 years. Nevertheless, the county still gathers data based on these geographical boundaries which can help us examine the present-day distribution of population. In the 2010 Census, the total population of Orange County was estimated to be 133,801. Below is a map of Orange County townships and their 2010 Census population:

Orange County Population by Township, 2010

As you can see, over 75% of county residents live either in the Chapel Hill or Hillsborough townships, with almost 68% of the county population in Chapel Hill township alone. The Chapel Hill township contains both the town of Chapel Hill and the town of Carrboro, as well as just under 14,000 residents living slightly outside the Chapel Hill / Carrboro town limits.

Implications for Library Siting

One of the criteria that County staff discussed in their prepared memo on March 19, 2013 was:

“Able to provide comprehensive library services to all the residents of southern Orange County.”

Given this criteria, I believe it is reasonable to say that “Southern Orange County” could be reasonably defined as the two southernmost townships, Bingham and Chapel Hill. These two townships had a combined population of 94,498 in the 2010 Census. Of those 94,498 people, 93% of them lived in Chapel Hill township, and 7% of them lived in Bingham township. This means that if you’re trying to maximize your ability to serve “all the residents of Southern Orange County,” you should probably focus heavily on how you’re going to serve the people in Chapel Hill township most effectively.

In the past few months, a new visualization tool has appeared that gives us an even closer look at population distributions, the Census Dotmap website, which maps every single person in the USA using one dot per person in their Census Block, the smallest level we can look at the data without actually placing people in their homes, which the Census will not do for privacy reasons. Here’s a look at the entire county using that tool:

Census 2010 Dotmap with Orange County Township Boundaries

The simple take-away is that the darker the section of the map, the more people live there. I drew in the county boundary using a graphics tool so if you go to the Census Dotmap website, don’t expect to see the townships there. Still, even without the townships drawn in, you’ll find that you can pick out the county border pretty well along the Alamance and Durham county lines. It’s harder with the Chatham and Person/Caswell borders, but the effects of the Orange County Joint Planning Agreement and rural buffer are still evident.

You’ll see that Southern Orange County’s population core is in the sections of Chapel Hill and Carrboro roughly bounded by Estes Drive on the north, MLK/Hillsborough/Country Club on the east, Fordham Blvd/Clubreth/Smith Level Rd (including Southern Village) on the south, and Old Fayetteville Rd on the west. Scroll down for a closer look at that population core, traced in dark red. For orientation, the primary commercial section of Franklin Street is highlighted in Carolina Blue. The sunburst graphics are as close an approximation as I can make at this scale of the following locations that have been mentioned as potential Southern Orange County library sites:

1128 Hillsborough Rd (Orange)
401 Fidelity St (Blue)
301 W Main St – Town Hall (Purple)
201 S Greensboro St – Roberson St Lot (Red)
300 E Main St (Green)

Southern Orange County Population and Various Potential Library Sites

The county staff’s preferred site, 1128 Hillsborough Rd (shown in Orange) from March 2013 is outside the “core of the core” section of Chapel Hill Township, while the other four sites are within that critical center of population.

Recap: Southern Orange County Population

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing more benefits of building the library in the population heart of Southern Orange County. But for now, I’ll close by reviewing the following facts about Orange County population.

Unless there is a sudden, drastic change of plans to put the Southern Orange County library somewhere north of Eubanks Rd, the existing Orange County library on West Margaret Ln in Hillsborough will be the closest library to pretty much everyone in the five northernmost townships: Cheeks, Hillsborough, Eno, Little River, and Caldwell.
Of the combined population of the two southern townships, the population split is 93% Chapel Hill township, 7% Bingham township.
Of the combined population of the two southern townships, 78%, or almost 4 out of every 5 residents, live in the Chapel Hill or Carrboro town limits.
If the county staff’s linear projections are correct, Bingham Township will add 2,686 residents by the year 2050; while Chapel Hill township will add 51,996 residents by 2050.
If the county staff’s exponential projections are correct, Bingham Township will add 3,854 residents by the year 2050; while Chapel Hill township will add 90,825 residents by 2050.

With the exception of the graphics, I got all of this population and projection information from the County website’s demographics page. This data acknowledges that nearly 80% of the people most likely to use the library are in-town residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and the county’s own projections looking forward indicate significantly higher projected growth in Chapel Hill and Carrboro town limits than in unincorporated Chapel Hill Township or Bingham Township.

Future analysis of any potential library sites should acknowledge this baseline data about where population is located.

Measuring Transit Access to Potential Southern Orange County Library Sites

Posted on April 8, 2013 by patrick

When considering where to site a public library in Southern Orange County, one of the criteria studied by both town and county staff has been the presence of public transportation, in this case, Chapel Hill Transit bus service. Evaluating this criteria has been conducted by noting the distance to the nearest bus stop in materials we have seen thus far. However, transit service is not evenly distributed at every stop and different bus stops provide different levels of access to the rest of the transit network at large.

Fortunately, there is a great tool called Mapnificent that allows you to calculate how far you can travel from a specific point on transit at a certain time of day. This calculation is completed using the Google Transit data for a community that is publicly available.

Using Mapnificent, I created the following maps for the three county sites that the Carrboro Board of Aldermen sent to the Orange County Board of Commissioners, as well as two other sites that were previously mentioned by Carrboro elected officials: 201 S Greensboro St and 300 E Main St. Here are the results. The tool was set to see how many places could reach the library sites within a 15-minute bus ride at 9 am on a weekday.

The light-colored areas can reach the library site within 15 minutes by bus and walking. The remainder of each map cannot.

1128 Hillsborough Rd – County’s Preferred Site as of March 2013

1128 Hillsborough Rd: 15-Minute Transit Shed

As you can see, the site has limited access to most Chapel Hill residents and the most heavily populated parts of Carrboro along Jones Ferry Rd and NC 54 are generally not included in the 15-minute travel zone to this library site.

401 Fidelity St

401 Fidelity St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

401 Fidelity St fares better, covering the major North-South and East-West roads in Chapel Hll, and getting down to part but not all of Southern Village. Coverage is barely reaching Carrboro High School.

301 W Main St (Town Hall Site)

301 West Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

The Carrboro Town Hall site shows expanding coverage through more of Carrboro, as well as improved access to Glen Lennox and other neighborhoods near Eastwood Lake.

201 S Greensboro St (Roberson St Parking Lot Site)

201 South Greensboro St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

Everywhere in Carrboro that has bus service can reach this site in less than 15 minutes by bus. In Chapel Hill, residents along Eubanks Rd and Ephesus Church Rd can reach the library in 15 minutes by bus.

300 E Main St

300 East Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

With 300 East Main’s super-central location, now even residents in Durham County have 15-minute or less access by bus to the library. Luckily for us, if we put the library there, those Durham residents might spend some money with our merchants while they visit.

Obviously, there’s more that goes into library site selection than how easy it is to take the bus there. But conversations I’ve had in Carrboro suggest that this is an important criteria for many people, not only for environmental and local economy reasons, but also for social justice ones- like making the library as easy to access as possible for households that may not own a car.

The level of transit service to the library cannot be judged simply by “is there or isn’t there a bus stop nearby?” We also need to look at the amount of network you can reach from that stop, and (perhaps a topic for another post) the level of frequency and hours of service available throughout the day, evening, and weekends.

Chapel Hill News Asks Wrong Questions on Carrboro Parking

Posted on March 28, 2013 by patrick

Roberson St Lot by Flickr User Rubyji

In Sunday’s (3/24/2013) Chapel Hill News, the second left-hand editorial expressed concern over parking management for Shelton Station and the recent purchase of the Roberson Street lot by the town. The paper suggests that by buying parking in one part of downtown while considering ways to reduce the demand for parking at Shelton Station in another part of downtown, the Aldermen are acting at cross purposes by pursuing both initiatives.

Is Carrboro Talking Out of Both Sides of Its Mouth on Parking?

This editorial lacks context in a few places, and it is worth unpacking them one at a time.

Carrboro’s thoughtful development has made it one of the Triangle’s most livable and entertaining towns.

But the town can’t have it both ways.

Let’s start here. The town is not having anything “both ways.” As the piece goes on, it seems to portray the issue as if asking Shelton Station’s developers to reduce the amount of proposed parking to be NEWLY BUILT onsite is somehow a REDUCTION in parking downtown while the Town purchasing parking that ALREADY EXISTS and is being used today is an EXPANSION of parking. To clear things up, Shelton Station will definitely add some amount of parking to downtown; how much has yet to be determined. The purchase of the Roberson St lot does not add a single parking space to downtown. It moves the control of the property’s destiny from the private sector to the public sector.

Is Shelton Station Significantly Out of Step with Town Parking Requirements, and Is That a Problem? Or an Opportunity?

The editorial goes on:

As proposed, Shelton Station would have 170 parking spaces – fewer than the town requires.

This is partially true- the town has base-level requirements for various uses, and within certain parts of town, mostly close to downtown, developers can take reductions in parking based on the assumptions that some uses will share parking. The developers have arrived at the 170 spaces listed above by accurately applying the shared parking reduction formulas of the town to the base parking requirements.

However, this only matters if the parking requirements make any sense, and in the United States, generally, they don’t. What’s wrong with parking requirements, particularly those from the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), which the Town of Carrboro uses? Fortunately, Donald Shoup, the pre-eminent expert on parking in the US, and perhaps the world, has done the heavy lifting for us.

From Shoup’s landmark paper, “The Trouble With Minimum Parking Requirements”:

Where do minimum parking requirements come from? No one knows. The “bible” of land use planning, F. Stuart Chapin’s Urban Land Use Planning, does not mention parking requirements in any of its four editions.1 The leading textbooks on urban transportation planning also do not mention parking requirements. This silence suggests that planning academics have not seriously considered or even noticed the topic. This academic neglect has not prevented practicing planners from setting parking requirements for every conceivable land use. Fig. 1 shows a small selection of the myriad land uses for which planners have set specific parking requirements.

Without training or research, urban planners know exactly how many parking spaces to require for bingo parlors, junkyards, pet cemeteries, rifle ranges, slaughterhouses, and every other land use. Richard Willson (1996) surveyed planning directors in 144 cities to learn how they set parking requirements. The two most frequently cited methods were “survey nearby cities” and “consult Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) handbooks”. Both strategies cause serious problems.

Shoup goes on to point out that the “survey other cities” approach often leads to the repetition of mistakes of other communities. Carrboro is particularly susceptible to making this type of mistake because very few towns Carrboro’s size possess a level of transit service or cycling usage anything like ours.

Carrboro does, however, use on the handbooks of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in its analysis of how much parking certain uses require in town. All of the italicized quote below is Shoup’s commentary except for the section in blue, which is a direct quote from the ITE Parking Generation manual:

To base parking requirements on more objective data, planners consult Parking Generation, published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. For each land use, this publication reports the “parking generation rate”, defined as the peak parking occupancy observed in surveys by transportation engineers.

A vast majority of the data… is derived from suburban developments with little or no significant transit ridership… The ideal site for obtaining reliable parking generation data would… contain ample, convenient parking facilities for the exclusive use of the traffic generated by the site… The objective of the survey is to count the number of vehicles parked at the time of peak parking demand (Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1987a, vii±xv, bold added by Shoup).

The ITE summarizes the survey results and reports the average peak parking occupancy observed at each land use as the parking generation rate for that land use. Half of the 101 reported parking generation rates are based on four or fewer surveys of parking occupancy, and 22% of the parking generation rates are based on a single survey. Because parking is free for 99% of all automobile trips in the United States, parking must be free at most of the ITE survey sites. Parking generation rates therefore typically measure the peak demand for parking observed in a few surveys conducted at suburban sites that oversample free parking and lack public transit. Urban planners who use these parking generation rates to set minimum parking requirements are making a big mistake.

So what does a page out of the ITE Parking Generation handbook look like? Anybody familiar with statistics and regression analysis who has not seen ITE parking math before is in for a treat. Check out this scatterplot- click to enlarge:

This is a recommended equation for calculating parking for a fast food restaurant in the ITE Parking Generation Manual, based on the thousands of square feet of leasable space in a restaurant. It has a R-squared value of 0.038. Put another way, the ITE gives urban planners a chart and equation to forecast the peak demand for parking at a certain type of restaurant in which they admit that over 96% of the variables that explain variation in peak parking demand are not captured by the chart or the equation. I’m ignoring the fact that they have 18 observations and that my grad school faculty said never to conduct regression analysis with less than 30 data points.

The bottom line is that with these equations and 3-decimal point numbers, the ITE manuals look like highly scientific documents, when in fact they are at best alchemy conjured to replicate conditions for single-use buildings that contain all their parking on one site, in places where that is a wise strategy because land is not terribly valuable. They contain a value judgment that everyday parking should be sized to meet peak demand, which is the philosophy that brings us massive fields of parking for Thanksgiving Day shoppers that sit mostly empty 315+ days per year outside big box stores. These types of analyses were never meant to work in downtowns, and even as a first step prior to shared parking reductions like that which has been contemplated in the Shelton Station application, we should put limited stock in them.

Anyone seeking an informative and entertaining read on the folly of minimum parking requirements should read Dr. Shoup’s entire paper here (PDF 324k). It’s not a long read and there are many graphics. The first 7 pages lay out most of the problems quite well.

Returning to the Chapel Hill News editorial, the piece concludes:

The aldermen may be right to relax the parking requirements for Shelton Station. But if they’re wrong those cars are going to have to park somewhere. Before the project comes back, they may want to figure out just how much parking downtown really needs.

This is not necessarily true. Those cars might not have to park somewhere. What the CH News staff is missing here is that downtown attracts PEOPLE first, and also, as a secondary derived consequence of attracting PEOPLE, also attracts VEHICLES, which include:

BIKES
BUSES
FOOTWEAR
SCOOTERS
WAGONS
STROLLERS
and yes, CARS

Travel behavior surveys from around the country and the UNC campus show that most people, when living in a community that provides transportation choices, use several different modes in any given week. You might drive to work but walk to the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays. You might take the bus to UNC for work but drive to the movies with friends. (you might consider taking the bus home from the movies if it ran later, too)

The key point is that people are reasonably smart and if they want to come to downtown Carrboro, and we give them choices, and encourage them to make choices that keep the downtown less congested and allow more access for others to do the same, then many of them will figure out other ways to get downtown than get in a car. This already happens thousands of times a day, every day- in downtown Carrboro. Some of them will still drive, and that’s fine as long as we don’t do things that makes downtown less vibrant to ensure they have a perpetual supply of free spaces.

If We Shouldn’t Trust ITE Manuals or Other Communities’ Unscientific Standards, How Should We Evaluate What the “Right” Amount of Parking is for Development, Particularly Downtown?

First, we should realize that there is no bureau of Parking Weights and Measures coming to sue us/yell at us/etc if we make unorthodox choices. We’re on our own, and that’s good.

Second, we should discuss parking policy through the prism of our goals. Vision 2020 aims to double commercial space downtown. Space for parking competes directly with that goal, which is why we need to focus on providing ACCESS to downtown rather than parking. I wrote a column on Orangepolitics on this subject five years ago that I think still applies well today. Access will require improving our environmentally friendly mode access to downtown, and probably involves eventually putting a market price on parking downtown.

Third, we should conduct research on how people get to businesses in downtown Carrboro. What the exact percentage is, I’m not sure- but the percentage of people arriving at Weaver Street Market to shop on foot, by bike, and by bus is surely very, very, different than your standard grocery store.

Fourth, we need to recognize that the fragmented parking landscape of downtown with many owners, all trying to reserve parking for their own customers, contributes to congestion and air pollution when people drive from lot A across the street to lot B to avoid triggering a towing policy, even though the individual moving their car across the street is the mutual customer of two downtown businesses.

When Dan Burden visited in 2001, he recommended that we figure out how to get more shared parking arrangements in downtown. With the exception of Fitch Lumber allowing Weaver Street Market customers to park there for Thursday night and Sunday morning events, I don’t think this has really happened in any tangible way in downtown.

Back to Shelton Station

This last point is where unbundling parking comes in, and remains a key variable for Shelton Station. Technology has improved a lot over the last ten years and may offer us an opportunity to create “virtually shared” parking in town. If Shelton Station is approved with the 170 spaces that the shared parking portions of the Town parking rules allow, or even some lower number of spaces, then if there is a carsharing vehicle onsite, renting apartments with unbundled parking will maximize the chance of the Shelton Station lot having capacity because lower-car ownership households will have an incentive to rent there that is not present elsewhere in town.

If after unbundling, Shelton Station developers find they have seven empty spaces pretty much all the time, then it would be great if they could put those seven spaces into a “shared parking pool” for downtown. We could call the system, you guessed it — “CarrPark.”

These spaces would have a special sign letting people know that while most of the Shelton Station property was reserved for residents and businesses on site, that these seven spaces could be used by anyone WILLING TO PAY the market rate for that parking space at that time of day and day of the week. Surely at some times of the week, that price would likely be zero, but at others, there would be a per-hour charge that would be adjusted by time of day to make sure that Shelton Station’s shared spaces were priced to be 85% full and 15% empty all the time.

Why would any developer do this? Easy- they could keep any revenue from the spaces after the costs of registering those seven spaces in the CarrPark system were accounted for. Over time, a network of CarrPark parking spaces would be created downtown, on both public and private lots. The town could put its public lots into the CarrPark system and build the computerized backend, which would include sensors that share real-time information on whether or not a parking space is empty. Visitors to downtown could check a real-time information app before they drove into town to see which lots had the most availability, and what their price per hour is.

This approach would allow incremental changes, one parking space at a time, to yield genuinely shared parking in downtown Carrboro across multiple public and private lots, without necessitating complicated land swaps among parking space owners.

While an electronic shared parking “CarrPark” system is obviously a longer-term idea to discuss for the community, the key point for projects like Shelton Station which will reach the Aldermen’s table soon is this — there are a lot of parking innovation tools we could deploy to make downtown Carrboro even more lovely for pedestrians while making it a lot more convenient to park downtown.

All of them are likely to work better if Shelton Station rents apartments and parking spaces to residents separately in an Unbundled fashion.

The other stuff can come later; but this is a great time to try Unbundling. I hope we can see this happen through a condition in the use permit for the site, or some other appropriate mechanism the town can come up with.

Informal Urbanism Indicator #6: Food Trucks

Posted on February 22, 2013 by patrick

Food Truck Mini-Rodeo at Johnny’s

Perhaps the most high-profile Informal Urban Indicator that can be spotted around Carrboro, Durham, and many other cities is the Food Truck. Whether committed to a regular spot or broadcasting its movements on Twitter, the repeated presence of one or more food trucks in a certain place is usually hinting at one thing: “this part of town could absorb more dining and perhaps more retail options.” If the place where the repeat appearances occur is single-use and does not include food service as part of its by-right zoning, the food trucks provide a hint on where mixed-use is warranted, and in some cases, desperately needed. (there’s a reason why whenever RTP hosts a food truck rodeo at their HQ, lines for lunch are 30 minutes long or longer)

Food trucks are particularly interesting as urban indicators because of their ability to relocate in response to demand for their food, albeit within constraints imposed by town operating rules. To my knowledge, Carrboro’s rules are rather simple and require that the food truck has a permit to operate in Carrboro, that it can park in any lots specified on a map maintained by the town, and pay $75 to be a vendor.

Below are some additional photographs I have taken of the Carrboro food truck scene over the last few years. At the end of the post, you can see a map of where food trucks are commonly found in town, and the coverage area bound by those locations.

Fitch Lumber Taco Truck	Crepe Truck at Fifth Season Parking Lot
Ice Cream Truck at Seagrove Pottery	Evening Benefit Food Truck Rodeo at Farmers’ Market

Below is a map of regular food truck locations in Carrboro. Zoom out slightly for a full view. View Carrboro Food Truck Locations in a larger map #informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #5: Outdoor Dining

Posted on February 21, 2013 by patrick

One of the key features that differentiates an urban place from more suburban places is the number of people on the streets. While many of the people out and about are walking from one place to another, many of them are quite stationary, often at a table enjoying food and drink. In his masterpiece on cities and towns, A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander states:

“We know that people enjoy mixing in public, in parks, squares, along promenades and avenues, in street cafes. The preconditions seem to be: the setting gives you the right to be there, by custom; there are a few things to do that are part of the scene, almost ritual: reading the newspaper, strolling, nursing a beer, playing catch; and people feel safe enough to relax, nod at each other, perhaps even meet.”

Outdoor Dining – Milltown

Alexander is observing what we all know- people like to be around other people, and cafe culture is perhaps human civilization’s best invention for providing people-watching opportunities. But although there are plenty of people-watching opportunities inside any eating or drinking establishment, the deliberate move to provide outdoor seating, which always introduces extra labor hassles to the establishment, is a recognition that there are people-watching opportunities outside along the street as well as in the cafes, bars, and restaurants themselves.

That being the case, if we are searching for indicators of where people walk, outdoor dining/cafe seating should be a good guide. And boy, does Carrboro have a lot of outdoor dining. The least expected place? Burger King! Yes, it’s a very suburban setup at Willow Creek shopping center, and your view is mostly people parking nearby, but even BK put out a few tables and a shrubbery. Good for them.

Outdoor Dining- Burger King

Here are some tables along West Main Street at Tres Amigos.

Outdoor Dining – Tres Amigos

Including these three locations, even if we ignore food trucks that might have their own seating (i.e. Fitch Lumber taco truck), I found a total of 17 Outdoor Dining locations in Carrboro. Here they are on a map, each identified with a burger and beverage icon:

View Outdoor Dining in a larger map

While I was not surprised, it is worth noting that there is no Outdoor Dining at Carrboro Plaza. Most of the rest of the town that has any commercial development has found some space for Outdoor Dining. If you’ve been following the blog this week, you’re probably starting to see a pattern in the maps, which I will cover in an upcoming post.

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #4: Yarn Bombing

Posted on February 21, 2013 by patrick

Whereas the Super Strudel graffiti was likely the work of one artist, the February 2012 Yarn Bombing of downtown Carrboro was a coordinated work of many skilled artists who sought (and received) permission from the town of Carrboro to put their pieces in the public realm. Below are some photos of some of the Yarn-bombed sites, and a map of where they were ultimately located, which reflects the combined decisions of town representatives and artists.

Yarn Bombed Tree, Looking Glass Cafe

Yarn-Bombed Parking Lot (Photo by Flickr User RubyJi)

Yarn-Bombed Town Hall (Photo Courtesy Carrboro Citizen)

View Yarn Bombing in Carrboro in a larger map

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #3: Municipal Holiday Light Displays

Posted on February 20, 2013 by patrick

Snowflake Above WSM Lawn

With Christmas 2012 quickly receding into memory, here’s an indicator that you need to measure while you can: holiday light displays put up by the town! Our earlier indicators from this week, Graffiti and Fliers, reveal mental maps of walkable space of a single individual and many individuals acting separately.

Community holiday lights on telephone poles or buildings reveal what is probably a resource-constrained consensus decision made by several individuals together in our public works department, perhaps in consultation with the Town Manager.

This one was rather easy to map- I just got in the car and drove all over town in any direction I saw a snowflake until I passed the last lighted pole. If I continued east into Chapel Hill I would have more data, but I had somewhere to be and went home after observing the extent of holiday snowflakes in Carrboro.

In the map below, the roads marked in red are where the snowflakes were posted, and the green area is the overall zone of coverage they surrounded using the furthest extent of snowflakes in each direction.

Holiday Snowflake Extent, Carrboro 2012

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #2: Fliers

Posted on February 20, 2013 by patrick

Fliers in Carrboro

If you’re trying to determine where the hotspots of the urban fabric begin and end in a neighborhood, you would be hard pressed to find a better indicator than fliers on telephone poles, walls, and other surfaces. Fliers are great indicators for the following reasons:

1. They’re usually time-limited. The constant refreshing of flier locations re-validates that these locations are important to pedestrians.

2. They can be layered on top of each other. Some flier locations develop a 2-to-5 flier thick coat of promotional verbiage and graphics. Like the rings on a tree stump where more rings equals more years, more fliers stapled on top of each other indicates a stronger advertising location.

With the second quality of flier placement, we can actually gather data on flier density in addition to flier locations. I’ve started using a smartphone app called Fulcrum to gather data on fliers, including flier density, and although it will take a while to get a data set like the one for the Super Strudel post, I do intend to map it and try some analytical techniques on the data if it makes sense.

The key point that is great about fliers, however, is that whenever you see repeated postings of new fliers from different people and organizations at the same place, you’re looking at a place that is important across MANY people’s mental maps of their community, and most likely within the heart of the walkable urban fabric.

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #1: Graffiti. Where Does The Urban Fabric Begin and End? Ask Super Strudel

Posted on February 19, 2013 by patrick

If a visitor asks a random Carrboro resident where downtown is, they’ll be almost certain to get directions to where the railroad tracks cross Main Street right by The Station bar.

This is the undisputed center of Carrboro’s urban fabric, a.k.a. the place where the most people are walking around. But if this is the center of the action, where is the edge of the action? Where does it dissipate? When you are in downtown Carrboro or any other downtown, do you ever wonder how far the people you see walking walked to get there?

As someone who does a lot of walking around town, I’ve started thinking about all the little and big modifications that happen to an urban streetscape because one person or institution tries to capitalize on the presence of a significant number of walkers to sell a product, promote a show, or share an idea. For lack of a better term, I will call these modifications “Informal Urbanism Indicators.” Another way to think of them might be as “Hints from Residents.” In this case, the “hint” is data about where people walk.

For the remainder of the post, I’d like to introduce you to our urban graffiti guide, Super Strudel. To be fair to the artist who created him, I must acknowledge that perhaps the “SS” stands for something else, and that it is possible that “Super Strudel” was added by another person walking by with a sharpie. I had seen Super Strudel in a few places and started taking pictures before I finally got his name down from this display by Fitch Lumber.

Super Strudel at Fitch Lumber

Whatever type of rodent he is, this guy gets out on the town pretty regularly. He showed up over on the dumpster at Carrburritos:

Super Strudel on Carrburritos’ Dumpster

Over by the White Oak Condominiums on Fidelity Street:

Super Strudel at White Oak

On the edge of the UNC Campus across from the Carolina Inn:

Super Strudel Visits Campus

When he arrived at Back Alley Bikes and Tar Heel Tattoo, he went large format:

Super Strudel Seeks Bikes, Tattoos

While this final shot on the back of Kinetix does not convey the size well, this one was also 4 or 5 feet tall, I think:

Super Strudel at Kinetix

The interesting thing about these photos as a group is that if we map them, we get a visual that depicts (probably in part) the mental map of one person of what constitutes the walkable urban fabric of downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Click on the minus button in the map to zoom out one level, and you’ll see all 6 photo locations above mapped.

View Super Strudel Art Locations in a larger map

But this is just one map of one person’s urban fabric, using one variable. If we layer together data created by MULTIPLE people, that represent jointly made decisions or separately made decisions that reinforce each other, we get more “Hints From Residents.” As the title of the post suggests, I’m going to do several of these posts on Informal Urban Indicators. The post on Indicator #2 shows up tomorrow- feel free to guess what’s coming in the comments. Meanwhile, let me know if I missed any Super Strudel locations! I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.

#informalurbanindicators

How are Carrboro Residents Distributed Across Town?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by patrick

Recently, a programming guru at MIT, Brandon Martin-Anderson decided to make a map of every person in the US Census- all 300+ million of us. The map assigns a dot for every person to the Census Block they live in, and then displays it. You can see the interactive map here, zoomed to a level that shows Hillsborough, Durham, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, mostly. Anderson has since added Canada and Mexico Census data as well.

Here’s a slightly more zoomed-in look at our neck of the woods. The main commercial section of Franklin Street is shown in blue.

Census Dotmap of Chapel Hill / Carrboro

If you look at the Chapel Hill / Carrboro map long enough, you’ll notice a few things:

There’s a “core” of population density (circled in red) that includes the UNC campus, the MLK corridor about halfway between Foster’s Market and Estes Drive, West Carrboro’s apartment complexes along NC 54 and Smith Level Road, and Southern Village.
The large white spaces in the center of both Chapel Hill and Carrboro are contiguous Census Blocks that are dominated by employment and not residents, so they appear to be empty. They simply have few or zero residents. In 2020, projects like Greenbridge, 140 West, 300 East Main and Shelton Station should change these blocks a good deal.
There are some other denser clusters of population near Eastowne/Sage Rd/Erwin Rd and at some apartment complexes on MLK near Timberlyne.
Southern Village is clearly more dense than Meadowmont.
Suburban Carrboro is generally a little more dense than suburban Chapel Hill.

If we further zoom in on Carrboro, and match the dots up to a street map, you can also see that the densest neighborhoods in town are Abbey Court/Collins Crossing condominiums, and generally the entire area bounded by Jones Ferry Rd, Barnes St, and NC 54; Estes Park Apts, the entire area bounded by NC 54 and Old Fayetteville Rd; and the apartment complexes along Smith Level Rd close to Carrboro High School.

Carrboro Density – click to embiggen

CityBeautiful21

Urban Planning for the 21st Century

Category Archives: Data

The Distribution of Population in Orange County and the Site of the Southern Orange County Library

Measuring Transit Access to Potential Southern Orange County Library Sites

Chapel Hill News Asks Wrong Questions on Carrboro Parking

Informal Urbanism Indicator #6: Food Trucks

Informal Urbanism Indicator #5: Outdoor Dining

Informal Urbanism Indicator #4: Yarn Bombing

Informal Urbanism Indicator #3: Municipal Holiday Light Displays

Informal Urbanism Indicator #2: Fliers

Informal Urbanism Indicator #1: Graffiti. Where Does The Urban Fabric Begin and End? Ask Super Strudel

How are Carrboro Residents Distributed Across Town?