Agenda - 11-15-94 - V-A - Laserfiche WebLink

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPREHENSIVE QUALITY GROWTH STRATEGY AND 8 COMMUNITY BUILDING PLAN FOR ORANGE COUNTY Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and the unincorporated areas of Orange County are at a crucial period in their history. The next twenty years could well determine whether Orange County will continue to be an attractive, desirable place to live. With the improving economy and national recognition of our area as a good place to live, work, and retire, we face tremendous development pressures. There are various possibilities. We could become like Los Angeles with urban sprawl from Caswell to Chatham and Durham to Alamance. The environmental, social and economic consequences of this picture are not pleasant to contemplate. Another possibility is that the four governing bodies working together with each other and the citizenry could develop an Orange County model as determined by the values and visions of the people. This would not be an easy or a quick task, but the prospect we face without working together to preserve the quality of life we enjoy now, but are beginning to lose, is worth the effort. Without this we face increased environmental degradation, increased social problems, and increased taxes and expenses for citizens. Any one of these issues makes it imperative that we work together to develop a comprehensive quality growth strategy and community building plan. As.we have grown in the past twenty years, one of the losses we have experienced is a shared sense of community. This is evidenced by increasing violence, an increasingly transient population, and lack of knowledge of our neighbors, among other things. To try and correct this, it is important that a community building plan is included in the quality growth strategy. Building community in the context of this effort has two components. First we need to assess the entire County's perspectives on issues relating to quality growth. Once assessed, we will need the "community" itself to reach consensus on resolving these issues. Attempting to reach such consensus - reaching out to understand others - is, in fact, community building. The second component is the development of a process for maintenance of community in every part of the County. With growth, we must make sure that we better our community, improve our relations with each other, and hopefully lay the foundation for future generations to lead fulfilling lives. If these are the tenets of our work together, then developing a process for nurturing community is imperative. At the September, 1993 conference on Shaping Orange County's Future, which was sponsored by the Assembly of Governments, nationally recognized quality growth planner Dr. John DeGrove said that we could grow smart or we could grow dumb. The way to grow smart, he said, was to develop a comprehensive quality growth strategy and the place to start was with Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and the unincorporated areas of Orange County. As a result of this conference, the four governing bodies - Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and Orange County - appointed a Steering Committee to design a process for developing a community building and comprehensive quality growth strategy. After numerous meetings, the Steering Committee submits the following proposal which sets into motion the quality growth strategy discussed by Dr. DeGrove and adds to it a community building component. 1