INDY Week - 15 Minutes

highlighted questions from interview with Leigh Tauss
read the full interview on IndyWeek

You seem to do a little bit of everything in the world of #ralpol—from being a City Council shortlist candidate for the District D appointment, to more recently being appointed to the Raleigh Transit Authority. 

I usually describe my involvement in Raleigh politics as choosing to have an opinion and be loud, because I think too many people think things in the city will just take care of themselves. But the reality is if you don’t speak up, things just stay how they are. A lot of my work in an architecture firm ties into the city ordinances, so I work with the code every day and I’m familiar with how it affects small businesses firsthand.

You have a pretty holistic way of thinking about these things. 

As a designer, when we think about the infrastructures and systems that are around us in their complexity, there’s not one solution that is going to work to fix Raleigh’s issues. These are really big problems­—whether we’re talking about growth and gentrification, climate change—we got here because of a lot of different, varied decisions, and it’s going to take a lot to get out of here.

Some of the solutions are simple, like ending single-family zoning, but some are more complicated like our goals for reducing our carbon footprint and how we subsidize affordable housing.