Greetings!

As we wrap up the first quarter of 2024, Code with the Carolinas has news to share about our Open Sidewalks and Zoning Atlas projects and about our general operations.

Our Open Sidewalks project has reached a significant milestone–we have completed mapping and validating all crossings in Downtown Raleigh! This represents tremendous contributions by dozens of volunteers. Work continues on mapping sidewalks in Downtown Raleigh and crossings in Uptown Charlotte.

Our Raleigh mapping activities also got some great media coverage from WRAL in this story, Residents taking it upon themselves to update maps showing city walkability.

Volunteers also attended the MappingUS virtual conference, including participation in a mini-mapathon of buildings in Cumberland County, NC. At the conference, we learned about BetaNYC's Mapping for Equity project, and we are hoping to partner with them for some local Carolinas events with an in-person component this summer!

Motivated by interest in our January GeoJSON Community FOSS TechShare event, in the second quarter we will begin working more seriously on getting to know the data we’ve contributed to OpenStreetMap and work to create a local demo of AccessMap, currently only available for Seattle.

The Zoning Atlas project has also reached a significant milestone: we have completed the internet review of all jurisdictions in South Carolina and uploaded the data to the National Zoning Atlas Editor in February. We are now focused on preparing zoning texts, zoning maps, and downloadable GIS layers to be uploaded to the Editor. In March, we participated in Carolina Engagement Week hosted by the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Our interactive online event, Better Data for Better Zoning: Adding the Carolinas to the National Zoning Atlas included over 50 participants, with student participants earning Campus Life Experience Credit.

In terms of general operations, the big news is that our fiscal host, Open Collective Foundation, is closing. We have had favorable conversations with three potential 501(c)(3) fiscal hosts. We’ll be discussing these options, and possibly others, at our April 10th meeting and plan to vote for our final decision at the May 8th meeting. Assuming we transfer to one of these hosts, it will probably be in the late summer time frame.

We have also continued work to improve our website and developed templates to create flyers and social media graphic. Help spread the word about Code with the Carolinas with these materials.

Expect at least one more of these quarterly updates before transition to a new fiscal host!