Raleigh's Next Chapter
What kind of city are we collectively building? Raleigh's new Comprehensive Plan gives us the opportunity to embrace growth, welcome new neighbors, and build a stronger future.
Every generation gets the chance to shape the future of its city.
This is ours.
Over the next year, Raleigh will rewrite its Comprehensive Plan, the document that sets the long-term vision for how our city grows over the coming decades.
Most people will never read it. Many won’t even know it’s being updated. But they’ll live with the decisions it shapes.
It’s important to note that the Comprehensive Plan isn’t a law.
Instead, it’s the lens through which the City’s decisions are made.
Future rezonings are evaluated against it. New policies are measured against it. Infrastructure investments, transportation priorities, housing programs, parks, and long-range capital planning all draw direction from it. When City Council weighs difficult decisions about Raleigh’s future, the Comprehensive Plan is one of the first documents everyone reaches for to guide those decisions.
If the UDO is the rulebook, the Comprehensive Plan is the vision those rules are meant to accomplish.
If you’re new to land use planning, Raleigh Forward published an excellent primer a few years back on what a Comprehensive Plan is and how it fits into the City’s planning process.
Earlier this year, we explored how Raleigh’s Unified Development Ordinance shapes what gets built in our city. The UDO determines what can be built on a piece of land. The Comprehensive Plan answers a bigger question.
What kind of city are we collectively building?
Right now Raleigh tests this vision one project at a time, one rezoning hearing after another. They aren’t just singular debates, they are chances to move closer to the city we say we want to become. That’s why consistency with the comprehensive plan is the main question in rezoning decisions.
At first glance, the next Comprehensive Plan might feel like just another plan update. It isn’t.
The Comprehensive Plan has evolved over the years, just like our city. Since the 2030 Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2009, under Mayor Charles C. Meeker, by the full Council Mayor Pro-Tem James P. West, Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin, Councilor Thomas G. Crowder, Councilor Philip R. Isley, Councilor Rodger Koopman, Councilor Nancy McFarlane, Councilor Russ Stephenson, Raleigh has changed and grown. The City has adopted a new Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) in 2015. The City completed a citywide rezoning that down-zoned many neighborhoods in 2016. Then in 2019, Raleigh made significant updates to both the Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance that embraced more housing choices, walkable neighborhoods and transit options. Those amendments can only go so far.
With the new Comprehensive Plan - for the first time in over 15 years - Raleigh isn’t just editing and amending individual policies. We’re collectively taking a step back to re-ask the big question.
What kind of city are we collectively building?
Raleigh has always been a growing city. The next Comprehensive Plan shouldn’t simply manage growth. It should embrace growth as an opportunity to welcome new neighbors.
The story of Raleigh’s current Comprehensive Plan is more complicated than many people realize. It wasn’t written all at once, and it doesn’t speak with a single voice. We’ll trace how the plan evolved from its adoption in 2009 through major amendments in 2019. And in a future article, we’ll spend more time exploring the history of Raleigh’s plans because understanding how we got here is essential to deciding where we go next.
Today’s conversations aren’t simply about maps and zoning and policies.
These conversations are about values, about the kind of city Raleigh wants to become. They’re about whether Raleigh’s next vision will ask where growth belongs or how every neighborhood can help welcome it.
the conversation has already begun
Raleigh’s Planning Department has spent the past year or more gathering ideas through its Reflecting Raleigh initiative. More than 12,000 residents participated in community conversations, surveys, pop-up events, and a civic assembly to help identify priorities for the city’s future.
If you haven’t explored the work yet, it’s worth your time.
The engagement reports, community inventory, and recommendations provide an excellent snapshot of where Raleigh is today and the conversations already underway. Whether you agree with every conclusion or not, they represent one of the largest public engagement efforts Raleigh has undertaken.
We encourage anyone interested in this process to check out the City’s summaries of Phase 1: Engage and Assess and the Civic Assembly.
CITYBUILDER’s role is different
The City’s job is to gather input from across Raleigh. City Council’s job is to decide what vision ultimately becomes policy. Which is why this 2026 election matters.
Our job is different.
As a pro-housing advocacy organization, CITYBUILDER exists to organize people around a pro-housing vision for Raleigh. A vision that welcomes growth, embraces abundant housing choices, and builds stronger neighborhoods. This Comprehensive Plan is one of the most important opportunities we’ll have to put those values into practice.
We’ll be advocating for housing choices in every neighborhood. Transportation choices that give people more freedom than simply driving everywhere. Infrastructure that grows alongside our population instead of becoming an excuse to stop it. We’ll champion a Raleigh that becomes greener as it grows and invites many hands into the work of building our city.
And when we say “builders” we mean all of them.
The homeowner adding an ADU.
The family opening a neighborhood coffee shop.
The carpenter restoring an old house.
The nonprofit building affordable housing.
The local builder of a fourplex.
The development teams and construction firms that create the apartments, offices and mixed-use neighborhoods that shape Raleigh’s skyline.
Cities aren’t built by one kind of person. Cities are built by thousands of people making investments, taking risks, opening businesses, creating homes and building the places we all live our daily lives. Everyone of these people helps make Raleigh a welcoming city. Because growth isn’t something that happens to Raleigh, growth is something we create together.
We believe that Raleigh should make it easier for anyone to be a city builder.
The way to build a stronger Raleigh is to make it easier for more people to build it.
So, we won’t pretend to be neutral. We’ll tell you where we stand, advocate for policies that welcome new neighbors and expand housing choices, and explain why. We’ll back our positions with evidence, examples from other cities, and honest reporting on the tradeoffs.
Over the coming months, we’ll explore how Raleigh arrived at this moment, what we’ve learned over the past fifteen years, and what the next Comprehensive Plan should say. We’ll also share CITYBUILDER’s recommendations for Raleigh’s future, along with the evidence and values behind them.
If you care about Raleigh’s future, be part of the conversation. Read along. Come to our events. Reply to our articles. Challenge our thinking. Share examples from other cities. Tell us what we’re missing.
And don’t just engage with us. Participate in the City’s Reflecting Raleigh process too. Read the materials. Attend community meetings. Submit comments when draft policies are released.
In our next article, we’ll look back at the 2030 Comprehensive Plan and the planning philosophy that shaped it. Before Raleigh decides where it’s going next, we need to understand how we got here.
Every generation gets the chance to shape the future of its city.
This is ours.
Jenn Truman is a young designer, leader, and advocate based in Raleigh, she is embedded in the local community through both her professional and volunteer work. Jenn is a regular contributor to and Founder of CITYBUILDER.