CIVIC-PG Track B: Catalyzing Walkable, Sustainable, and Equitable Urban Development using Innovative Transportation Strategies

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This Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) project aims to establish innovative approaches for converting auto-oriented suburban commercial corridors into walkable, accessible, sustainable, and affordable mixed-use “activity centers” by leveraging cutting edge transportation design innovations and strong university and community partnerships. This project relies on state-of-the-art “Placemaking Alternative Intersection” strategies that have great potential to catalyze walkable development along decaying multilane suburban highways. Other benefits will include multi-modal accessibility, reduced delay, improved safety, reduced carbon footprint, improved equity, reduced per-capita cost of infrastructure, and strong economic vitality. Civic partners involve the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), the City of Greenville, and the Town of Smithfield. The non-profit, Strong Towns, will also collaborate and ensure project results and associated tools and methods for national implementation will be widely discovered. The project provides a process for empowering community officials and NCDOT with tools and strategies for advancing sustainable, accessible, multimodal development through participatory approaches. Tools and process include 3D visualizations and development of community-specific design guidelines for implementing mixed-use development and innovative intersection models.In this planning effort, the project team of university researchers and community organizations will work together to address research questions necessary to prepare design guidelines for the study areas. This includes gathering baseline information on land uses, density, transportation mobility, travel time, current experiences and perceptions, and other factors. Results of this Stage I effort will include the initial research agenda and assessment identifying community-specific strengths, needs, challenges related to transportation, walkability, equitable access to amenities, and economic development opportunities for a Stage 2 project. The project team and partners will devise a 12-month strategy involving community surveys, focus groups, and workshops to increase acceptance of new ideas, 3D renderings to demonstrate design strategies, and further performance analysis. Webinars and new webapps are also planned for Stage 2 to broaden the impact and vet these strategies thoroughly before a larger audience of stakeholders so that urban revitalization strategies centered around transportation can be easily applied in community plans and NCDOT planning processes. The goal is to demonstrate how to overcome obstacles to sustainable, walkable, and equitable urban design by using innovative placemaking strategies in suburban communities currently struggling with revitalization. By vetting the project vision with key stakeholders, the project will also determine the cost to implement strategies and how much can be constructed from development-financed value-capture strategies. This will help communities more likely to adopt placemaking and alternative intersection strategies and amenities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.