Click below to listen to the conversation between 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck and Susana Dancy — managing partner for Rockwood development, UNC alumna, founding chair of the board of the Incremental Development Alliance and former chair of Chapel Hill’s Community Design Commission.
Welcome to “Embrace The Space!” A monthly segment presented by Trinsic Residential Group, “Embrace The Space” features conversations with experts and professionals in town planning, discussing how differing concepts — from land use and housing to transportation and beyond — all come together to create a community that works, and works for people. This month, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck was joined by Susana Dancy, who has a long resume including — but certainly not limited to — a graduate degree in city and regional planning from UNC, a history of real estate investment, restoration and rehabilitation, a founding position on the board of the Incremental Development Alliance and former chair of the Community Design Commission in Chapel Hill.
“Over time, I’ve become aware of the importance of place, and how the way you put components of commercial and residential real estate together influences whether you have a quality place that you’re living in,” said Dancy. “Back in 2004, I decided to go to planning school. I ended up getting a Master’s in city planning from UNC and thinking that, ‘well, this will give me insight into how to work with regulators so we can end up with better places.’ And about a semester into planning school, I said, ‘yeah, I don’t want to be a planner.’ It’s a whole lot easier to create good spaces when you’re working on the private side versus on the regulatory side. Regulations really should make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing, but very often our regulations fail to do that — and I think we see that outcome in Chapel Hill in much of what gets built here.”
Citing concerns such as outdated car-focused suburban design and lack of options for both traversal and general design, Dancy takes an outcome-oriented approach to changes she sees as necessary for towns like Chapel Hill to continue to succeed in her work with other people and organizations who feel similarly.
“I was the founding chair of the board for Incremental Development Alliance, which very much has this philosophy of change can happen small or change can happen big,” said Dancy. “But, actually Chuck Marohn is a great person who talks about this. He says that no area should be exempt from change, but the change that occurs needs to be respectful of what is there now. … I think that our community is much too set in no change. And then there are folks who want change, and so then they’re trying to leap from something … the leap is too big. And so, that transitional space doesn’t doesn’t occur.”
“Embrace The Space” is a monthly segment presented by Trinsic Residential Group on 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com featuring conversations with experts and professionals exploring town planning, from land use to housing to transportation, and examine how so much works together to form a place where people can not only live — but thrive.
You can find more conversations like this in the “Embrace The Space” archive on Chapelboro, and each month in a special segment airing on 97.9 The Hill!
