All about ‘missing middle’

All about ‘missing middle’

The City of Raleigh recently made a change to their Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) that sets the guidelines for what can be built within the city limits. The UDO is the base for Zoning throughout the city and defines what you can do with your property while living there or when someone else buys it. Often the zoning is exclusionary meaning it only allows certain types of building.

The change Raleigh made was to allow more ‘missing middle’ housing types to be able to be built. There’s been a lot of said and written about missing middle and its impact on communities and much of it is misinformation or biased. So instead of us trying to define it, we sat down with Professor Tom Barrie.

Tom is an architect and Director of the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Initiative at the NC State University College of Design. You can watch the whole interview below, but we wanted to highlight a couple points he made:

What is ‘missing middle’ housing?

Did the City of Raleigh outlaw single family homes?

Our current zoning laws are racist and classist. They keep people out through the guise of preserving the character of a neighborhood. Professor Barrie explains why:

So this means Raleigh will have multifamily homes and luxury apartments sprouting up every other lot, right? Nope

Still got questions? Watch the whole interview:

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