Locust: The story behind the story

One reason planners need patience is that it takes years for what they do to come to fruition.

The Nov. 16 Citistates Report, in the article "Ring Around Charlotte," praised the town of Locust in Stanly County for its New Urban-style downtown plan of a few years back.

But Locust was, in fact, years ahead of many towns in the state in adopting a form-based town code. It adopted its town plan and code in 1996-97, under the guidance of David Walters of the UNC Charlotte College of Architecture. I remembered his role and asked him for more details:

I did the Locust town plan and form-based zoning code in 1996-97. The town employed UNCC on a “contract for services” basis to use my skills and time. This small grant, $20,000 if my memory serves, covered my expenses, wages plus expenses for a student assistant. This was the same arrangement by which I did the codes for Davidson (with Tim Keane) and Huntersville (with Ann Hammond), and guided Cornelius towards their new code, all between 1994 and 1996.

More recently we have used a similar formula to produce well-received master plans for Mineral Springs (2005) and Wesley Chapel (2007-08) in Union County, using a graduate class I used to teach.

In Locust, the town debated long and hard about whether to take up the NCDOT’s plan for a bypass that would effectively kill their town by taking all the traffic and commerce away, or accepting that they would lose the mini-downtown to the big highway and then plan for a new town center on some open land.

To their eternal credit, the town’s committee voted to pursue the latter course, so in my plan and code I showed a "city center” area backed with higher density “neighborhood residential.”

It took nearly ten years to come to some fruition, but that’s about the average time for something like that. ... The main credit goes to the Locust citizens who had the foresight to plan their town a decade into the future.

Bill James: "Why I hate sidewalks"

Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James wants to explain why he thinks sidewalks are a waste of public money. James, in case you're unfamiliar with local politics, is a conservative Republican County commissioner who lives in Matthews. He's not just controversial, he's a guy who lives to generate controversy. He's anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-public funding for the arts among other positions.

Here's the headline: If there were a sidewalk in front of his house, he said, then people would have a legal place to hold protests over things he does. With no sidewalk, they don't.

Well, OK, seriously, there's a bit more to his objection, and he's talking about residential streets in the 'burbs, not a blanket dismissal of all sidewalks. His e-mail is copied below.

Obviously I think he's wrong about the value of sidewalks, and about the value of connecting streets. (Could there possibly be any better reason for putting in a sidewalk than to allow a spot for anti-Bill James protests?) Here's James' e-mail. What do you think of his reasoning?

You forgot the best reason for not building sidewalks in some neighborhoods. It prevents political protests and theatrics.

When liberals get mad at something I have done (or they think I will do) they always threaten to 'protest’ in front of my house. Their threats are always designed to force my family, friends or neighbors to endure some angry mob as the price to pay for some vote or statement thinking that will change my mind.

Problem is, protesting in the ‘street’ requires a permit and isn’t likely to be granted in a residential neighborhood. Protesting on a sidewalk is a constitutional right.

Build a sidewalk and you guarantee that folks can (and will) show up to protest every decision (left or right) because sidewalks are ‘public.’

No sidewalks means the closest protesters can get to my house [and not be on the street] is about a mile away at the entrance to my sub-division. Of course, there I can’t see them or hear them so there is little point in them showing up.

Sidewalks in the 'burbs where there are cul-de-sacs are a waste of money and a reduction in privacy.

I live in a sub-division without sidewalks with one road in and out and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Crime is low, protests are non-existent and the quality of life is improved because sidewalks and connectivity don’t exist.

If I need to take a walk, I can walk along the street.

Where sidewalks SHOULD end?

Continuing the discussion of sidewalks and walkable streets, in response to my Saturday op-ed column, "Where the sidewalk shouldn't end," I received the following e-mail:

Why both sides? A person can only walk on one side at a time. I know some may argue safety from crossing streets, but that is on certain streets that may carry heavy traffic or number of lanes which make streets wider.

City and County standards for designing subdivision streets take some of those issues into account with “block lengths”, widths of streets, and connectivity. I believe that sidewalks on both sides of a typical subdivision street is wasteful and should only be required on busier and wider streets determined by traffic engineers.

Working for a real estate developer I know the costs of sidewalks do get passed along to homebuyers and on a typical 70’ wide lot with a 4’ wide sidewalk, the cost is +/-$850 per lot. As you said in your article “A slab of concrete. Impervious surface.” The impervious surface is also becoming an environmental issue concerning storm water runoff and municipalities looking into “post construction ordinances” which (try) to reduce the amount of impervious areas and treat the rest through a series of water quality ponds and rain gardens which drives the cost of a home way up, and limiting sidewalks to one side of a street can help the impervious area calculations and costs.

Of course, I think that in a city you need sidewalks on both sides, and for many reasons. Here's one: Today's quiet residential street in a quiet neighborhood with little traffic may, in 2030, be a high-traffic street. consider Kuykendall Road, or Barclay Downs Drive, or Sharon Road near the Queens/Selwyn intersection. All were, when built, at the edge of the city in quiet suburban areas. Now they're in-town streets with plenty of cars.

Where the sidewalk shouldn't end

My weekly Observer column in today's paper spins off some of the past week's discussion about kids walking to school, and sidewalks. The Charlotte developers' lobby is questioning whether the city should require developers to build sidewalks on both sides of residential streets.

If you want to follow my weekly column on a regular basis, go to this site: www.charlotteobserver.com/marynewsom and set up an RSS feed.

Now I gotta get back to my Saturday bloggers' camp and learn about tag clouds and other fun stuff.

City attitudes: The young have it.

Are the younger generation really different in their attitudes toward cities and urban life?

Here's a comment from my post "End of sprawl? Um, not yet."

"I think there's another factor too that's not entirely being examined. I'm a 26 year old young professional, and unlike young 'yuppie' professionals from past generations, my generation couldn't seem less interested in having a big house in the 'burbs. The majority of them seem to prefer more contained urban living. Will this new generation further the trend of new urbanism and fuel more inner city growth as they come more into their own? Only time will tell I suppose!"

Will this generation "further the trend of new urbanism and fuel more inner city growth"? Or will they be like previous generations and conclude that when they have children they require a house with a lawn, and suburban schools? I think one of the great untold stories -- and I hope to tell it one of these days -- is to debunk the myth that there are no families with children in uptown Charlotte.

But in Charlotte, at least, most of the uptown development seems designed with the assumption that folks with kids live elsewhere. Maybe that will change. Maybe the new 9-11 and Millennial generations will provoke the change. What do you think?

End of sprawl? Um, not yet

Christopher Leinberger of Brookings and the University of Michigan has declared an end to sprawl. "We are witnessing the beginning of the end of sprawl," he writes, in a piece for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He says the market is demanding it.

I've read a variety of writings along the same vein: Higher gas prices, or aging baby-boomers or Millennials or boredom with the suburbs are among the factors that planners and urban writers and Smart Growth advocates are saying will end the dominion of sprawl. I'm declaring those pieces to be the new trend in urban writing. Whether there's a real trend in U.S. development is, to my eye, still an open question.

So while I hope they're right, pardon me for being just a wee bit skeptical. Yes, as I look around my metro region of Charlotte, I see all kinds of interesting things: the New Urban-style Birkdale Village "lifestyle center" in Huntersville, about 10 miles north of downtown Charlotte, the New Urban-style Baxter Village in Fort Mill, S.C., revitalized or stable downtowns in Mooresville, Belmont, Salisbury and other towns. The transit plan in Charlotte has been successful and is shaping growth along its lines, as planners knew it would.

But in addition to those Smart Growth trends, there has been mile after mile after mile of dumb growth going on still. While Birkdale and Baxter were being so well designed, elsewhere in Charlotte mile after mile of single-use, single-family starter home subdivisions were going up, all on auto-pilot and many of them now tattered by foreclosures, even before they're 10 years old. "Sprawl slums," as Charlotte architect Tom Low calls them. (The photo above is of Peachtree Hills, a starter-home subdivision on the fringes of Charlotte.)

Maybe that's what the "beginning of the end" means, but so far, it's not necessarily visible.

Of course, in the past year, development of all kinds has been in hibernation. Maybe when it wakes up, it will forget the last 50 sprawling years. Sort of like the old Newhart show's ending: "Honey, you won't believe the dream I just had."

Can't walk to school? Whose fault, really?

To everyone who wants to blame:

-- the school board

-- the health department

-- the county commissioners

-- school desegregation

-- me

-- the Observer's editorial board

-- whoever else is handy ...

... for the fact that in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, as in many communities around the nation, it's difficult for most kids to walk to school, I offer the following complexities for your consideration. (If you're new to this, first visit my posting from yesterday, "Why it's not easy to walk to school," and the comments on it.) Now, here are a few things to ponder, among the many realities that affect the situation:

-- Until the late 1990s, the city of Charlotte didn't require developers to build many sidewalks in their new developments.

-- The city's budget for retrofitting streets with sidewalks, while expanding, is pitifully inadequate.

-- In North Carolina counties have no responsibility for streets or roads or sidewalks. Either the city builds and maintains them, or the state does. The state's attitude used to be to discourage any sidewalks built outside a municipal jurisdiction. Much of what's now inside Charlotte was in unincorporated Mecklenburg County when it was built (and later was annexed). Thus, few sidewalks.

-- Most of suburban Charlotte is pedestrian-hostile, with wide and busy intersections, few pedestrian lights and crosswalks, long blocks and little connectivity.

-- Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, in its building designs and site-size requirements, followed state requirements based on a national organization, meaning those requirements exist all over the country. Only in recent years have some N.C. requirements become "guidelines" which school systems can occasionally bypass. The requirements included huge sites: e.g. 18 acres for elementary schools, 60 for high schools. CMS, to its credit, is building on smaller sites when it can, and building more multistory schools, which need slightly smaller footprint. And it's trying to keep walkability (and transit) in mind for newer schools.
-- CMS has been harangued for years by the anti-tax crowd to be more economical in its school building, so like many large systems slammed with growth, it moved to larger (I would say too large) schools. Larger schools mean students must come from farther away, making it harder for them to walk, especially in Charlotte's pedestrian-hostile suburban areas.

-- The appropriate elected officials to blame for crowded schools are the county commissioners. They're the ones who allocate money -- or don't -- to build new schools and maintain old ones. The school board asks, but usually doesn't receive all it asks for.

-- While some comments have noted the can't-walk-to-school situation isn't universal, it is common across America, even where there was no school busing for integration. Desegregation is essentially a red herring in this debate. Further, even when there was plenty of busing for integration, some kids attended schools nearby for at least part of their schooling.
Yes, it's theoretically possible a push for more walkable schools might have arisen earlier if all children were attending schools nearby. But I've lived in Charlotte 30 years and the whole "walkability" movement -- irrespective of school kids -- was nonexistent for most of that time.

Why it's not easy to walk to school

"Why was it necessary to create a job in the health dept. to encourage kids to walk to schools? Isn't that something a principal/teachers/student nurse could communicate to the parents?"

Good question, from a comment on the previous posting. The situation is complicated. A few administrators at schools here (and other cities as well) don't want kids walking to school. They think it's unsafe. They think kids already have bus rides so why would they want to walk? In addition, many principals spend their time trying to make sure kids are learning and teachers are teaching. How students arrive at school -- as long as it's not causing immediate problems -- is way, way down the list. I wish the case were otherwise, but it's not realistic to think that will change.

And school nurses? Most school nurses are assigned to multiple schools and barely have time to turn around, must less launch campaigns to encourage walking.

But there are other problems, too, that even the principals who DO want kids to walk or bike can't surmount: Lack of sidewalks. Lack of crosswalks. Lack of midblock stoplights on long, long blocks. Lack of bike lanes. Lack of crossing guards. Those policies and decisions are not within a principal's authority, but reside with the City of Charlotte.

And it's even more complicated. Plenty of schools were built and designed for car- and-bus-only transportation. They're not in pedestrian-friendly settings. Here's a good example: Unless things have changed in the last couple of years, Greenway Park Elementary sits right next to the McAlpine Greenway, yet there's no pedestrian connection to the greenway. The school, like many, sits so far back from the road and its sidewalk that the whole setting conveys a subliminal message of "Don't walk here." Technically, of course, you can walk to that school. But it wouldn't be very efficient or pleasant.

Older schools -- Eastover, Myers Park Traditional, Davidson Middle, Midwood School, the old Wilmore School (now used for offices) -- were built when it was expected that kids would walk to school. That fell out of favor, all over the country.

School designs for the past 40 years had almost nothing to do with whether the assignment zones were neighborhood-school or crosstown busing. You see the same styles all over the country, not just in Charlotte. They have to do with state school design guidelines (influenced by national standards), traffic engineering and the architectural mode and practices of the day when they were built.

Reversing all the policies that combine to create an anti-walking environment is a huge task. I don't wany my school principals having to tackle it. They have another mission.

Healthy kids = walking kids

Good job by the Mecklenburg County Health Department. It created a job for a "safe routes to schools coordinator" and hired Dick Winters five months ago. The idea is that helping and encouraging more kids to walk to school can fight the growing problem of childhood obesity.

Winters is working with Cotswold, Highland Creek and Beverly Woods elementary schools -- and getting advice from Davidson, where a huge effort to get kids walking to school is having growing success -- to help them find parent volunteers and organize periodic "Walk To School Day" events. International Walk to School day was Oct. 8. Obviously, he hopes to expand to other schools.

He's learning, of course, that efforts at individual schools have to be paired with efforts to change some of the bureaucratic policies and procedures that can make it daunting for anyone, not just a student, to walk even a few blocks to a school. Some schools are situated where walking is difficult or unsafe, due to traffic or crime. At some schools, principals discourage students' walking or bicycling. I wrote a few years back about the city having taken away the crosswalk and light on Tyvola Road that let students and a neighborhood volunteer walk to CMS's Smith Language Academy.

Other schools have had more success. Winters said Highland Creek Elementary recently had to get more bike racks, and that one day someone counted 50 bicycles there. As Winters said, "We need a groundswell from parents to get policies changed."

Don't touch that tree

You know you're not in Charlotte when ...

... when you see a poster on a tree that there has to be a public hearing before it can be chopped down.

I saw this on a street tree over the weekend in Cambridge, Mass. Read the close-up below. Seems it's state law in Massachusetts (home, you'll remember, to godless groups and their advisers who hold fund-raisers for godless N.C. candidates).

And you know you're not in Charlotte when, if you mention the sign to a Cambridge friend, she says, "They ought to require hearings any time anyone wants to cut down a tree."

Even I wouldn't go that far. Some trees are diseased. Some were just planted in the wrong place. Some are -- should I say this? -- Bradford pear trees.

However, trees are amazing resources and plenty of folks here waste them without batting an eye. Even Charlotte's tree ordinance -- which we are lucky to even have and which gets praise around the state for simply existing -- doesn't protect very many large trees.

The tree ordinance for residential subdivisions protects Heritage Trees, those approaching the size of champion trees for each species. But it doesn't require saving remarkably big, old or otherwise significant trees.

An Observer story from June says the city's considering strengthening its commercial tree ordinance. No follow-up story on whether that happened. I'll try to get an answer later today. But I am safe, I think, in predicting that it wouldn't require public hearings before any street tree gets cut down.

Have to run out now to -- get this -- talk to a college class about blogging.

A medical office building plague

Random architectural musing, while driving through the Carolinas Medical Center complex over the weekend: Do they teach classes in architectural school on how to make medical office buildings ugly?

They must, because otherwise the law of randomness would mean now and again there would be a medical office building constructed that wasn't ugly and was even, you know, agreeable to look at. Ditto for hospitals. (Presbyterian Hospital, at least the older red brick part, on Hawthorne/Queens, is the pleasant exception to this pattern.)

You'd think doctors' groups and medical institutions would be particularly on the lookout for designs that encourage people to walk -- you know, get exercise? Ward off heart disease and diabetes and obesity? You'd be wrong. Most of their buildings are surrounded by moats of asphalt parking lots.

OK, end of random thought.

Traffic congestion: 'The condition of the city'

One of the most influential human beings in the world of architecture, planning, development, city growth and urban design is in town this week for a transportation conference. Andres Duany (ranked No. 5 on Builder magazine's list of the most powerful people in the planning industry) is giving a public talk this Wednesday 5:30-7 p.m. at the Levine Museum uptown.

Then he'll attend a three-day transportation summit conference by the Congress for the New Urbanism. Yep, Charlotte will be fairly crawling with New Urbanists. Here's a link for more about Duany, if you're not familiar with him and his work. Here's a link to information on the conference. (Correction: It's Congress, not conference, for the New Urbanism. Too much typing fast. My apologies.)

In a nutshell, Andres and his wife and business partner, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, helped found the whole New Urbanist movement.

You'll hear a lot of different definitions of New Urbanism, especially from developers and/or rival architects, many of whom paint it as a movement seeking only nostalgic houses with front porches. That's a simplistic look at a complex set of ideas.

In a nutshell, New Urbanism seeks to model new development on the successful, human-friendly designs of decades past.

I've heard Duany lecture over the years, and among the ideas that has stuck with me is this: When re grappling with the problem of traffic congestion, he said, remember: "Congestion is the condition of the city." Whether it's flocks of goats, ox-drawn carts, people on foot, people on horseback, carriages, cars, SUVs, buses, Jetson-style flying saucers, whatever. Cities are crowded places, and they are going to be congested.

What matters is whether people can get around in a multitude of ways: by car, on foot, bicycle, train, streetcar, bus -- the whole panoply of transportation options.

Love his ideas or hate them, Duany is always provocative, always an incisive observer of American (and world) societies.

What ails cities and suburbs -- and more

News from around:

Bull City Blues: Architect, engineer and planner Tony Sease raps Durham for how it's NOT making streets more comfortable for pedestrians in some new streetscaping projects.

Obama the City Dude: Alec McGillis writes in the WashPost that Barack Obama is the first candidate in decades who has spent almost all his life living in large cities, and speculates on what that might mean if he wins election. To make his point McGillis dismisses Dukakis as being from Brookline, not Boston, and Kerry as being more of Nantucket than Boston. That's a bit of a stretch.

Curing Urban-itis: Americans have a love-hate relationship with cities, writes author William Finley in a column on planetizen.com. The problems of cities and of suburbs are inextricably linked, he says, but usually they're dealt with as if totally separate Problems he lists include traffic congestion, lack of affordable housing, blighted inner city neighborhoods and sprawl. He fingers the federal government -- among others -- for lack of leadership.

Here's his take on traffic congestion: "Traffic Congestion is caused by one-person cars, auto and oil lobbies, subsidized parking, low gas taxes, political opposition to rapid transit, Federal and State failures to assist metro areas and the lack of regional leadership. It is always the other fellow’s fault."

Beauty Out of Season: Maybe Momma Nature decided the campaign muck was just too dreary and wanted to cheer us all up. Whatever the reason, some of the Rocky Shoals spider lilies are blooming out of season in the Catawba River near Great Falls, S.C. Lindsay Pettus sent along some photos from Bill Stokes. (one above, another below. )

The spider lilies are an endangered species that grow in the middle of the river. The colony in the Catawba is one of the largest known -- and when they bloom in the spring they're spectacular.

Foxx reels in big-name backers

At-large City Council member Anthony Foxx announced today he's running for mayor next year regardless of whether incumbent Mayor Pat McCrory wins the governor's race.

Foxx, a Democrat, told me he's rounded up enough early support to go for it. Among those supporters, he said -- and I was prying, he wasn't just tossing out these names -- are retired Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. and local Democratic Party bigwig Cammie Harris. McColl usually -- but not always -- backs Democrats.

Foxx told me he had decided just within the past few weeks, although he's been thinking about running for months. But he sent letters to supporters or potential supporters late last week. "I would defind that as the point of no return."

He'll probably face impressive opposition, likely Republican council member John Lassiter (if McCrory is ensconced in Raleigh) and possibly Democratic state Sen. Malcolm Graham, who's also been thinking about running for mayor for some time. Both are generally well-regarded and, in my experience, do a good job as elected officials, as does Foxx.

"Why now?" I asked Foxx. He gave a thoughtful and even visionary answer, which in a politician is refreshing. (Note: Lassiter and Graham could probably do the same. Many elected officials can't.) Part of it was a discussion of the current problems the city faces and how many of them are, in fact, regional problems: The economy. Transportation. The environment.

"When I ask people where the city's going, it's a microcosm of the country," he said. "People don't know where we're going."

Foxx grew up in Charlotte, went to Davidson and NYU law school. He's been on the council since 2005.

A contrary look at transit-oriented zoning

I heard an interesting proposal last week from architect-planner Terry Shook, who keeps a sharp eye on what's happening to properties along the Lynx Blue Line. It's a different way to look at the property-value increase along the line -- who benefits and who should benefit, and whether the city is letting developers get off too easy on the design of TOD projects.

The way it works now: The city, hoping to spur transit-oriented development (TOD) projects along the rail corridor, generally has taken the initiative to rezone properties to the TOD zoning. This creates an incentive to developers, which is why the city has done it.

But, as Shook points out, it also raises the value of the property, even if no developer has bought it yet. So in many cases it's the original property owners, not the developer seeking to do TOD, who benefits from the new, more intense zoning.

Why not, he suggests, hold off on giving out the TOD zoning until a development proposal comes in? That way the city has some leverage to hold over a developer whose proposal might not, otherwise, have great design? He offers in evidence the very tall project going up on Tremont at Camden Road: Its street-front design isn't very good, although it meets the TOD zoning requirements. If a property is already rezoned for TOD, the planners don't have as much leverage as they might if the owner was having to win a rezoning.

Here's some quick armchair analysis: The Shook idea would mean developers have to fight for a rezoning, which could well be a disincentive. Yet it would also mean the developers wouldn't be paying as much for the land, assuming that TOD-zoned land costs more to buy than industrial- or business- or other-zoned land. So while one incentive would be removed, there'd be another in its place. And if developers aren't paying so much for the land, they'd be more amenable to including affordable units in their projects -- especially if the city planners were pushing them to do so, in order to win a TOD rezoning.

I'm not saying Shook's idea is the solution to all problems. I'm saying it's an interesting view to ponder. Any developers or planners or property owners have thoughts, either pro or con?

Keep Charlotte 'Starched'

Long time, no Naked City. Too many candidates for editorial board members to research, too little time. More and better items to come tomorrow, I vow. I've been tucking tidbits aside. But here's a quick one now.

Architect/planner Tom Low was talking with Citistates Report writer Curtis Johnson last summer, thinking about Charlotte's bank-town soul. As it happened, he was wearing a "Keep Austin Weird" hat. That city has built a national reputation as a place where eccentrics and local color are both tolerated and celebrated -- not exactly the reputation Charlotte has. We're more of a starched-shirt kind of city. What would Charlotte's version of "Keep Austin Weird" be, Low wondered. Johnson quipped, "Keep Charlotte Starched." And thus, a movement was born. Or to be more accurate, a movement may be born or not, depending.

Low has launched -- well, he's trying to launch -- a "Keep Charlotte Starched" movement. There's a Keep Charlotte Starched Web site, as well as some stickers, if you're really keen on the idea.

But without one of our two banks, will Charlotte remain so starched? "How can we keep Charlotte starched?" Low asks. I'll ask, do we want to? Best three comments win a KCS sticker.

Historic trolley car No. 85 (above)

Tracks before their time

Who knew? Maybe you did. But it was news to me to learn from CDOT interim chief Danny Pleasant that the construction work on Elizabeth Avenue near Central Piedmont Community College includes laying streetcar tracks.

The work started as a "pedscape project" -- making the area amenable to pedestrians. Developer Clay Grubb, whose project is at the Presbyterian Hospital end of Elizabeth, wanted wide sidewalks. CPCC, which generates pedestrian traffic, got excited about the pedscape idea, Pleasant tells me, and is moving its parking garage entrances off Elizabeth.

And some $5 million in CATS money is paying to lay down streetcar tracks. Makes sense. Why rip the street up in 10 years, when the streetcar line is actually getting built? And in the interim, what about good old trolley car No 85, (pictured above) which was banned from sharing the Lynx Blue Line with the heavier light rail cars?

Pleasant says the light fixtures are being installed with the electricity that eventually will be needed for streetcars. (Or something. I am no electrician so I'm probably getting that part wrong.) When done and the streetcars are finally set to run, all they have to do is put in catenary lines, he says.

The 2030 Transit Plan shows streetcars on that section by 2023 -- 15 years off.

"Green" developers council?

Got an e-mail from developer David Smoots in response to the recent Citistates Report.

He proposes that developers, city officials and residents collaborate to find alternatives to sprawl.

He writes:

Our community must be prepared for a paradigm shift. It will require the collaboration of developers (I am one), city officials and citizenry to consider alternatives to the sprawling kind of development we’ve had in Charlotte for so long. In one recent national study, “Measuring the Market for Green Residential Development,” homebuyers admit we have to face the issue of environmental responsibility head-on. Nearly 38% strongly agree, and 41.2% somewhat agree, that “in order to protect the environment we will need big changes in the way we live.”

While New Urbanism has caught on over the past two decades, Charlotte should now prepare for the next step. One idea: Motivate the Urban Land Institute to implement a strategy among local members and push for the creation of a Sustainable Stewardship Council.

This council would work with citizenry, government and private entities on environmentally friendly development issues within our community. An involved SSC Council could help promote water strategies, energy strategies, transportation, health strategies, recycling and reuse of materials in rezoning, and permit-related activities. The upshot? Local real estate developers would become better community leaders.

Several things are notable about his suggestion. First, it sounds like a good idea. I mean, it couldn't possibly hurt and it might help educate developers. Second, it's further proof that at least some developers think (know?) that building "green" is a market niche that they can exploit. More and more customers are looking for "green."

Is there a role for city and state regulations? Should city standards and zoning rules be changed to make them more environmentally sound? Note, this might not mean ADDING regulations so much as changing the ones we already have.

CATS boss: Build it now, or never

CATS chief Keith Parker thinks the 2030 Transit Plan -- the one with four more corridors plus a streetcar system -- should become a plan for 2018.

He told a transportation forum this week: "If we don't build the 2030 plan before 2030, it will be hopelessly unaffordable."

He said rising construction costs could price the expansions out of reach if the Metropolitan Transit Commission hews to its timetable. And with "a modest increase in revenue" it could be done within the next 10 years, he said.

The idea isn't at all crazy. Denver is doing something similar. Its light rail debuted in the 1990s but never got expanded. A few years back a coalition of the Chamber of Commerce, mayors and environmental leaders backed a regionwide system of six lines at $4.7 billion, to be paid with a sales tax. Voters OK'd it in 2004, even without a commitment of federal support. (The estimated price now is $7.9 billion. You can see why Parker is worried.)

In Charlotte, Parker said, the success of the Lynx Blue Line has everyone demanding transit. "Everybody wants rail. Everybody wants it now."

I'd gladly pony up a fraction more on the sales tax if it meant faster construction of trains to north Mecklenburg, University City and good transit service to the airport and out Indy Boulevard.

'Catastrophic, but not unprecedented'

I caught up today with Dan Morrill, historian-about-town (he's a UNC Charlotte history prof and consulting director for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission) and he offered perspective on the Wachovia debacle and how Charlotte has faced similar economic crises in the past. (A quick tip o the hat, also, to Charlotte historian Tom Hanchett's book "Sorting Out the New South City," which I used to fill in some details.)

"The current situation is serious. It is catastrophic. But is is hardly unprecedented," Morrill told me.

Charlotte was once a gold town -- gold mines, companies that supported mining, even a mint making gold coins. Then came the California gold rush. "All the gold mines left, and the gold mining companies left," Morrill said. The banks declined.

Three Charlotte men -- lawyer J.W. Osborne, physician C.J. Fox, and merchant/lawyer William Johnston -- decided the city needed revitalizing and they pushed to build a railroad. In 1852 the first passenger train of the Charlotte & South Carolina Railroad arrived. In 1854 the North Carolina Railroad arrived. "It made Mecklenburg for the first time a functioning part of North Carolina," Hanchett wrote. The railroads, Morrill said, "made Charlotte what it is."

The Civil War was an economic catastrophe for Charlotte, he said. So was the Great Depression.

After the Civil War, Edward Dilworth Latta and D.A. Tomkins launched the region's industrial age with cotton mills.

After the Depression, mayor and businessman Ben Douglas pushed for an airport. That built the city's role in commerce and distribution.

In each case, Morrill said, the decisive factor was assertive leadership.

Ahem. Who will play that role today? Politicians, who must always look to the next election, usually have a hard time taking a long-term view. The business oligarchy -- is that really the best leadership model for the 21st century?

My prediction is we'll see nonprofits -- foundations and philanthropic funders -- stepping in to play an expanded role.

How Wachovia sale affects Charlotte growth

No one knows, of course, what the loss of Wachovia bank from Charlotte will mean long-term. Will it stop the tower under construction? I think that's unlikely. But an oversupply of office space may cause uptown rents to sink. Call it "affordable housing for offices."

(Note, Wachovia Corp. will remain headquartered here, but it won't own the retail bank.)

Here's one early assessment, from UNC Charlotte's Urban Institute director Jeff Michael:

"It just seems to me, as someone who gets paid in part to observe Charlotte and its progress, that something significant and historic just happened here about which we can't even begin to predict the consequences. 

"On the one hand, we may have just witnessed the beginning of the end of Charlotte's upward trajectory, or alternatively, we may be getting ready to see just how resilient this city really is. Either way, it's going to be a major story that unfolds over many years, and not just over the next six months."

Lots of us are wondering whether that huge 48-story Wachovia office tower under construction will ever be finished.  I bet it is. 

Here's what we know:

• Of its 1.5 million square feet, the bank was to have taken about half. 
  
• Duke Energy is the second largest tenant of the 48-story building, leasing about 240,000 square feet
  
• In June the bank announced Deloitte LLP, the accounting and consulting firm, would lease about 82,000 square feet – third largest tenant. 
  
• Wake Forest's Babcock Graduate School of Management is another anchor tenant. 
  
• In June, Wachovia said the building was fully leased.
  

Why shouldn't Charlotte lead?

I've been taking some time off after working as the editor of the 2008 Citistates Report, which debuted in Sunday's Observer. If you read it, you may recall that writers Curtis Johnson and Neal Peirce suggested the inside-the-beltway crowd isn't going to pass meaningful legislation on controlling greenhouse gas emissions – and thereby save the globe from grave peril – and that the best hope lies with "bold, visionary urban regions."

Or maybe state regions?

This week marks the formal start of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. It's a carbon cap-and-trade program among 10 northeastern states from Maine south to Maryland. Other regions, and California, are watching to see how it works.

But to quote Peirce and Johnson, why not Charlotte? Why shouldn't this region become the first metro region to try something similar? To be innovative on energy? To lead?

If you're thinking "Why worry about all this energy stuff when the nation's financial system is in crisis?" here's a possible answer.

It's a report from my friend, Christine Gorman, a former Time magazine staffer and current free-lance science and health writer, who was at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York.

The plenary session yesterday [Wednesday] was kind of a sleepy affair until Al Gore got all worked up and said "clean coal is a lie. It's like healthy cigarettes" and argued that the current financial crisis is nothing compared to what's going to happen with the environment. "The world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets," he says. Then he went on to call for a national "smart grid" for electricity and a carbon tax to reduce the payroll tax.

North Carolina showed some initiative with its Clean Smokestacks Act several years ago, to help cut down on air pollution and ozone. Surely it's time for some similar initiative to deal with the even larger problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

University Place: Bad design hurt a bright idea

Here’s another chapter of the old story: Bad design can undermine even the best intentions.

I caught up with former UNC Charlotte Vice Chancellor Doug Orr last week at a breakfast meeting of University City Partners to note the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking for University Place.

Orr, now president emeritus of Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, is a widely respected figure in this region. He was key to the creation of University Place in the early 1980s, which was a groundbreaking effort by a state university to shape the development near it. The place drew tours of planners from all over the world.

In those days mixed-use development (homes and stores and offices all mixed together, the way they have been in cities until the mid-20th century) was viewed with suspicion here by residents and developers alike. Orr and UNCC colleagues Jim Clay and Al Stuart worked like dogs to educate people on the value of mixed-used development, to pull together a plan and see it executed. So did numerous other people and institutions. Finally, University Place was born.

But what should have been a triumph of good city planning simply doesn’t work as a neighborhood. With all those good intentions, the project design is deeply flawed. It’s multi-use, but not truly mixed use.

The design is, inherently, post-WWII suburbia. Homes are separated from the small, but very pleasant retail area around the artificial lake. The rest of the place is big box stores and chain restaurants and surface parking lots. It needed a street grid, with stores and homes interspersed along sidewalks. It needed, basically, New Urbanist design. Compare University Place to Baxter Town Center in Fort Mill to get an idea of What Might Have Been. And it needed city zoning and building standards that would allow it. They weren't in place in the 1980s. The other component institution, such as the University Hospital and a branch of the public library, were built with standard suburbia models. They are isolated pods sitting in parking lots, without sidewalks or connections other than clogged traffic arteries.

In the 1990s, UNCC under then-Chancellor Jim Woodward turned its attention elsewhere. The rest of the University Place property became a Big Box Bonanza. The surrounding area suffered from the same disastrous planning.

Charlotte’s elected officials and appointed planning commissioners in the late 1980s and 1990s chose the “let the marketplace decide” philosophy. The marketplace – as it does – created short-term profits and the ugly development that conventional suburban zoning rules produce: horrific traffic and an unwalkable section of the city.

It was a tragic missed opportunity for a part of the city that deserved far better. Those who worked so hard for University Place deserved better. The whole UNCC community deserved better.

Today, some determined people, including current UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois and University City Partners have undertaken the long and expensive process of retrofitting this standard-issue sprawl into something that will endure and enhance UNCC’s future. Transit may well be the factor that will save University City from its past. But it's a daily, visible reminder that no matter the good intentions, without good design, even good initiatives can falter.

New future for Eastland Mall? (Part 2)

A reader e-mails to point to a redevelopment in the old Sears Building on Lake Street in Minneapolis. She opines: "The Art Deco Sears building is much more attractive, of course, than Eastland, but the idea is the same as what you’re talking about."

And it's a few miles from downtown, not out in the suburban neighborhoods such as Carowinds, and a bit closer in than Eastland.

Want to read the original posting, with comments? Here's a link. Or just look below.

New future for Eastland Mall?

If you haven't visited Plaza Fiesta Carolinas, you should. You might be glimpsing an early version of the future for the Eastland Mall site.

Eastland is a fading ’70s-era regional shopping mall, in a part of Charlotte that’s seen huge demographic changes in the past 30 years, with an influx of immigrants and more racially integrated neighborhoods. The mall’s owner, Columbus, Ohio-based Glimcher Realty Trust, has had it on the market since 2005. It said in July it would no longer subsidize it. Store hours have been reduced; the non-anchor stores aren’t even open Mondays or at night. And the city of Charlotte now holds an option to buy two of the five parcels at the 70-acre property.

Plaza Fiesta is a newly opened, Latino-themed enclosed mall in a re-used building next to Carowinds, just off I-77 on the N.C.-S.C. line. It's where the old Carolina Pottery and outlet mall used to be. New owners from Atlanta, home to the first Plaza Fiesta, bought it and upfitted the interior to resemble a Latin American village.

The nonprofit forum, Civic by Design, hosted Plaza Fiesta architects David Schroeder and Sean Slater from Norcross, Ga., on Tuesday night. They talked about modeling the interior after real towns in Mexico, even to the extent of replicating owner Arturo Adonay's (corrected from earlier misspelling) grandmother's house in Mexico.

It’s laid out with streets and “alleys.” There’s a central plaza, a fountain and a lot of kid- and family-friendly spaces, such as a huge playground and a video arcade. It’s becoming a popular draw, even for Anglo families, the architects said. Yes, they’re going to be giving a positive spin, but I visited it with friends one recent Sunday afternoon and saw lots of people eating, strolling shopping.

But I was most interested in another aspect: its role as incubator for small, locally owned (in this case mostly but not exclusively Latino-owned) businesses. Much of the interior is filled with booths, arranged in trade-show layout, which play something of the role kiosks do at conventional malls – except those kiosks are likely to be run by national chains, not mom and pop businesses. In Charlotte, Plaza Fiesta officials visited Latino businesses along South Boulevard and recruited some of them to open spots at Plaza Fiesta.

Is it faux? Of course. Shopping malls are all replicas of true shopping streets in towns and cities. Is it in the wrong place, planning-wise? Sure. I asked Slater and Schroeder about those concerns, and they pretty much said, yep, it would be better in a more central spot, next to transit, and it would be better if it were in a real neighborhood with real streets and real houses instead of fake ones. “It is what it is,” Slater said.

But, according to them, it’s working as a way to give small entrepreneurs a toe-hold, it’s attracting crowds with lots of planned events, and it’s functioning as well as anywhere else in Charlotte as a gathering spot for the geographically dispersed Latino community. It’s safe, it’s pleasant, and – assuming they’re telling the truth – making money.

Here’s the Eastland hook: In the audience was Tom Warshauer, a city economic development manager whose assignments include Eastland Mall (also Independence Boulevard, and North Tryon Street). He was intrigued by the concept of a marketplace of small businesses arranged around a plaza, acting as a community gathering area. Maybe he was doing just a little daydreaming – don’t we all? – but he talked of the possibility of creating a Plaza Fiesta-type incubator space in a real neighborhood, in a more central and transit-served location – Eastland.

Just remember, you read it here first.

'Parkway' N.C.-style = boondoggle

They're calling it a "parkway"? That's about as Orwellian as the Republicans running a presidential campaign AGAINST Washington – you know, where they've held the White House?

Have you ever driven Connecticut's Merritt Parkway? Now that's a parkway. Here's one key fact: It prohibits truck and commercial traffic. So even when it's jammed with traffic, you're not hemmed in by tractor-trailers driving through your tailpipe or blowing you off the road. It's a noticeably more pleasant experience.

North Carolina's so-called Garden Parkway, a proposed toll road through western Mecklenburg County and eastern Gaston County, isn't – really – being built because it will relieve clogged roads. It's a development-enhancing road. And part of the rationale is to help the truck traffic from an intermodal (yucky word, it means dealing with trucks, trains and planes) facility planned at Charlotte's airport.

Read about how some transportation planners say the road isn't needed. And read about how two state senators (David Hoyle of Gaston and Robert Pittenger of Mecklenburg, who's running for lieutenant governor) have bought land along the proposed route Because of local politicians' continuing inability to say no to developers, those "parkway" interchanges are destined to become as full of glop as those around Charlotte's outerbelt highway. Tip o the hat to Observer reporter Steve Harrison for those stories. Pittenger, you'll note, recused himself from two votes that moved the parkway proposal through the legislature.

The 67 miles of the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways are lined with trees and woods, and the Merritt has a series of architecturally interesting bridges, designed by one architect. Both opened as toll roads but tolls were removed in 1988.

Even New Jersey has a parkway that prohibits truck traffic: The Garden State Parkway (not to be confused with our proposed Garden Parkway) was built in the early 1950s and prohibits trucks on the northern third of the route.

Somehow I don't think the N.C.-style "parkway" will be a "parkway" at all. New name suggestion: The Garden Boondoggle.

Quaint (??!!) Pineville

I came across this article about Pineville, by two planners: Kevin Icard, city planning director, and planner Travis Morgan.

"Pineville is a historic city filled with landmarks, rustic antique shops and bustling downtown district reminiscent of the 1950s," they write. Well, true that, if you're talking about downtown Pineville. The town is right to try to protect it. But what they have done -- requiring new buildings to have brick facades -- won't protect the cozy turn-of-the-century downtown at all.

Even more significant, compared to the rest of Pineville, its downtown is like a b-b rolling around a six-lane highway. The rest of Pineville is the worst of suburban retail sprawl: strip centers, power centers, a enclosed regional mall, big box stores clear to the horizon -- all of it unwalkable, all of it a traffic nightmare at virtually all times of day. Pineville is famed throughout the metro Charlotte region as the worst possible example of unplanned retail development -- not that that has stopped other places (Concord Mills in Concord, University City, Albemarle Road, etc.) from trying to steal that designation.

It is famous in local circles, also, for refusing to let Charlotte's newly opened light rail line into town. The wildly successful transit line now ends at the Pineville city limits.

I will give Pineville kudos for saying no to a Wal-Mart supercenter a few years back, and I will give its planners kudos for trying to save downtown Pineville. But I'm pretty sure that an ordinance requiring every new building to have a brick facade isn't the way to do it, however.

Which U.S. city has best planners?

Which city in the country has the best planning department?
I'm on the e-mail list for a group of planners-architects-landscape architects-nonprofit activists and journalists who've all taken part, as I did in 2005-06, in the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami. A question went out recently to the group:

• Which mid-sized to large cities have the best planning departments in the country?

I was interested in the dozen or so responses that came in. They went about like this:

• "Nashville?"
• "Denver?"
• "Rick Bernhardt Nashville" [That was from a Tennessee developer. Bernhardt is Nashville's planning director.]
• "Montgomery, Ala." [From the same developer. He had a lovely quote at the end of his e-mail, which is worth repeating here: "Every increment of construction should be done in such a way as to heal the city." -- from Christopher Alexander, architect and author. ]
• "I think Portland, Oregon, probably belongs on this list."
• "Portland has done some great things. ... A list of other forward thinking departments should include Fayetteville, Arkansas."
• "Now that Harriet Tregoning is heading the DC Planning Department, that could very well join the list."
• "One would hope Milwaukee qualifies, having had John Norquist as mayor and Peter Park (now in Denver) as head of planning."
• "The cities of West Palm Beach and Stuart, Fla., might be worth looking into."

There you have it. Totally unscientific and based as much on reputation as on reality, but interesting nonetheless. Any planner-types out there care to second the above opinions, or disagree, or brag on their own cities?

The Amtrak candidate

So now we have a vice presidential candidate who uses Amtrak every day. Joe Biden commutes from Washington to his home in Delaware. If he's elected, some people think that bodes well for rail travel. Would be nice to have some Amtrak champion with clout in DC.

It's worth noting that John McCain has been an Amtrak opponent for years. But who knows? Maybe his veep choice will be another train fan.

Planetizen.com offers this item about Biden and Amtrak.

While I was in Boston last year, we took the train to New York and I noticed that between Boston and New York Amtrak was something like nine Acela trains a day (that's the speedier, slightly nicer train), as well as almost hourly regular trains. They ran on time, and were quite handy.

Made me envious. While we were in NYC's Penn Station awaiting a train back to Boston, I heard an announcement that the train from New Orleans -- which is one of the few trains that comes through Charlotte -- was arriving ... three hours late. Figures.

What gov candidates SHOULD be saying

I caught up today with Charlotte Chamber president Bob Morgan (below, left), and asked what questions he thought voters should be asking of North Carolina's gubernatorial candidates.
He didn't hesitate for even an eye-blink: Transportation, he said.

1. First, he said, ask Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue (the Democrat) and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory (the Republican) whether transportation funding is a priority for them. (As an experienced questioner, I'd say ask them their top three -- or maybe five, whatever -- priorities. THEN you'd see if "transportation" or "transportation funding" is among them.

2. Second, he said, ask how the state should pay for its transportation needs in the future. Some state officials estimate that by 2030 there will be a $64 billion (not million, billion) gap between state transportation needs and funds.

So far, according to Morgan, candidates are saying, "Fix the N.C. Department of Transportation," meaning (what follows are my words, not his) get rid of the cronyism and inefficiency that we've all come to know and love. Candidates also say they'd stop transferring money from the Highway Fund into the general fund.

Fixing DOT and stopping the transfer of funds may well be excellent ideas, but they don't solve the problem of there being not enough money to pay for the state's transportation needs: maintenance, new roads, maintenance, new transit systems, maintenance, better rail service, and did I mention maintenance?

Where does that money come from?

Of course, the answer has to be, "From the taxpayers." Maybe it's a sales tax, maybe it's a gas tax, maybe the state shuts down its education department or UNC Chapel Hill and transfers the money to the transportation department. (Note, I am NOT recommending that.) Regardless of how it's done, the money is taxpayer money.

Don't hold your breath waiting on either candidate to say so, though. Both Perdue (left) and McCrory (right) are smart enough to know the transportation mess isn't going to be solved without more money. And both are smart enough to know it's really stupid to talk about new taxes during a campaign.

Finding the Naked City

To answer Karina, who wrote:

"I sure wish this blog would attract some less nasty folk. (Why is it not listed under blogs on the website by the way?)."

You can find the blog if, upon opening CharlotteObserver.com, you click on the tab at the top labeled "Opinion" and then on blogs/columnists. Or click on the regular "Opinion" page and you'll see a listing for my Saturday op-ed column, and a teeny link to the Naked City blog.

I'm trying to convince the Web page designers to give this (and other blogs) more visibility. But for now, try bookmarking it, or or set up an RSS feed.

As to the tenor of the comments, let me remind everyone I police the comments and remove insulting or crude ones. If you disagree with me or with anyone else, that's fine. It helps provoke discussion. If you insult me or others or use profanity (even with ** for letters) or discuss the uses of corncobs or call people hillbillies or rednecks or other insults, your comments will be deleted. Stay civil and we'll all have a better time.

Finally, another reminder that one day soon, this blog will migrate from blogger.com onto a CharlotteObserver.com platform and you'll have to register and provide a name for your comments. So no more comments from "anonymous."

Student parking: Fewer spots, higher fees

The high cost of free parking, chapter 29:

Raleigh high school students are upset about a plan to raise their yearly parking fee by $50, the News and Observer reports. It would go from $120 to $170 a year. In 2005, the Wake school board doubled the fee to $240 a year, but rescinded it after students complained. Charlotte-Mecklenburg students pay $25 a year. Durham students pay $75; Chapel Hill-Carrboro students pay $100.

No parking is free, it only looks that way. The cost of the land, the grading and the asphalt to pave school parking lots is absorbed by taxpayers. In 2006, a CMS architect told me each parking space the system builds costs $4,000 -- not including the land cost. Those same taxpayers also shell out for a complete mass transit system for students only -- school buses. (Note, school bus costs come from two different pots of public money: county and state.)

Call me heartless. My driver's license-toting high school daughter would shriek if she knew I was writing this. But I think schools should offer less parking and charge more for it. Yes, it would probably cost more for high school bus routes, but maybe not that much more. They've got to hire drivers anyway, and drive the routes for the kids who do take the bus. Many of the buses end up with empty seats anyhow, because so many kids drive. (OK, OK, offer a "hardship" option to low-income students if they can prove to the principal they need to drive to school and can't afford a higher parking fee.)

If parking cost more, more kids would walk, bicycle, take the school bus or a city bus, or carpool. The pocketbook talks.

A little light reading

A few links for you today, as today I have to work on the part of my job that takes up the bulk of my work time: writing editorials, an op-ed column and helping produce the daily Opinion pages of the Observer. So happy reading, y'all.

-- MIT scientists say the country could slash the amount of fuel guzzled by a gas-guzzling nation by 30% to 50% by 2035, with such changes as lighter cars, hybrids and fuel cell cars. In other words, newer technologies. Here's a link to a piece about it. Note, the words "MIT" and "scientists." That means it's not light reading.

-- Outside magazine's list of what it deems the Best Towns 2008. No Carolinas towns made this particular list, though Wilmington made the "Rest of the Best" category.

Excerpt: "WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA (POP. 95,900) ... With nearby beaches along the Cape Fear coast, an ever-expanding Riverwalk, a National Register historic district comprising more than 230 blocks, and a renewed economy that has been fueled partly by an active filmmaking sector, "Wilmywood" has become much more than a shadow of its former self."

-- NY Times: Downtowns across the U.S. see streetcars in their future. Mentions Charlotte.

-- San Jose tries to fight sprawl from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Survey results: Uptown by car, foot, bike

The city, as part of its study of I-277 (the famous "freeway cap") study, conducted a survey of motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists who use uptown. A synopsis of the results is part of this PowerPoint presentation, which was given last Monday. If you can follow that link, the PowerPoint contains a drawing (above) of one possibility for what South Tryon might look like in years to come. The artist was Ed DeLara of the consulting firm HNTB, which conducted the design workshop pro-bono.

Here are some highlights from the survey results.

From motorists:
Commuters and visitors think signs that list more exits and the distances to them, and better lighting on signs, would improve I-277. They think more signs directing drivers to I-277 access streets are needed.
Other concerns commonly voiced by commuters and visitors:

• Difficulty merging onto and across I-277 to reach their exit.
• Fast and aggressive driving on I-277
• Inadequate signage to alert drivers to when and where their exit is.
• It's not wide enough for a “breakdown lane” to get fender-benders and breakdowns out of traffic.
• Too dark, poor visibility on several stretches of I-277 at night.
• Poor driving conditions in the rain; standing water.
• Trash and litter.

From pedestrians:

• The chief complaints are the prevalence of jaywalking and the aggressiveness of uptown drivers who speed through intersections and make turns into pedestrian crosswalks.
• Also, the sidewalks across I-277 at Tryon and College are not perceived as pedestrian-friendly. Sidewalks, particularly on College, are narrower and traffic moves faster than in the center of the city. There was also a comment that these sidewalks are dirtier and more littered.
• Darkness and poor visibility under the I-277 overpasses.

From bicyclists:

• Bikers' chief concern is being visible to drivers who are driving fast and aggressively, often distracted by cell phone conversation.
• Concern over the speed with which drivers exit onto streets such as South Boulevard and College from the right, where the cyclists are riding.
• Darkness and poor visibility under the I-277 overpasses. (Gee, anyone notice a pattern?)

Just what IS "pedestrian-friendly"?

Some very quick reactions to a couple of comments from previous posts:

"Cato," a regular reader, was talking about how some downtown streets are great, but others aren't very exciting. Yes, they have sidewalks, but . . . He says, "The Wachovia Securities stock ticker board at the corner of College & MLK could have been a minor landmark, but it's in such a dead zone practically no one sees it."

Commenting on an earlier posting, "Anonymous" asked: How are you defining "pedestrian friendly? My neighborhood of Spring Valley is very pedestrian friendly where you could walk continuously for several miles without the bother of busy intersections, plenty of sidewalk and wide streets for bikes, jogging strollers, etc."

I define pedestrian-friendly as having good sidewalks that are wide enough for several people at a time, including those with strollers, and having intersections designed so they don't terrify you if you have to cross. They have relatively short blocks so you can get somewhere without going too far out of your way. They have destinations, so you're not walking aimlessly only for exercise (though I like to walk for exercise).

In my definition, really pedestrian friendly streets need something interesting to look at. Different people think different things are interesting, of course. I like to look at people's gardens, landscaping and big old trees. This bores my husband something terrible. He likes store windows, sidewalk cafes and lots of people on the sidewalk.

But most everyone can agree, I think, that surface parking lots, parking garage entrances, loading docks and long blank walls are not pedestrian friendly. Those are, as Cato suggests, "dead zones."

How do you avoid them? Simple (if not easy). Encase parking garages in ground-floor retail, like Seventh Street Station. Put surface parking lots behind buildings.

I like to walk uptown, and some streets are quite comfortable for pedestrians: E.g., Tryon Street. Others are awful: College Street between Trade and Fourth, or Fourth Street between Church and Poplar.

Got nominations for great pedestrian streets? Or horrific ones?

CDOT: "Don't Walk Here" Wall Doomed

Here's the word from Danny Pleasant, interim director of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, responding to my post earlier today about this pedestrian obstruction on Brevard Street as you head from Fourth toward Third Street:

Good news, Mary. We have a project to convert Brevard Street between Trade Street and Stonewall Street into a more pedestrian oriented, two-way, two-lane street. It will follow the current work of converting Caldwell Street to two-way operation. We are in the process of selecting a design firm. The process should finish up in October. The project will include sidewalks on both sides of Brevard the length of the project. It will take a couple of years to build. But when it’s done, the brick wall will be gone.

Here's what I had written earlier:

Don't you love this? Walkable Charlotte, eh?

This particular barrier to pedestrians is on Brevard Street, between Fourth and Third streets, a half a block from the Transportation Center -- a spot to which thousands of people walk daily.

Last time I asked about it, several years ago, someone at either CDOT or the city planning office told me they were waiting for that property to develop and when it did, they'd make sure the sidewalk got built. That's been several years. Guess they're still waiting. I'll see what interim CDOT chief Danny Pleasant has to say.

And to be fair, I'll say that CDOT has improved dramatically in its attention to pedestrian comforts, and that uptown Charlotte is, square foot for square foot, the largest pedestrian friendly site in the city. Does anyone know of any others that would compete for that distinction?

Yesterday: Don't Drive. Today: Don't Walk?

Don't you love this? Walkable Charlotte, eh?

This particular barrier to pedestrians is on Brevard Street, between Fourth and Third streets, a half a block from the Transportation Center -- a spot to which thousands of people walk daily.

Last time I asked about it, several years ago, someone at either CDOT or the city planning office told me they were waiting for that property to develop and when it did, they'd make sure the sidewalk got built. That's been several years. Guess they're still waiting. I'll see what interim CDOT chief Danny Pleasant has to say.

And to be fair, I'll say that CDOT has improved dramatically in its attention to pedestrian comforts, and that uptown Charlotte is, square foot for square foot, the largest pedestrian friendly site in the city. Does anyone know of any others that would compete for that distinction?

Quiz: Which local pol to attend both conventions?

City Council member James "Smuggie" Mitchell will be attending the Republican National Convention next month in St. Paul, Minn. Say what? Mitchell is a lifelong Democrat.

He's also going to the Democratic convention in Denver later this month. Mitchell will attend both conventions as president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, a nonpartisan group that's part of the National League of Cities.

"Sometimes duty calls," he told me. And he pointed out that the top issues for cities at the moment -- foreclosures and crime -- aren't partisan issues anyway.

Confederate memorial: Why 1977?

Following up on the Confederate Memorial I stumbled across on the lawn at the old City Hall:

One commenter said: "You wonder what politicians in 2008 think about that memorial? They probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about it at all."

At least one politician wasn't thinking about it at all, because he wasn't aware of it. I called the City Council member who represents uptown Charlotte, James "Smuggie" Mitchell. Mitchell is an African American Democrat, a lifelong Charlottean. He said, "Wow. I did not know it was there. ... That's my district and I kind of pride myself on knowing what's there -- restaurants and places to visit -- and I did not know. Wow."

He thinks the monument should stay. "As an African American I was always taught to associate the Confederacy with oppression," he told me. But as he grew up, he said, he learned that "you have to respect that people fought for what they thought was right." Part of being a leader, he said, is respecting the diversity of opinions that people have.

Of course, he said "Respecting is different from embracing."

He, too, thought the 1977 timing was odd. As another commenter noted: Why erect a memorial so long after the Civil War? ... Was it erected to convince people that it is okay to be racist? Was it a reaction to blacks gaining political power and greater equality? Was it the act of ultra-conservatives that want to make this state like the clearly backward one to our south? Good people died during that war and they should be remembered. However, the fact that this was erected in 1977 suggests that this was more a reaction to modern civil rights than to fallen soldiers."

A reader e-mailed this thoughtful note:
As a Southerner who feels remorse at the conduct of my ancesters, I feel qualified to make this observation. If we remove markers such as this, we remove valuable insight into the mindsets of individuals and groups during the course of history. Someone had this erected, and others did not stop them. This is valuable information to future generations. Rather than removing it, erect another marker telling the people of the future that the people of 2008 feel remorse at the mindset of the past. Both the ones in 1865, and the ones in 1977. Removing the evidence of errors made opens us to the possibility of repeating mistakes.

And one last note: I'm a Southerner, and both my parents grew up in the South and lived there for all but five years of their lives. I've lived in the South all but six years of my life. I've lived in Charlotte for 30 years. You may not agree with what I write, but I'm no Northerner.

Surprise! Confederate memorial at City Hall

Did you know there's a Confederate Memorial on the grounds of Charlotte's old City Hall? I didn't, until I chanced to walk past it Monday morning. It's not prominent, set off to one side along Davidson Street. And by Confederate memorial standards it's modest – no statues of men on horseback. It's just a square hunk of granite with some carving. This not being South Carolina, no Confederate flag was flapping in the breeze.

"Mecklenburg County remembers with honor her gallant sons who fought in the armies of the Confederate states," it says. "With the other brave soldiers of the South, they struggled nobly for the cause of independence and constitutional self-government. Their heroic deeds will be forever honored by patriotic men and women."

Now, a Confederate memorial isn't a rare thing in the South. They were erected for decades after the Civil War and on into the early years of this century.

Then I saw, at the bottom of the granite square, this: "Erected by the Confederate Memorial Association of Charlotte, May 10, 1977"

1977! Does that strike anyone else as a bit late in the 20th century to be erecting memorials to a cause that – for all the talk about states rights and honor – saw nothing wrong with enslaving thousands of human beings? By 1977 the schools were integrated, black Americans were voting, and no one was being arrested for sitting in the front of the bus. Harvey Gantt, a black architect, was a city council member, if I'm not mistaken, and another black politician, Fred Alexander, was serving in the state Senate. Yet apparently Charlotte's city fathers and mothers were OK with putting up memorials to the Confederacy at City Hall.

I wonder what politicians in 2008 think about that memorial. I doubt they'd allow one erected today. But would any push to have it removed?

I-277, the low road or the high road?

Talking about whether to cap I-277 uptown and put something atop it, one commenter today (Anonymous 3:48 p.m.) said-

"Mary, you forgot to mention the supermarket and hotel in Newton that traverse the Mass Pike as you drive into Beantown. This stuff makes sense guys."

I appreciate the thought, but that hotel and grocery (Shaw's, I think) look like rather awful places to hang out, I have to say. I much prefered the grassy lawn between Harvard's Science Center and the gates of Harvard Yard and the Memorial Hall. That grassy lawn was a cap over a high-volume street in Cambridge.

In other words, design and location matter, too.

Note today's article on the issue by Clay Barbour. It shows which developer is buying property where along tht section of I-277. I'd link to it, but it doesn't seem to be appearing anywhere on CharlotteObserver.com that I can find. You'll have to dig up the on-paper newspaper. Note, there's a cool map with the printed story.