This meeting is adjourned

You be the judge. Was Mayor Pat McCrory unnecessarily curt, or avoiding a politically sticky situation or just being time-efficient after a long meeting Monday night, when a delegation from the gay/lesbian alliance appeared before Charlotte City Council?

Here's the background: The council's 5 p.m. dinner meeting was to be followed by a Citizens Forum, a regular event where the council hears from the public but doesn't take action or engage in much discussion, though upon occasion a council member will ask questions or make comments. Only one speaker had signed up, a man from Durham.

He turned out to be Joshua Lee Weaver, accompanied by a dozen or so local folks from Charlotte's gay and lesbian community. He sought the council's approval of "A Resolution in Support of Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples." (He must have had Charlotte confused with Chapel Hill or something.) With his allotted 4 minutes at the microphone, he asked for their support and read the resolution.

When Weaver finished, Mayor McCrory said quickly: "Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned." And council members began packing up. Weaver said something like, "Well, I was hoping for some feedback." McCrory said he appreciated him being here, but didn't comment on the substance of the proposal.

Afterward, Weaver said two municipalities had passed the resolution already – Chapel Hill and Carrboro – and Durham was considering it. He said other cities would be asked to pass it but wasn't sure which he'd approach next.

Observer reporter Julia Oliver asked McCrory after the meeting if he'd put the resolution on the agenda and McCrory said he wouldn't.

To be fair, McCrory and several council members afterward did go speak to Weaver afterward, and to some in the group accompanying him. I noticed Susan Burgess and Anthony Foxx, and there may have been others. Council member Andy Dulin sent a letter to the Observer today saying he doesn't support civil unions – "One man, one woman is what I believe" – and noting that none of the seven Democrats at the table said a word to Weaver. He's right. Of course, the mayor closed the meeting before anyone had time to say a peep.

Stimulus bucks? Tar Heels get hosed

Want to get mad? Here's a good one for you:

A USA Today analysis of where stimulus money has gone so far, compared to unemployment rates, shows North Carolina (jobless rate 10.8 percent, among the nation's highest), is getting way below its per capita share of stimulus money. Here's a link to the article.

Here's the telling paragraph: " ... the first contracts [for spending stimulus money] have amounted to only about $7.42 per person on average in the eight states with unemployment rates higher than 10% last month. By comparison, government records show it has awarded about $26 worth of contracts per person in North Dakota, whose unemployment rate is the nation's lowest."

The nationwide average is $13 per person, the story says. In North Carolina, the figure was only $1.56 per capita.

No wonder we're laying off teachers and gutting our colleges and universities. You'd think President Obama would be a tad more grateful for his much-touted victory here last November.

Even South Carolina, where Gov. Mark Sanford is trying his best to stop incoming stimulus money despite its 11.5 percent jobless rate, got $81.34 per capita. Sanford must not be trying hard enough.

Blue Line or Green Line?

Should the existing Blue Line be renamed the Green Line, to please UNCC? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Transit Commission takes up the discussion at its 5:30 p.m. meeting. Here's a link to the meeting agenda.

At first, it sounds like an easy and simple decision: The transit line that's planned to run from uptown to UNC Charlotte should be the Green Line, to reflect the 49ers school colors.

But with transit – and transportation in general – things are rarely as simple as you'd think. Here's the biggest sticking point: The new line will be a continuation of the existing Blue Line. That is, you could hop on at I-485 outside Pineville and ride all the way to beyond UNCC.

There's already been significant investment in "Blue." Even the train cars are blue, not to mention the signs, etc.

As CATS officials note, they couldn't find any other transit system that "changed colors midstream" (hmmm, interesting turn of phrase). It might well confuse riders. I mean, we're not talking a lot of riders here with New York-caliber subway expertise (where one line simultaneously might have two numbers or letters or colors, and you have to notice whether you're hopping on a local or an express route, for instance). Starting on the blue line and ending on the green line might be as confusing as starting out on Woodlawn and, without turning, finding yourself on Runnymede and then Sharon Road then Wendover, and then Eastway. Or maybe Tyvola to Fairview to Sardis to Rama. Or ... well, I could go on but I won't.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, a Blue-to-Green Line transit corridor fits right in. How very Charlotte.

Agriburbia? Tell that to Detroit

My earlier posting on "agriburbia" – saying "Agriculture is the new golf" and reporting on an in-the-works development near here that will feature farm fields instead of a golf course or – brought an e-mail with this link to a story from the online Detroit Free Press.

It seems some visiting urban planners, noting the enlarging areas of disinvestment in the Motor City, have proposed that eventually the city will resemble clusters of villages surrounded by farmlands. Back to the future, indeed.

Does anyone know of any urban land that has successfully reverted to farmland?

I asked a soil specialist some years back about the feasibility of turning abandoned big-box stores and their huge parking lots back into farmland and was told that, unfortunately, the development scrapes away the topsoil, which takes centuries to create. Maybe with enough chickens and livestock one could replenish the soil?

'Agriculture is the new golf'

The latest career advice, I hear, isn't "plastics." It's "agriburbia."

A developer-land planner-type pulled me aside this week to talk about his newest project: A development, in the general vicinity of Kannapolis-Salisbury, that they're dubbing "agriburbia." It's a residential development but instead of common open space and big lawns, they'll have a civic farm, land leased to a farmer. There will be do-it-yourself options for backyard gardeners. They'll market it, he said, to people affiliated with the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis – the health-and-wellness related research operation.

The term "agriburbia," he said, was coined by a guy in Colorado. Sure enough, here's the Web site. "Agriburbia" is even trademarked. But it's such a great word it may have a life of its own, like "locavore." Its slogan: "Growing Sustainable Communities by the Bushel!" Its goal: "the re-integration of food production directly within the living environment ... by focusing on agriculture as the centerpiece of both new and existing communities."

This dovetails with a talk in Charlotte last fall by New Urbanism godfather Andres Duany, about what he termed "agricultural urbanism." It was Duany who quipped "agriculture is the new golf." By that, he meant an activity and marketing point for developments.

"Only 17 percent of people living in golf course communities play golf more than once a year," Duany said. "Why not grow food? By the way, food is very good-looking." (I wonder if Duany, an urbane Miamian, has ever seen fading tomato plants at the end of a hot, aphid-ridden summer, or squash plants wilting from vine borer assaults. But I digress.)

Duany suggested the $40 billion that Americans spend on lawn care might be better diverted to food production. And this may be the biggest eyebrow-raiser, coming from a devoted urbanist devoted it to agriculture: "The large lot (as in large-lot suburbia) can be justified primarily as the making of food." When Duany is trying to justify large-lot suburbia, you know the world is changing.

Being Andres Duany, he even came up with a "transect" (translation: context-appropriate designs) for agriculture in a range of conditions from rural (your basic farms, with farming village clusters) to center city (container gardens on terraces and rooftops). His transect has specific allowances for how many chickens are allowed – though no cluckers in the most dense urban neighborhoods. If memory serves, you can't have a rooster unless you're in one of the more rural zones in his transect. Whatever.

The local developers said they'll be going public in a few weeks. Theirs isn't "agricultural urbanism," they said, but suburbia with farms instead of big lawns. Stay tuned.

Transit lovers, and Portland haters (an update)

Friday, May 22, 12:21 PM update:
If you like reading about Portland, check out this piece from the Oregonian's Anna Griffin, whom some of you will remember as a former Charlotte Observer writer (who covered the growth beat here in the QC before moving to our Raleigh bureau.)

Today, a little something for transit-lovers and then for transit- and Portland-haters.

First, here's a newsy dispatch from Mary Hopper at University City Partners:

"The most recent cost estimate for building the LYNX Blue Line Extension from Center City to University City now exceeds $1.1 billion. That's a lot of money, to be sure. But is it too much money? A study paid for by University City Partners suggests that every dollar spent on transit construction will come back three-fold in additional development and increased property value and tax base within our municipal service district through 2035." Here's a link to the study she refers to.

Hopper, executive director for UCP, also points to a proposed high-rise office building from Bank of America:
"University City's proposed transit line is already spurring plans for intense transit-friendly development on North Tryon Street. Bank of America has requested a zoning change to allow up to 1 million square feet of offices in buildings up to 16 stories tall, just south of Mallard Creek Church Road. The wooded 24-acre site lies within a quarter mile of a proposed light-rail station on Mallard Creek Church Road. The Charlotte City Council will consider the request at its June 15 zoning hearings." Read more. And here's a link to the rezoning petition.

Finally, for those who like to read opposing opinions, here's some red meat for you anti-transit, anti-planning, anti-density readers: George Will on "Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong and Portland Stinks." [My title, not his.]

2:15 PM – A friend shares with me this riposte to George Will. Link here.
3:28 PM – A TV station in Portland is running an online poll on who would win if George Will debated U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat who's an avid supporter of transit, bicycling, pedestrians and planned growth. Link here.

High-speed rail roadshow comes to town

If you're hot for high-speed rail through the Carolinas, then pay attention Wednesday.

Charlotte will bat lead-off in a national high-speed rail vision road show – a series of workshops in seven U.S. cities put on by the Federal Railroad Administration.

The workshop – the only one to be held for the Southeast Corridor – will be 1-4:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Charlotte Suites Hotel, 2800 Coliseum Centre Dr. (off the Billy Graham Parkway).

If you'll remember, President Obama has offered up $8 billion in grants for high-speed rail corridors, intercity passenger rail and congestion grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, as a pirates would say). Competition is likely to be fierce. Last month I heard Xavier de Sousa Briggs, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, talk about what would give regions a leg up in competing. He said regions that can demonstrate solid regional cooperation will have an advantage.

N.C. rail insiders suggest it's not coincidence that Charlotte and the Southeast Corridor are first on the schedule. Folks from Atlanta are expected to attend. And let us hope our sister state to the South shows some interest, despite its governor's dislike of stimulus money.

Here's a link that will tell you more, including linking to the letter from FRA administrator Joseph C. Szabo. Szabo's letter says the FRA seeks input "to provide us with your regional visiton of high-speed and intercity rail networks," among other things.

If you want to attend you may RSVP here. And to submit comments for the public docket, click here. It's Docket No. FRA-2009-0045 and the deadline for comments is June 5.

Modern architecture -- Oh, the terror!

This may explain why I, and many other people, aren't so fond of Modernist-style buildings. We're instinctively reacting with fear.

(See my previous posting about the Mid-Century Modern home tour this weekend. Link is here.)

I stumbled on this piece from Fast Company about how surroundings shape our minds and bodies. Among its interesting tidbits: People instinctively prefer objects with rounded edges (think of arches, for instance) over sharp-edged objects (think of most 20th-century buildings, such as the Westin hotel in Charlotte, shown above, with the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the foreground). The theory is that it has to do with hard-wired fear of sharp objects.

Memo to architects designing libraries: High-ceilings in rooms encourage you to think more freely and abstractly.

And memo to minimalists: Clutter increases the "memorability" of a place. As the article says, "A generous scattering of objects generates a fondness for the place." (But I'm pretty sure that doesn't include dirty socks or last night's grease-splotched pizza box.)

Mid-Century Modern: Charlotte's bulldozer bait?

If you think Mid-Century Modern is outdated and ugly, and ought to be torn down, you're probably over 45.

The nonprofit group Historic Charlotte has put together a Mid-Century Modern home tour this weekend, (here's a link where you can see a list, a map and buy tickets) featuring 17 homes built from the 1950s to 1970s, to try to show everyone why a lot of younger people are interested in preserving and living in houses from that era. It's part of a whole month of celebrating Mid-Century Modern.

The houses range from modest to impressive, and with local architects Murray Whisnant and the late Jack Orr Boyte among those represented.

It's an architectural style and era not beloved around here – until recently. Diane Althouse, executive director of Historic Charlotte, told Tuesday night's Civic By Design forum that buildings from the era are in greater risk of demolition than others in Charlotte. And of course, we know virtually everything here that doesn't have preservation in its deed restrictions is at risk of demolition.

Here's a measure of how unpopular this modern architecture is. Last fall, in an unprecedented move, the City Council in a 6-4 vote, rejected a move to name a 1957, Jack Boyte-designed house in the Cloisters neighborhood a local landmark. The owners wanted the designation; the city-county historic landmarks commission wanted the designation, the state preservation office had concluded the house was eligible. Usually the council doesn't have a problem, if the preservation experts say something's worth designating, and the owners concur. But council members just said they didn't think the house was very attractive.

If you're old enough to think Mid-Century Modern is ugly, you're probably old enough to remember when Victorian-style buildings were being demolished because they were "too ugly" and far too many treasures were lost.

I confess to some ambivalence about Modernism. As generally carried out, it's too bleak and stark. One modernist building amid older, ornate buildings is sleek and elegant. A whole city (or even whole city block) of nothing but square angles, bare concrete and cold glass would be depressing. But the point of preservation isn't only to preserve buildings we think are pretty. It's to ensure that eras aren't obliterated.

And it's worth pointing out that buildings from this era are coming to be treasured and sought-after. I know of several people who are specifically looking to buy homes from that era.

Atlanta vs. Charlotte for 'King of South'

Atlanta Journal-Constitution weighed in last weekend on the Charlotte-Atlanta rivalry with a piece by former Observer reporter Dan Chapman: Rivalry to be economic King of South heats up.
Read it, then read the comments. Then tell me whether you don't suspect that a lot of the talk about how well (!!) Charlotte has dealt with growth and transportation comes from Atlanta types hoping to goad their legislature with some jealousy. The story says the Georgia leg won't let Atlanta or other metro regions impose sales taxes for roads, and won't even let MARTA use its own money to fill budget holes.

Is Charlotte doing things better than Atlanta? Depends on what you look at. Definitely we're doing better at tying land use to transit – at requiring transit-oriented development along our light rail line. Atlanta didn't do that during MARTA's earliest decades and results show.
Is Charlotte doing any better at controlling sprawl? That's a tough question. I think some of the counties and smaller towns in the region (Cabarrus County, Davidson, Belmont, etc.) are, indeed, doing better. Further, N.C. annexation laws have left Charlotte in a healthier situation and have allowed the city limits to expand, instead of being hemmed in like the actual city of Atlanta itself.

Yet Charlotte and Mecklenburg have done virtually nothing to preserve farms or any section of the county from suburban-style development, other than a few county parkland purchases. Eventually every square foot of the county will be developed except for those parts purchased for parkland or privately donated to land conservation groups such as the Catawba Lands Conservancy. No serious farmland or forestland protection measures have been taken by local governments other than Davidson.

Atlanta is definitely bigger. Is it better? I think that depends on what you're looking for and how closely you look.

Trashing public art -- again

Mayor McCrory, council members Andy Dulin and John Lassiter, can I make a request? If you don't like the city's 1 percent-for-art program, then end it. But as is, it's tediously predictable that whenever you get a presentation about what the money is being spent for, you go off on the program's administrators and trash the art.

Guess what. Their job is to administer the city program. The city program allocates 1 percent of the cost of most (not all) city projects and dedicates that money for public art.

Now, plenty of people can make good philosophical arguments for why government shouldn't be paying for art. It's a reasonable position: Art should be independent of government, because public money comes with strings attached. Public art typically isn't very cutting-edge, for instance, because that would offend the pols and they'd ax the money. Some people genuinely think art isn't what government should be doing, and I respect that view, even though I disagree.

But there are other good arguments about the value of art to the public and about the value of having artists in your city. And for now, city government (and the county, and the transit system) have concluded it's worth the fractional amount of money it takes to have public art.

The item getting people's attention is a project to put mosaic tile covers on trash cans along Central Avenue, as part of a Central Avenue streetscaping project. Here's a link to the slide presentation; mosaics are on page 6. The City Council heard a presentation on Monday, showing numerous public art projects. Dulin tallied up the cost of the mosaics – $42,000 for mosaics on the outsides of 12 trashcans, 4 mosaics each – and said, "That's $3,500 a trashcan." Then he asked if he could get one of those trashcans at the bus stop near Myers Park High School. "$3,500 per trashcan is a little bit out of line, I'm sorry," he said.

Lassiter wondered whether the primary colors of the mosaics would look good next to some murals also planned along Central Avenue, whose colors looked (in the slide show) more pastel. (Should we cut him some slack? He was suffering jet lag from a trip to Ireland.)
McCrory complained – as he does whenever public art comes up – that he prefers more representational statuary that depicts people and history. "I like the statues at The Square. I just don't think we have enough of them," he said. "The most comment I get from people is the statue at Myers Park Hardware [a privately funded statue of the late, eccentric Hugh McManaway]."

There were snickers and snide remarks about several of the art works. Robert Bush of the Arts & Science Council, which administers the public arts program, was stoic. Public art administrator Jean Greer kept a pleasant smile on her face. Surely they get sick of this, every time they appear.
OK, let's try it one more time: Not all art will please everyone. If it did, it would be awfully tame. Some people like abstract art, and I don't want the mayor, or any mayor, choosing what art I see. Some people prefer ancient Roman busts, or statues of nekkid goddesses or "The Thinker." But art changes with its era, and this art should reflect this era.

Putting art on a trashcan might just be a way to brighten up a part of town that, heaven knows, has felt decades of city neglect. Should all art be restricted to uptown or Myers Park, where more affluent people live? Should art not be allowed on trashcans, only walls?

This is silly, fellas. Can't we just move on?

Was Charlotte's Maya Lin piece an early "Wavefield"?

Was Charlotte's not-so-lamented lost artwork "Topo" (above, in happier days) an early incarnation of the undulating earthworks for which artist/architect Maya Lin is now famous?

Read this New York Times article from today about a Lin work, Storm King Wavefield, at the Storm King Art Center in New York. Look at the wavefield. Does it not remind you a bit of the now-demolished "Topo" Lin did early in her career, in Charlotte?

The piece I did about Gumby and public art (read it here) mentioned Maya Lin's landscape art for the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road. When the City Council turned thumbs down on Joel Shapiro's proposed sculpture, a.k.a. "Gumby," the public art commission turned to the young Yale-graduate Lin, who had won worldwide acclaim for her 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. She and Henry Arnold of Princeton collaborated to create "Topo" – nine large, ball-shaped Burford hollies arranged on an undulating median at the Coliseum. The original plan called for a misting system so the balls would appear to float. That idea was dropped because of its cost.

"Topo" was installed in 1991. It was pleasant, and I always liked the undulating berms, the shaping of which Lin herself supervised on site. But unless you were in a helicopter, it was a bit hard to get the overall sense of "Topo." And it always seemed to me that any sculpture lively enough to have acquired a name even before it was built would have become a kind of beloved civic character – maybe not as beloved as Charlotte Hornet Muggsy Bogues, but beloved nonetheless.

Look at Lin's work since then (somehow, "Topo" doesn't show up on her Web site) and it's clear she has put that undulating earth concept at the center of much of her recent work. Storm King Wavefield looks magnificent – like a mature and confident version of the baby version in "Topo." As Lin's fame has grown, "Topo" might well have become notable simply for being one of her earliest.

The city sold the Coliseum for private development, and the building was imploded in 2007. The new owners tried unsuccessfully to find someone to adopt "Topo" and its nine hollies. "Topo" was demolished in 2008. The photo below shows the work in its last days.

Why conservatives should love transit, and more

A few links to interesting reading: A piece on "Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit," here.
One provocative excerpt: "Support for government-subsidized highway projects and contempt for efficient mass transit does not follow from any of the core principles of social conservatism.
A common misperception is that the current American state of auto-dependency is a result of the free market doing its work. In fact, a variety of government interventions ensure that the transportation 'market' is skewed towards car-ownership."

A wonderful profile of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood by the NY Times' inimitable Mark Leibovich here.
Here's a closer look at the new state of Virginia standards that won't put state highway money into developments that don't meet a connectivity index. The article is from New Urban News, and it criticizes VaDOT for not being aggressive enough with its connectivity standards.
It also references the study done in Charlotte by CDOT and Fire Department staff that found more cost-efficiency for emergency services in connected neighborhoods than in cul-de-sac-collector neighborhoods. Here's a link to where I wrote about it, and here's a link to a slide show about the study itself.

(Note, Delaware is doing something akin to Virginia. The New Urban News main web site says: Delaware mandates connected streets The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), which has jurisdiction over most streets and roads in its state, is — like Virginia — requiring that new subdivision streets be connected to neighboring areas.

From the Colorado-based High Country News, a piece on the possible end of Exurbia, at least in the West.

A word about that story: I've read several pieces in recent months in which people say suburbia is on its last gasps, and the recession will kill it. I'm skeptical. Among other reasons: At least in my neck of suburbia (Charlotte), financial stress means people are less mobile than before – they can't sell their houses, or find jobs to move to. Thus, they are not leaving exurbia even if the want to. In addition, housing in the far 'burbs is still, dirt for dirt, cheaper than in the city (vast exurban McMansions and uptown luxury condos notwithstanding.

Many "Death of Suburbia" themes are premised on the assumption energy prices will rise. I believe they will, and savings from cheap housing will be undercut by the gasoline prices needed for long commutes to work and shopping. But for now gas prices seem to have stabilized. Further, local governments around here – and I suspect elsewhere – are in no mood to crack down on any kind of development, there being, for now, virtually none going on.

Another arts flap we need to live down

Before the Actors Theatre of Charlotte's recent play, "Southern Rapture," there was the 1996-97"Angels in America" flap that inspired that new play. And before "Angels" there was "Gumby." All are part of Charlotte's continuing uneasy relationship with "art." And maybe a new National Endowment of the Arts grant will help redeem the city, in some small way, from its "Gumby"-tainted history.

Because the Angels flap made national news – it sparked a sort of revenge-on-the-gays vote by the then-county commissioners, who axed the county's yearly allocation for the Arts & Science Council and then, except for the eternal Bill James, all lost their next elections – it lives on on local memory (and embarrssment).

But an earlier, similarly embarrassing flap came in 1987. The city's public art commission chose a semi-abstract bronze work by noted sculptor Joel Shapiro for the to-be-built-and-now-already-demolished Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road. Morning DJs John Boy and Billy and plenty of other folks ridiculed the piece. Among them was arts commission member Robert Cheek, who dubbed it "Gumby." And to be just, there is a certain familial resemblance to the '50s claymation fellow. (Art gallery owner Cheek pleaded guilty a few years later to cocaine smuggling and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.)

So the City Council in an act of not-unprecedented spinelessness, rejected the Shapiro work. Instead the city chose a work by Maya Lin – a collection of Burford hollies supposed to look like balls rolling downhill. It, too, was demolished. Shapiro went on to worldwide fame and success – his works are now at the National Gallery in Washington and art museums in Houston, New Orleans, Raleigh and even on the Davidson College campus. That $400,000 sculpture would have bought the city a work surely worth many multiples of that today. But no, our elected officials instead consulted the drive-time DJs about their cultural purchases and exhibited the political spines of earthworms.

Redemption ahead? Recent news says we got a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to go toward a monumental sculpture costing approximately $300,000 at the planned Romare Bearden park uptown (named for the Charlotte-born artist) near the Panthers' stadium. Is it too late to get something by Joel Shapiro? Maybe. And anyway, Shapiro (who has sold numerous other copies of the model he did for our city) might not want to play. In 1993, in conjunction with an exhibition that included the model for "Gumby," he opted against returning here to be on a panel. Of the brouhaha here, he told Observer reporter Ricki Morell, "It was a farce and quite humiliating. It was a low point in my career."

And by 1993, even the DJs were having second thoughts. "John Boy" Isley told Morell: "I've grown attached to it over the years. Viewing the bushes that are at the Coliseum now [the now-demolished Maya Lin art], maybe we were a little harsh on Gumby."

Before we leave Gastonia

Downtown Gastonia is either experiencing a major rebirth (see below), or mired in the same old problems. At least, that's what the commenters on "What Ails Gastonia" have been saying.
This one was among the more interesting comments, from Alicia Demeny $#8211; and she nails me for using an old photo from the Observer's files. I hope she's right about the new energy. So many times and so many hopes have gone into trying to revitalize Gastonia's downtown. Would be great if this time it worked:
"The author of this article has failed to mention that there are over 8 bright, nice new businesses that have come to the downtown area, with more coming soon. Included in these great new places are restaurants and coffee shops, a cool new pub, boutiques and salons, nice office complexes and condos. A photography studio and event center ... and more.
Most of all of them doing major upgrades and renovations to the old buildings. These improvements are bringing out the beautiful old exposed brick, hardwoods and architecture of these once glorious structures. The author of this article also failed to use a photograph that is recent. The photograph used shows a building that no longer exists. A lovely park is at this very moment is being built in its place. As an employee in the downtown area I am excited about the potential and positive growth. As a women I feel totally safe walking down the street to the new restaurants and pub. Just last week the downtown area hosted an art crawl that included many of the businesses, live music on the street and wine tastings. The general statement by the over 300 in attendance was that it was a great event and that it should happen more often.
If it's been six years or six months since you have been downtown you owe it to yourself to visit again before believing a biased article that simple focuses on the past and politics. Those of us downtown are focused on growth and the future."

What ails Gastonia - one view

It's always been a mystery to me why downtown Gastonia hasn't economically revived like Salisbury, Mooresville, Concord and other downtowns around here. Last night I ran into a former Gastonia City Hall-type who gave me an interesting insight, as we were chatted over wine and hors d'oeuvres. Here's a paraphrase what the person said:

It's all politics. And its roots go deep into Gastonia's milltown culture.

A little history, in case you didn't live through it or know about it: That culture lured thousands of dirt-poor Carolinas farmers to towns to work at textile and cotton mills during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mill culture permeated this region, including large chunks of Charlotte. Workers made more money than at subsistence farming, but child labor was common. Whole families had to work in the mills to earn enough to live. Many of the mill owners pretty much controlled everything: They supplied workers' houses, owned stores and in some cases even told the workers where to go to church. Mill workers were despised as "mill trash." It wasn't as bad as slavery, but it was a lot closer to economic slavery than many people realize. When some workers tried to unionize or held strikes to push for better wages and conditions, mill owners in some cases brought in gunmen. Gastonia was the scene of one of the bloodiest strikes, when a police chief and a union organizer were killed. (Charlotte has its own bloody labor history, and there appears to be an unspoken civic agreement here to ignore it.)

How does this relate to Gastonia's downtown development? It's worth remembering that at one time, Gaston County boasted more spindles than any other county in America. Mill history runs deep. My City Hall-type companion opined that city government there was perceived by many Gastonians to be like the old mill owners: We know what's good for you, just do what we say. Rightly or wrongly, there's resistance and resentment among the citizenry. And there's an oblivion to that situation on the part of some city officials.

It's a shame. Gastonia has the makings of a great downtown. Maybe, by 2009, Gastonians can consciously decide to change the old patterns, put aside old resentments and biases, and focus – together – on reinvigorating downtown.

Buyers pay impact fees? Myth, prof says

(More from "The Next City" conference last weekend in Cambridge, sponsored by the Nieman Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Harvard's Graduate School of Design. I encountered blogus interruptus when my Mac laptop went on strike. I'm doing a series of notebook-dumping posts.)

Continuing the theme of quotable economists: Jeff Chapman, professor of applied public finance of Arizona State, who researches state and local government finance, gave a rundown of what he called "tax myths." Herewith:

1. All states are the same.
2. Tax breaks for economic development are worthwhile. His position is that almost always the companies would locate there anyway and that taxes are a lesser consideration for those corporate decisions.
3. Property taxes are regressive. (A regressive tax disproportionatelys hurt lower-income people. Sales taxes are regressive. The income tax is progressive, as in wealthier people pay proportionately higher rates.) Chapman is a fan of the property tax because it's stable, hard for people to evade, and promotes local government. " ...and it is really unpopular," he concedes.
4. Not taxing e-commerce is good.
5. Housing impact fees are always shifted to the buyer. Most empirical evidence, he said, shows that isn't true. And, he asks, if housing impact fees could be shifted so easily to the buyers, why are the plaintiffs in cases challenging them always the developers?

CRA to blame? No way

(More from "The Next City" conference last weekend in Cambridge. I encountered blogus interruptus when my Mac laptop went on strike. I'm doing a series of notebook-dumping posts.)

One more from Wellesley College economist Chip Case. Then, later today when my other opinion-writing duties are finished, I'll dive into such topics as the myth that housing impact fees are always shifted to homebuyers.

Do you get the sense Case likes to skewer conventional wisdom? He opined on the belief, particularly dear to some political conservatives, that the Community Reinvestment Act is what caused all those mortgage companies to give mortgages to unqualified people.

Now before you go off on me, I'm not saying the Democrats were blameless. The ideal of homeownership has been up there with apple pie, motherhood and the American flag for many Americans for many years, nudged along by Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, social policymaker wonks and numerous homebuilder and Realtor associations. Everyone seemed to accept as given truth that homeownership is the ticket to wealth, stable neighborhoods and family values. Which is one reason -- among many -- that the out-of-control mortgages didn't get nearly enough scrutiny from people who might have stopped it.

This is about the Community Reinvestment Act, a Carter-era federal banking law that applied to banks (not to hedge funds or mortgage brokers or insurance companies) and required them to make loans to qualified customers in poor and minority neighborhoods and to ensure banks were serving those neighborhoods. It clearly was not perfectly enforced, or you'd see a heckuva lot more Wachovias or BofA branches in Charlotte's poorer neighborhoods. But I digress. If you were a bank looking at buying another bank, the feds would look to see if you were following the CRA, and if not, perhaps might not let you make that acquisition.

Here's Case's view: I believe in the CRA. That legislation didn't cause this mess [the foreclosure and credit crisis]. Lehman Brothers [the Wall Street investment bank that went bankrupt in September] didn't give a damn about the CRA.

His point was that Lehman Brothers, as well as Bear Stearns, weren't into commercial banking anyway, or giving mortgages to poor people. The CRA applied only to FDIC regulated banks. As Floyd Norris wrote in The New York Times in September, " ... most of the worst loans appear to have been made outside of the banking system, by mortgage brokers not subject to its [CRA] rules." For a balanced discussion of the CRA-foreclosure issue, see the Wikipedia entry on CRA, particularly the section on "Relation to 2008 Financial Crisis."

Case of Case-Shiller dishes

(More from "The Next City" conference last weekend in Cambridge. I encountered blogus interruptus when my Mac laptop went on strike. I'm doing a series of notebook-dumping posts.)

Chip Case (right), Wellesley College economist and a founder of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, was quite entertaining and not what you might expect from an academic in "the dismal science."

A Chip Case joke: "I had an economist call me the other day, said he couldn't sell his house and what should he do. I said, 'For Christ's sake you're an economist! It's worth -- I hate to tell you -- what someone's willing to pay for it!' "

Chip Case prediction on the commercial real estate: "It's the next shoe to fall." Every worker lost (and the U.S. job loss from December 2007 to March 2009 has been 5.1 million), creates an average vacancy of 180 square feet. "That stuff is still being held on the books of banks at par," he said.

Case response when asked about the so-called "American Dream of Homeownership"?
"It's largely bulls---." He went on to say, "Rental is better for a lot of people (unless they bought during a boom)."

John King, urban design writer for the San Francisco Chronicle: What about all the starter-home suburbs?
Case: I don't know. They're going to stagnate.

Me (buttonholing Case after his talk): What advice would you give to governments and policymakers on how to deal with stagnating starter home suburbs?
Case: I'd appoint a housing czar, inventory what's out there, what condition it's in, and start buying. Buy, and hold until it's needed.

He then acknowledged state and local governments have no money. "The only government with money is the one that's printing it."

Housing expert: Upturn this year?

Chip Case, economist from Wellesley University and a creator of the Case-Shiller Housing Index:
"I think you're going to see things turn this year. In the housing market. Commercial real estate is going to dominate the press in the next few months. [Because of banking issues.] But the story's in residential ... "

Case noted, wryly that his long-time Red Sox fandom proves he's an optimist.

"Florida's not going to die. Arizona is sick but it's not gonna die." His point is that people still want to live in warm areas.

"Florida and California alone are one-third of the [housing and real estate] value in the United States. California alone is a quarter of it."

(This is at a conference on "The Next City" in Cambridge, Mass., sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Nieman Foundation and Harvard's Graduate School of Design.)

The 'Next City': Transit or ... another Michigan?

Justin, who commented on the previous post, hopes we (the country) are finally getting it together.

(To fill you in: I'm at a conference on "The Next City" in Cambridge, MA, sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Nieman Foundation and Harvard's Graduate School of Design.) We're now listening to economist Chip Case of Wellesley University, creator of the Case-Shiller Index of real estate. More about him later.)

Keith Schneider -- a Michigan-based writer and blogger (ModeShift.org) who free-lances for the New York Times and founded the Michigan Land Use Institute -- opined that unless the country does get its act together, the whole country will be like Michigan. That is, suffering deeply.

By getting its act together, he means stronger transit and not jettisoning the already-built infrastructure in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, and building in ways that aren't as expensive for public infrastructure as the years of low-density sprawl growth has been.

He noted that the problems the whole country is now seeing, such as foreclosures and declining incomes, were first visible in the outer-outer suburbs of Detroit. (And, I should add, in the new starter home subdivisions ringing Charlotte.)

The 'Next City' – on fast tracks?

I'm listening to Michael Dukakis at conference on "The Next City" in Cambridge, MA. He's a huge rail fan. Says Boston IS this country's best version of "the next city." That's because it's compact, walkable and has plenty of transportation options beyond highways.

He's optimistic, because the president and the Congress are now interested in trying to build a better national rail transportation system. "My concern is what’s going on at the state and local level," he just said. "That’s where we’ve got to spend some time." He didn't mention South Carolina specifically, but ...

A call to help our schools and kids

Leonard Pitts, the Miami Herald's Pulitzer-winning columnist, is in town today. He spoke to a breakfast sponsored by the nonprofit group Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education, or MeckEd (http://www.mecked.org/ ). This afternoon he'll visit the staff at The Observer.

In 2007 Pitts wrote a series, "What Works," in which he highlighted more than a dozen successful efforts around the country to help children and schools. One was from Gaston, N.C. (a town near Roanoke Rapids on northeastern North Carolina, not nearby Gaston County) and featured a KIPP Academy.

"How do you change something many of us long ago learned to take for granted?" he asked the crowd. And, "If we know what works, why not just do it?"

He quoted an ancient Greek saying: "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in."

In other words, get involved where you can, doing what you can.

He's not the first to note this, but it's still true: A strong public education system is important for the local economy, for keeping businesses healthy and for the fiscally prudent goal of keeping local people engaged in productive lives and out of jail. It's not just a feel-good thing, Pitts said, but a common-sense mathematical calculation.

Yet if you read the comments section of this blog or many online sites, anytime the public schools emerge as a topic, and they're filled with hostility toward Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in particular and public schools in general. Which is, at bottom, incredibly counter-productive for the whole community. Nothing is perfect, but invective doesn't help anyone improve anything and indeed, tends to have the opposite effect.

Has my kid had some bad teachers at CMS? You bet. Been in class with a few deeply troubled kids? Yep. Do CMS administrators make occasionally silly decisions? Of course. Why should they be different from managers everywhere? (I say that as a former department head, where made my share of dumb decisions.) None of those problems is specific to CMS or even to public schools.

Yet there's a vein of what seems to approach hatred running through parts of Charlotte, toward its public schools that too often drowns out an equally strong vein of support.

MeckEd hopes to start a community discussion on public education. Here's a link to their new discussion board, being run with help from the Crossroads Charlotte initiative.

And don't forget DonorsChoose.org, where you can put your money to good use helping classroom teachers who really need the help.

High-speed rail in N.C. on a faster track?

The News & Observer reports that N.C. transportation officials are optimistic that the Charlotte-Raleigh-Washington route will fare well in snagging some of those $8 billion in stimulus money for high-speed rail, and that it's one of six corridors feds have said are likely candidates for the first stimulus funds to be distributed later this year. (Associated Press report here.) If that's the case, then kudos to North Carolina for having worked for years to try to keep alive the idea of high-speed inter-city rail travel, even during years when many taxpayers thought the idea was just a waste of money.

I'm just back from a week spent traveling by rail in and around New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. Took commuter rail from NYC to Princeton. Took heavy rail (that would be the subway) around Manhattan. Took Amtrak from NYC to DC. It was easy. It was fast. It was environmentally prudent. It was more convenient than flying -- downtown to downtown. And the whole time I was on the train I didn't worry a bit about landing in the Hudson River.

Does inter-city rail cost money? You betcha. But so do our taxpayer-built airports (don't forget the air traffic control system), as well as the interstate highway system, with which we are all busily polluting our atmosphere (possibly destroying the global environment as we do so, though I think I'll be dead before we know whether that's really what we're doing) and enriching some Middle Eastern potentates I'd just as soon not enrich. Everything's a trade-off.

Architects, and the GREEN Line

UNCC's planned uptown building (above)

Good news for N.C. architect Phil Freelon. His firm, the Freelon Group, has been named to a team that will design the Smithsonian's new Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall. David Adjaye, an up-and-coming young architect from London, will be lead designer. The Freelon Group is also designing Charlotte's now-under-construction Afro-American Cultural Center, to be named for architect and former Mayor Harvey Gantt.

Speaking of Gantt, he was one of the many glitterati (such as we have in Charlotte) at the UNC Charlotte groundbreaking on Monday for the 12-story building at 9th and Brevard streets uptown. Among the folks who spoke or whom I spotted in the crowd: UNC system president Erskine Bowles, UNCC trustees chair Ruth Shaw, Mayor Pat McCrory, City Council members Patsy Kinsey, Anthony Foxx and Andy Dulin, county commissioners' chair Jennifer Roberts, ex-BofA exec Dennis Rash, former First Union CEO Cliff Cameron, retailers Al and Leon Levine, and a string of city staffers including City Manager Curt Walton.

And if the firepower assembled at that party tent makes any difference, you should put money on the northeast transit corridor -- an extension of the existing Blue Line -- being renamed the Green Line, after UNCC's colors. References to the "green line" drew enthusiastic applause.

Do 'uptown leaders' still rule the roost?

Vacation over. No more outerbelt opinions -- at least for a while. Onward to other things.

Is the Saturday Observer so slightly read that a huge package on the future of Charlotte -- one suggesting that the city's "business leaders" weren't the leaders anymore -- got only two comments? Maybe everyone was busy dying Easter eggs or playing in the sunshine. Even a column from UNC Charlotte's Jeff Michael attracted little reader attention online. He writes that based on planning textbook factors, Charlotte shouldn't have been an urban success at all.

So take a look. Do you agree that the local oligarchy of business leaders is gone? If so, who should take their place, and how should that process happen?

I wrote, "I keep hearing people asking who Charlotte's next leaders will be – as though some king-maker somewhere gets out the royal staff and taps a few CEOs, who become The New Leaders. I think Charlotte is too big and too diverse for that old pattern of oligarchy to work, even if we wanted it to."

Put your comments here, or on the article, if you care to comment. Reactions (those that are civil and have some thought informing them) will help shape comments at a series of forums around the region next week, with 2008 Citistates Report writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson and local elected officials, business leaders, environmentalists and others.

The forums are free and open to all. To Register: www.ui.uncc.edu.
They'll be:
Tuesday, April 21, Gaston County: 2-4:30 p.m. at Gaston Citizen's Resource Center, U.S. 321 North, Dallas.
Wednesday, April 22, York County: 1-3:30 p.m. at Rock Hill City Hall, 155 Johnston St., Rock Hill.
Thursday, April 23, Cabarrus County: 1-3:30 p.m., Cabarrus Arena and Events Center, 4751 N.C. 49 North, Concord.

I'm moderating the panels on Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope I'll see some of you there.

No, DON'T make 485 top priority

I'm going out on an opinion limb here, but I've been trying to figure out why just about every elected official around here seems to take it on faith that finishing that final leg of the outerbelt should be at the top of all local transportation spending lists. It shouldn't. There are better and more useful ways to spend that estimated $220 million.

Putting a lot more of it into Charlotte's transit system and better -- faster and more frequent -- rail service between North Carolinas cities would be a good place to start. Yes, it's expensive. But it would solve a lot more congestion than any urban loop road ever would. Yes, the money's in different legal "buckets." So change the law, already.

Meanwhile, we should get smarter in using state and federal transportation money restricted for streets and roads. There are plenty of legitimate projects in Mecklenburg County that are sorely needed, as development has overtaken old farm-to-market roads. But instead of building the typical NCDOT-style four-lane country highways, build four-lane boulevards. This is, after all, a city.

And this is the most important part of this piece: Build plenty of streets that connect. The more connections, the less the load on any one road. And can we stop calling them "roads"? They're streets. Streets are what you have in cities. Roads are what you have in the country.
Did I mention that this is, after all, a city?

On those interconnected streets, build (or require others to build) sidewalks and bike lanes. If key thoroughfares need connecting, buy the houses that stand in the way, and connect where needed.

Note what the state of Virginia has done. The state recently decided it will no longer maintain (or even plow) state-owned streets in new subdivisions that don't meet state requirements for connectivity and sidewalks. Here's a link to a WashPost story. The reasoning is sound: State taxpayers are funding road widenings that wouldn't be necessary if subdivisions and other developments were required to connect with each other. And disconnected neighborhoods pose a serious problem for emergency services.

That's true in North Carolina as well. Your tax dollars will pay for a Shelby bypass to bypass the current Shelby bypass, because Shelby and Cleveland County welcomed all that sprawling development along the U.S. 74 Bypass (while sort of pretending it also was supporting its downtown. Come on.)

Ditto Monroe, although are planned to help pay some of the planned Monroe bypass. Supposedly. (And anyway, it's looking as if the "Finish The Outerbelt" forces will use up that Monroe bypass money for a few years.) Ditto widening Providence Road, a state highway needlessly carrying thousands more vehicles than it would if developers had been required to connect their developments with a street network. But the developers didn't want to do that, because customers like to live on cul-de-sacs, so local rule-makers didn't make them.

Sure, that little gap atop 485 looks weird. But in terms of solving traffic congestion, it's a nonstarter. Loop roads have no history of solving congestion in any city. They generally clog shortly after they open, because local elected officials happily OK just about any development proposed anywhere along the route -- thus packing the outerbelt with what is, essentially, local traffic. That's one important reason I-485's southern leg is so congested. Mecklenburg County commissioners, plus municipal officials in Charlotte, Pineville and Matthews, pretty much let any developer who wanted to build anything do so.

What we need, instead of widening 485, is about 10 more connector streets besides 485, N.C. 51 and the handful of others.

Indeed, old-timers remember when the outerbelt was first proposed back in the 1960s, its rationale was more openly stated in those innocent times. It was "to open land for development." Transportation rationalizations came much later, after developers had already snapped up the land along the route.

Hardly any local transportation professionals believed the outerbelt was necessary, longtime local transportation planner Bill Coxe told me more than a decade ago. But knowing the powers pushing it, they didn't openly oppose it. "That bulldozer was way too big for anybody to get down in front of,'' Coxe told me.

I remember in 1998, hearing Harry West, the longtime director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, who had seen how Atlanta's Perimeter Highway pushed that city's sprawl. Speaking about I-485, he told a Charlotte conference sponsored by, among other groups, the Charlotte Chamber: "If I thought you would listen to me, I'd tell you not to build it.''

Obviously, we didn't listen to him. And we still aren't.

USDOT a Ponzi scheme?

This just in: U.S. Transportation System is a giant Ponzi scheme.

OK, it's an April Fool's joke (sort of) by the clever folks at the Project for Public Spaces. The "Faking Places" newsletter today has these other headlines:

-- How football stadiums can be transformed into vital community places.
-- Get your kicks on I-95: USDOT announces "Roads with Character" initiative.
And my favorite:
-- Ice rink tops list of amenities proposed by residents of Hell.

McCrory's next project?

I hate to interrupt the great comment thread going on at "Developers bend city official's ear" but here goes:

Hizzoner Pat McCrory stopped by the paper today to talk about what he plans to do with his remaining eight months in office. Headlines: Economic development [recruit more companies to bring more jobs], city spending [try to cut what needs to be cut in the city budget], public safety [he's against crime and supports the police chief]. Motherhood and apple pie were probably on the list too.

But near the end of the conversation he talked about having recently gone to Atlanta for an event sponsored by Georgia Tech, to look at mega-regions. There's a lot of theorizing going on among people who study city and metro region growth that county and state lines are all but irrelevant if you look at how economies work. It's essentially the "Citistates" theory of folks such as Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson. Now folks are talking about mega-regions. One mega-region, dubbed "CharLanta," is the urbanized crescent running from Atlanta through Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., Charlotte, the N.C. Triad and on to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area.

McCrory said he and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agreed to try to get a project going, possibly with Georgia Tech and UNC Charlotte, to look at "the bigger picture vision thing."

Now I've not always agreed with McCrory, but in transportation, he's usually on target or pretty darn close, in terms of what's needed. And he's right about the need to look long-term and big picture.

One major need in the CharLanta corridor: Better passenger rail service. A significant attribute that sets apart the DC-to-Boston corridor is its clearly superior rail service. The whole Southeast region ought to get together and make the world's best pitch, to anyone in D.C. who will listen, that it's our turn for some of those rail dollars. After all, North Carolina got shafted in the federal transit-stimulus-divvying formula.

I don't know how McCrory plans to spend his time post-mayorship, but working to put a mega-region coalition together might well be a project in need of a champion.

Developers bend city official's ear

I wish I could tell you what was discussed at 7:45 a.m. today, when the Charlotte Chamber's Land Use committee (a committee of real estate, development and related business people) met with Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble. But I was told I wasn't welcome.

On the agenda, according to an e-mail last week from Natalie English, the Chamber's senior vice president for business and education advocacy: "Collin Brown [a lawyer] with K&L Gates will present specific examples of the cumulative impacts of the Post Construction Control Ordinance, the Urban Street Design Guidelines policy and the Proposed Amendment to the Tree Ordinance. Please plan to attend to participate in the discussion with Ron Kimble about how we might affect the impact these ordinances have on economic development, affordable housing and development in our community."

The post-construction controls ordinance is a water-quality protection measure. The urban street design guidelines (policy, but not embedded into ordinances yet) aim to make city streets walkable and would require more streets and more street trees, among other things. The proposed change to the tree ordinance would strengthen tree-save requirements for commercial property developers.

The Chamber, English told me last week -- when she was, in a very friendly and polite way telling me I couldn't come this morning -- is concerned that the proposed tree ordinance changes, on top of the post-construction controls ordinance and the street design guidelines, would "drastically impact the ability to grow the economy."

The Land Use committee chair, Karla Knotts, is also interim executive director of the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (REBIC). REBIC and some members of the Land Use committee had asked the Chamber to oppose the proposed tree ordinance changes.

Clearly, putting more requirements on developers will increase the costs of development and construction. That means what gets built would A) Cost more to buyers, OR B) Mean developers wouldn't offer as much money to buy land to start with. Both results have been known to occur, depending on the location, the market, etc. But regardless, the marginal difference in building cost isn't the villain in today's horrific real estate and building slowdown.

Nor would the real estate market here miraculously revive if only developers could offer product a bit more cheaply, with narrow sidewalks and no street trees, its runoff still allowed to pollute local creeks, and just as many trees being cut down as is allowed today.

Here's the painful reality, painful to everyone in this area, because none of us likes to see businesses hurting: The developers' potential customers are losing their jobs, health insurance, and even their homes to foreclosure, or they can't sell their existing homes. Financing agencies, including banks, are struggling to offer credit because the finance system is full of toxic loans. That's the problem developers are facing. It isn't the tree ordinance.

Pols brave danger to walk down sidewalk

(CDOT staffers negotiate narrow, debris-filled sidewalk during Monday tour)

We all survived the walk down Woodlawn Road in mid-afternoon. We even managed to cross Woodlawn in safety after waiting several minutes for a gap in traffic. But ... there was an incident. More later.

Council members Anthony Foxx, Michael Barnes, Susan Burgess, Patsy Kinsey and Nancy Carter (all but Kinsey members of the Transportation Committee) went for a tour by the city's DOT staff to show some pedestrian issues. It's part of the Pedestrian Plan, which CDOT planners are drafting and hope to give to council for approval in the next few months.

A big issue is uncomfortable, uninviting back-of-curb sidewalks along major thoroughfares. So we all walked about a quarter mile up Woodlawn.

Here's a report on the "incident": Shortly after we start, near Preston Townhomes at Woodlawn and Scaleybark, a black Jeep Cherokee zips past (speed limit is 35 mph, but most drivers appear to be ignoring that) and someone inside chunks a drink cup out the window. It hits Foxx and splashes Kinsey. No harm done, though it was rattling.

Only Barnes, Kinsey and CDOT planner Dan Gallagher dashed across Woodlawn at Bayberry Drive in order to see the much nicer sidewalk built at the townhouse-style Oak Leaf development across the street. The rest of us had to wait to cross until a couple of school buses set a pick for us, essentially stopping the oncoming traffic so we could safely get to the other side.

The point CDOT was making was that developments such as Oak Leaf, which needed a rezoning, don't get that OK unless they fix the bad, back-of-curb sidewalks. Plus, many of the newer zoning categories require better sidewalks. But so-called "by-right" development -- in which the land already carries the zoning needed for the development -- doesn't have to do anything about sidewalks.

CDOT is offering for consideration the idea of changing local ordinances, so developments such as Preston Flats and Preston Townhomes would have to update bad sidewalks, the way Oak Leaf did. After all, as CDOT pedestrian advocate Vivian Coleman pointed out, Preston Flats had to do significant grading of the site, for the construction. Pouring a new sidewalk would not have been onerous. As it is, though, any sidewalk improvement would come out of city coffers.

Want more pedestrian info? See the CDOT page of links to pedestrian organizations, ordinances, etc.

Politicians risking lives? Stay tuned

At 3 p.m. today a bunch of Charlotte City Council members and assorted others (including yours truly) will possibly risk their lives by walking on one of those cruddy back-of-curb sidewalks along Woodlawn Road, where traffic whizzes by at 50 mph, inches from your body. And then we'll be invited -- try not to gasp in horror -- to cross the street. Note: Woodlawn has no lights or crosswalks between Scaleybark and South Boulevard, almost a full mile. So if you need to get to the other side, you just dash.

The purpose: Show the politicians how pedestrian-UN-friendly some of today's existing development standards are.

Let us all hope no elected officials get squashed like bugs on the street. As we have seen in recent months, filling seats of elected officials (e.g., county sheriff, school board) can be messy and ugly. We would just as soon not be put through that again this year.

Why do the sidewalks tour? CDOT is working on a Pedestrian Plan which it hopes to put to council for a vote later this year. The plan (in its current draft) would recommend studying changes to ordinances in order to require back-of-curb sidewalks be improved if there's a substantial development on a site, and that infill/teardown development be required to install sidewalks. There's probably going to be opposition from the developers' lobby. This is a way to help present the other side of the issue to the council members.

Small note: Technically the sidewalks on Woodlawn are not all back-of-curb. There's a minuscule planting strip of perhaps 12 inches weedy grass-like foliage.

I'll be taking photos. If anyone is turned into a grease spot on the pavement, don't say you weren't warned.

'First Garden' to sprout at White House

Alice Waters and other sustainable food advocates must have been persuasive. The Obamas are planning a veggie garden on the White House lawn, says the Washington Post.

Yes, it will include arugula. No, it isn't the first such garden. President John Adams, the first president to live in the White House, planted a garden. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden during World War II. The last true farmer in the White House, Jimmy Carter, wouldn't plant a vegetable garden – not even a peanut patch.

The New York Times even shows a schematic of what will be planted in what patch in the garden.

But will we see the First Family out digging up wild onions and Bermuda grass or shoo-ing the First Squirrels away from the First Tomatoes? We await further developments.

Lester Maddox lives on, in MARTA woes

(The late Lester Maddox, above)

Check this out, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about MARTA's budget problems.

The ghost of Lester Maddox -- the ax-handle-toting, proudly segregationist Georgia politician -- is with us still, in the form of a provision that's hamstringing MARTA's efforts to deal with the downturn in sales tax receipts due to the recession. (The photo above is Maddox in 2001.)

It seems that way back when MARTA was being formed, then-Lt. Gov. Maddox ensured that a provision in state law would prevent the subway-transit system from using more than 50 percent of its revenues for operations. MARTA wants the legislature to remove those restrictions.

Charlotte's transit system is in no way perfect, but we in the Queen City should thank our lucky stars the city didn't have to try to placate politicians who were quite as antediluvian as Lester Maddox. (Though to be fair to Georgia I could, of course, name some Charlotte names of folks who lacked only for ax handles ...)

Assessing Charlotte's transportation

(The city adopted a bicycle plan last year to help riders such as this)

This is for transportation policy wonks, among others. The city of Charlotte's transportation department has issued its yearly report on how the city is doing on its Transportation Action Plan. Here's a link, if you'd like to read it in full.

The good stuff: The city adopted a Bicycle Plan, and the light rail ridership substantially outstripped its projections.

But there's cause for concern: Despite new city policies, more attention to pedestrians and requirements for building more sidewalks, the percentage of city residents who live within a quarter mile of schools, parks and transit is lower now than in 2004. Of course, that may have as much to do with the lack of neighborhood parks and with school-siting decisions than with whether sidewalks are adequate.

Here are some "issues and challenges" identified in the report (their wording, not mine):
- The percentage of population within ¼ mile of schools, parks and transit is lower today than in 2004, making access by walking, bicycling, and short vehicle trips less viable.
- The percentage of multifamily units being approved in the wedges [not near the transit or major business corridors] is higher than the land use targets called for in the Centers, Corridors and Wedges growth framework.
- NCDOT’s project designs typically do not reflect Charlotte’s urban needs (for example Mallard Creek Extension).
- Gas tax revenues at the federal and state levels continue to decline, reducing the funds available for building and maintaining roads.
- ½-cent sales tax revenues for transit are lower than anticipated.
- Without a local dedicated transportation funding source, at levels consistent with the TAP, Charlotte will struggle to keep pace with continued growth and increased travel demand.

Here are some of the accomplishments the plan notes (again, their wording):

- Charlotte residents passed $160M+ in transportation bonds during 2008.
- Key road and intersection projects were advanced as depicted in Map 1.
- LYNX Blue Line averaged over 15,000 daily riders in its first year of service.
- The Committee of 21 [a local group] and the 21st Century Transportation Committee [a state group] convened and identified transportation revenue options to address transportation needs at the state and local levels.
- Both the Federal Highway Administration and the North Carolina American Planning Association honored the TAP as a model plan.
- Council adopted the City of Charlotte Bicycle Plan.

Politics vs. planning

I've had this bit in my notebook for a week, and finally have time to write about it:

Mayor Pat McCrory was right – but wrong – at last week's City Council meeting (March 9) when he badgered a planner about why planners removed a street connection from the Arrowood Transit Station Area plan.

He was right to question it and to say city planners should give their best professional planning judgment, not bow to political pressure. (At least, that's what I think he was trying to point out. And I must note that many elected officials get similarly huffy when planners act oblivious to political reality. But I digress...)

But McCrory shouldn't have hectored planner Alberto Gonzalez, who was presenting the plan.
In fact, Gonzalez ended up fainting or passing out – apparently because he hadn't eaten for some time – which made the scene even more dramatic.

The staff had originally proposed a street connection from Sharon Lakes Road to Hill Road. But neighbors in Starmount didn't like that idea. (See my Feb. 28 column, "Aiming at where the future will be," about connectivity.)

So, Gonzalez told the council, "We went back and took a closer look." And they deleted that street connection. Their thinking, he said, was that such connections are made when property is developed or redeveloped, and since the property in question was relatively newly developed, it wasn't realistic to think it would be redeveloped again any time in the near future.

McCrory wouldn't let him off the hook. He said, in essence, "Your job is to give us the planning perspective, not make judgments about what will or won't fly politically." So, he continued, was your recommendation during the public hearing incorrect? The poor planner was going to have to say, "Yes, we were wrong," or "Yes, we caved politically." I can't remember at what point he blacked out. It might have been right about then.

Warren Cooksey hopped into the discussion to note that the plan should probably have the connections that planners think are needed, because a redevelopment might occur even if it is, today, deemed unlikely, and you'd want that street connection to be in the plan.

The upshot: The City Council adopted the plan with only Cooksey voting against. The mayor doesn't have a vote on those matters. Here's a link that will let you look at the Draft Plan and the revisions. The original street connection proposed is on Page 13 of the Draft Plan.

Feeling parched?

A few years back I heard local Democrat-about-town David Erdman give a talk on Charlotte geography, which included this memorable nugget: southern Mecklenburg County is the hottest, driest part of the state. He had rainfall and temperature maps to prove the point.

I'm reminded of that, looking at the map accompanying this USA Today story that the first two months of 2009 are the driest on record in this country. (Figures that the year of horrible news would include a huge drought as well.) Note on the map how the only part of North Carolina in the red, "extreme drought" zone is -- surprise! -- not southern Mecklenburg. Looks more like Rutherford, Polk and Cleveland counties, where there are, indeed, farmers who need the rain instead of city- and suburban-dwellers who just want lawns.

Which brings me to my two points:

1. First, patronize local farmers because it's smarter, long-range, to ensure that we have a good food supply in this part of the country and don't have to depend on veggies trucked in from California and other faraway places. If you want to "save open space" and "preserve farmland" then for pete's sake, think about preserving farmers as well. Here's a link to a column I wrote on the topic in November.

2. And second, what's with watering the lawn all summer? It's a huge waste of a precious resource. If you have fescue grass -- which most people here do -- it naturally goes dormant in hot weather and will revive in the fall. Water it every 2 or 3 weeks to keep it from dying. If you see someone with a green lawn in July, you're looking at someone wasting our water.

Chamber stays home. What should they see?

As I wrote in the Saturday Observer, the Charlotte Chamber isn't going on an inter-city visit this year, opting to stay home and study what's here. I gave some suggestions for what they should do and see, such as have a locavore dinner and hear from artists and people with lots of piercings.

But what would you recommend they see? (And for the purposes of this blogposting, let's all assume those who wish to have already visited whatever topless bars they care to.) If you want to vote on the Chamber's online poll, here's a link.


Chatting with Chamber president Bob Morgan, I asked if he, too had observed more people uptown dressing more formally? Just in the past several months, it seems, I've seen more guys in suits and ties and fewer in khakis and knit shirts or jeans and sport shirts. Morgan said he'd noticed the same thing. We speculated people afraid of being laid off are dressing up more, and those already laid off are trying to look professional as they look for new work.


Then, he noted something else. In conversations he's hearing, he said, "It's no longer about work-life balance. It's now about 'work ethic.' "


Not unexpected, of course. When times get tough, companies want workers who'll put in long hours, not whine about pay/benefits and not have to deal with those pesky "family" problems such as sick kids or ailing parents.

Where are all the foreclosures?

A USA Today story last week uses data from RealtyTrac to show that more than half of the nation's foreclosures last year took place in just 35 counties, in about a dozen states. Outside those foreclosure hot spots, the article says, "the foreclosure wave was barely a ripple — at least until it started swamping major banks that had invested heavily in mortgages." Wachovia, it points out, was hammered by foreclosures in California and Florida. And we all know the rest.

Do gates really keep out crime?

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Director Debra Campbell tells me city planners and the city-county police department will study crime rates in and around gated communities to see if the gates really do reduce crime. (So, will they also be looking at crimes such as tax fraud, insider trading or Ponzi scheming? If you've lost your retirement savings, you might consider those white-collar offenses worse than just simple auto break-ins.)

Campbell said at a recent City Council meeting that the city doesn't currently have a policy about gated developments, although its street connectivity policies would discourage them. Planners generally think gated subdivisions work against such things as a sense of community, social capital and mixed-income neighborhoods, in addition to bollixing up general traffic flow.

It's a welcome attempt. Gated developments derive much of their popularity from the general belief that they're safer. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I know we have often vacationed at a gated beach community, in which there are gated developments inside the gated development. So, um, if you need those extra gates, does that mean the first set of gates doesn't work? Who, exactly, are you trying to keep out? If it's that journalistic riffraff, well, the gates aren't working.

Commuter rail: Finally?

A couple of rail-related news bits:

Item No. 1: Why hasn't much commuter rail been built in the country in recent years? The Bush administration's Federal Transit Administration had written some requirements for how to calculate such things as projected ridership when submitting requests for federal transit money. It's complicated, but the upshot was that the rules made it impossible for commuter rail -- which goes faster and has fewer stops than in-town light rail -- to compete for the limited federal transit dollars.

That's why the North Corridor transit line that the Charlotte Area Transit System wants to build had that "gap" in its funding plan -- it's the gap where federal funds might have gone, but weren't available. The Triangle Transit Authority in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill was stuck for the same reason.

Now comes word the FTA has rescinded those old parameters, CATS chief Keith Parker said late last week. He didn't know yet what the new parameters would be or whether new money would be available for commuter rail projects. But it's got to be good news for CATS and the many people who've been hoping to see a rail line from uptown Charlotte to Davidson and even beyond, if Iredell County would cough up some money (not to mention good news for the TTA and our fellow North Carolinians in the Triangle.)

Item No. 2: A new Elon University poll finds 77 percent of North Carolinians would like to see commuter rail developed in urban areas, and 69 percent support regional rail systems.

While 51 percent of North Carolinians oppose collecting tolls to fund
statewide transportation projects, 77 percent would like to see commuter
railways developed in urban areas and 69 percent of citizens support regional
rail systems. Sixty-seven percent of respondents support a state-wide bond
referendum to raise money for transportation projects, while 57 percent of
residents support giving local governments the option of using a half-cent sales
tax to finance local projects. Residents oppose a fee based on the number of
miles they drive annually (74%) and increasing the cost of the driver’s license
renewal fee (55%).

Poll: New roads don't top preference list

Interesting poll out from the National Association of Realtors and the advocacy group, Transportation for America, finds a majority of Americans believe upgrading and repairing existing roads and bridges and expanding transportation options (i.e. transit, bicycling and pedestrian options) should take precedence over building new roads.

A press release from the Realtors' association says: "When asked about approaches to addressing traffic, 47 percent preferred improving public transportation, 25 percent chose building communities that encourage people not to drive, and 20 percent preferred building new roads. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed believe the federal government is not devoting enough attention to trains and light rail systems, and three out of four favor improving intercity rail and transit."

You can download a PDF of the full report here.

Frank Gehry at 80

Big-name architect Frank Gehry turned 80 on Saturday, and the L.A. Times ran a profile and assessment of his work, from architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. (Gehry's Disney Hall in Los Angeles is at left, courtesy of the L.A. Times.)

The recession has hit his practice hard: Two major projects, Grand Avenue in Los Angeles and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, have been put on hold, and Gehry has half the staff he did a year ago. Interestingly, the piece points out that the reputation of the once-hailed Gehry is shifting.

" ... The virtuosic approach to design that Gehry has embodied since his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened to rapturous acclaim in 1997 faces an increasingly pointed critique within his profession."

And it has this interesting rumination about younger architects' view of Gehry' work and that of other celebrity architects:

"They are less interested in the bravura, photogenic icons that Gehry has lately produced – so-called signature buildings by a so-called starchitect – and more compelled by eco-friendly designs or anti-poverty efforts such as those aimed at providing affordable housing in rural areas. Other young architects are looking beyond the star model of architectural practice and toward communal, even anonymous, design initiatives."