By Jeff Havener
July 2026
The Barrier in Plain Sight
Every transportation network has weak points. Most remain invisible until the city around them changes. In Midtown Raleigh, that weak point is the Beltline.
No one designed it to divide the district that exists today.
Successful places eventually outgrow the infrastructure that made them successful.
When the Beltline Was the Edge
In the early 1950s, Raleigh was still a compact state capital centered around downtown. The Beltline was conceived not as a local street, but as a high-speed bypass to move regional traffic around the city. Built largely through undeveloped land, it featured widely spaced interchanges with little to no consideration for local cross-connectivity.
Rather than containing growth, the Beltline helped attract it. North Hills opened in the 1960s as Raleigh’s first major suburban shopping destination, and over the following decades, development steadily intensified along the corridor. What had been designed as the edge of the city was quietly becoming the center of one of its fastest-growing districts. By the time the Beltline was completed in the 1980s, it had become more than a highway; it defined Raleigh’s geography, giving rise to the familiar distinction between ITB and OTB.
As North Hills evolved from suburban retail into one of Raleigh’s prominent mixed-use districts, the transportation network remained largely unchanged. With few local crossings, nearly every trip between inside and outside the Beltline was forced through the congested Six Forks Road or Wake Forest Road interchanges, or on the Lassiter Mill Road bridge. The infrastructure that had enabled growth had become a barrier to moving within it.
The Beltline near Lassiter Mill Road in 1967,
when it still marked Raleigh’s northern edge.
North Hills Changes the Map
The transformation of North Hills has been one of Raleigh’s defining redevelopment stories. What began in 1960 as a suburban shopping center evolved into North Hills Mall, one of the Southeast’s earliest enclosed regional malls. But the opening of Crabtree Valley Mall accelerated a decline that continued through the 1980s and 1990s.
Its revival began when Kane Realty reimagined the property not as a shopping mall, but as a dense, walkable mixed-use district. Over the next two decades, redevelopment spread beyond the original mall into the Main, Lassiter, Park, and Innovation District, transforming what had once been acres of parking into one of Raleigh’s defining mixed-use destinations.
North Hills succeeded because it grew where the city had already invested. Roads, utilities, and public infrastructure were already in place, allowing Raleigh to accommodate thousands of new residents and jobs without extending development farther outward.
That success, however, exposed a new challenge. Today, North Hills functions as one place. The transportation network still treats it as multiple places. The mismatch is no longer between land use and demand.
It’s between land use and connectivity.
The Beltline provides the regional access and transportation capacity needed to support that concentration of activity. Ironically, the same highway that makes this level of development possible also creates one of its biggest obstacles. What serves regional mobility interrupts local connectivity.
The Beltline still reflects the assumptions of the 1950s. North Hills reflects the realities of today.
Extending the Connection
The proposed Big Branch Greenway will eventually connect Crabtree Creek Trail to Cedar Hills Park. Its defining feature is a multimodal bridge across the Beltline. Without it, the greenway would remain divided at one of the largest barriers in Raleigh’s trail network.
The significance of the project extends well beyond a single trail. As North Hills builds out, the connector is expected to place more than 10,000 residents within a ten-minute walk of Raleigh’s 120-mile greenway network. It illustrates a broader truth: transportation networks derive their value not from roads, trails, or sidewalks themselves, but from the connections between them. Remove one critical connection, and the usefulness of the entire network is diminished. The bridge will carry local traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists across a barrier that currently forces all movement through two congested interchanges.
Michael Pollack argues in Sidewalk Nation that we rarely notice sidewalks until they’re missing. The same is true here. The bridge isn’t creating a community. It’s responding to one. What appears to be a bridge project is really an investment in the network itself.
Cities Reveal Their Gaps
Every growing city eventually discovers the limits of the infrastructure that once fueled its success.
The gaps rarely appear all at once. They emerge gradually as neighborhoods mature, destinations multiply, and travel patterns change. A road that once bypassed the city becomes the center of it. A shopping center becomes a mixed-use district. A creek that once separated neighborhoods becomes the missing corridor in a greenway network.
Growth doesn’t create these gaps.
It reveals them.
The North Hills bridge is one example. Tomorrow it may be a new sidewalk, a greenway connection, a transit line, or a redesigned intersection somewhere else. As cities evolve, they continually expose places where yesterday’s infrastructure no longer serves today’s community.
The proposed bridge is less about crossing a highway than it is about connecting a district that already functions as one place. One piece of infrastructure simultaneously connects the street network and the greenway network.
The Beltline is not a planning mistake. Without it, North Hills likely never becomes the thriving district it is today. The irony is that the very infrastructure that enabled its success now must evolve because of that success.
The Beltline has not moved.
North Hills has.
Today, you can still stand in North Hills and see where you want to go.
The difference is that the city has recognized the need for a way to get there.
Well argued. Perhaps drawings of the site plan and how it integrates with the community would add to your great writing. Agree or not, this is the kind of engaged, thoughtful dialogue we could use a little more of. Thanks for making the effort.