RTP 3.0: Re-imagining the Future of Research Parks

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, suburban business parks and office-anchored developments have faced challenging headwinds: the emergence of hybrid work, a difficult office market, and increased demand for workplace amenities. This presentation looks at how the nation’s largest research park is taking a new approach to land use governance and zoning so that traditional suburban corporate campuses can be transformed into transit-oriented, live-work-play communities for a rapidly growing region.

In 2022, the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina (RTF), the nonprofit steward of Research Triangle Park (RTP), began an ambitious, long-range planning effort to reimagine RTP development. The resulting vision, “RTP 3.0,” is a flexible framework that introduces three new development types to the Park: Enhanced Corporate Campus, Residential Neighborhood Development, and Mixed-Use Node. Panelists include members of the multidisciplinary team of urban designers, legal experts, and planners that brought RTP 3.0 together. The presentation provides insight into the private and public regulatory reform required to enable new land uses in the Park, the extensive community engagement conducted, and the new development typologies that support RTP’s innovation-oriented mission and align with critical transit-oriented development principles and equitable growth.