Balancing urban, suburban The consensus for the Legacy plan that stretched across environmental and business lines recognized the need to balance urban and suburban development. You have to be reasonable. Winston-Salem offers no alternative to the suburban lifestyle, Norby said. The Legacy plan seeks to deal with that by encouraging urban development through development ordinances and economic incentives. The Legacy plan envisions a city along the lines of Asheville or Greenville, S.C., where the suburban commercial districts are balanced with a vibrant, downtown urban life.
Musicians play the streets, and a vibrant nightlife thrives.
Michael Kelley, among the city's top developers, said he envisions downtown retail has the best potential if it's developed with specialty shops, entertainment venues and restaurants. Developers say they feel that they have been blamed unfairly for sprawl, because they were simply following the rules of development that government ordinances have laid down for the last 30 years. Kelley doesn't suggest to such retailers as Kmart that they move into bigger boxes, farther from the city. But instead it's the Kmarts and Wal-Marts that approach developers for such projects. Consumers then respond to them with their purchasing power.