Growing church vs. historic bungalows

It was easily the most interesting of the rezoning cases the City Council heard last night – and the one that brings up the trickiest issue of the evening: What rules, if any, should the city have to limit institutions that encroach into neighborhoods? And how do you deal with big ugly surface parking lots? They're not pedestrian-friendly, nor do they contribute to the much-loved-by-planners "vibrant urban village." They're also polluters, due to polluted storm runoff.

A church in the Wilmore neighborhood wants to expand and build a large new building and a big surface parking lot on a street now holding several historic bungalows. (By "historic," here, I don't mean designated landmarks or in a designated historic district, simply a neighborhood that dates to the turn of the 19th-20th century and has an ambiance akin to Dilworth, Elizabeth and Wesley Heights.) The church has said it won't demolish the five houses but will move them to other property it owns.

The matter was a public hearing on zoning case 2008-158. The council vote should come next month.

Several things made this an interesting presentation. First, the council chamber was virtually filled with members of the church, Greater Galilee Baptist Church, whose current sanctuary (shown above, photo courtesy of the church) is on South Mint Street at West Park Avenue.

Second, one speaker in favor of rezoning had a great line: "We, as people, are in noncompliance. With Jesus."

Yet opponents had some good points: Why should a church be allowed to remove five houses and put up a surface parking lot? As neighbor Chip Cannon put it, this would be putting "a suburban mega-church in the center of a small-scale pedestrian neighborhood."

Some political realities are in order. This church is African American. Two at-large council members are running for mayor and both want African American votes (though black candidate Anthony Foxx has an edge there). Among nine at-large candidates (for four slots), three of the four Democrats are African American. Two at-large incumbents – Democrat Susan Burgess and Republican Edwin Peacock – will have to vote on this petition. Burgess, in particular, will want as many Democratic votes as she can get in November. If she faces black voters' triple-shotting for the three black at-large candidates, she'll have a problem.

Another political reality: No one wants to vote against a church, especially an obviously growing church. Maybe they'd do that in some other city in some other state, but in oh-so-Christian Charlotte? Not on your (eternal) life.

Yet another political reality: How fair would it be to crack down on an African American church when Carolinas Medical Center has been allowed to devour vast tracts of Dilworth with, near as I can tell, hardly a peep of protest from the city? And the affluent and predominantly white Myers Park United Methodist plopped a surface parking lot (nicely landscaped, though) at the prime corner of Providence-Providence-Queens-Queens. No one told them, "No." (Note to out-of-town readers: That intersection is for real. Don't even ask.)

Final political reality: I chanced to be sitting near Planning Director Debra Campbell and asked if there were any zoning standards that said you can't put in a parking lot, and she said, only in the UMUD (uptown) zoning. I asked if planners had considered cracking down on surface parking lots in other zoning categories. She just laughed – heartily, I must add – and said, "No way."

Corbu? Or You?

Yesterday I posed the question of who should be on the list of worst urbanists – spinning off Planetizen.com's entertaining Top 100 Urbanists list.

The easy, cliched choice would be Le Corbusier, the brilliant but destructive architect whose vision for the city of the future was one of tall towers surrounded by large lawns and big highways. In other words, this guy invented Charlotte's suburban office park development Ballantyne, as well as this nation's many failed public housing towers. But Corbu was avant-garde and influential, and many others took up his theories. This was especially true in the U.S., where they dovetailed nicely with the auto and petroleum industries' push to get everyone into automobiles and driving a lot.


But thinking of Le Corbusier made me think of General Motors and its famous Futurama display at the 1939-40 New York Worlds Fair, depicted at right. Surely the automobile and petroleum industries – with their powerful influence on Congress and highway funding and with GM's purchase of many urban streetcar systems in order to dismantle them – did more to shape the nation's cities for the worse than any one architect could.

But then, of course, it's worth remembering that while Le Corbusier did influence huge numbers of architects in this country, Walter Gropius and his colleague Sigfried Giedion (who wrote "Space Time and Architecture") probably influenced more, during Gropius' many years at the Harvard School of Design. So maybe Gropius and Giedion should be on the list.
But again, wait. Architects challenge us to think. They may be wrong but who, really, decides what gets built? It's government that makes the rules that shape our cities. What about Herbert Hoover, who before he became president was Commerce Secretary and commissioned the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, which to this day underpins most land use ordinances in America and whose very foundation rests upon the theory that separating uses is the way to a safe and healthy city or town. As Jane Jacobs later showed us, it really isn't.

The federal government funded the interstate highway system, envisioned as a way to connect cities. But when it entered the city it caused open, ugly wounds to the urban fabric that continues to damage cities to this day.

It was the federal government whose rules for backing mortgage loans created the redlining that cut off access to credit for anyone who A) was black, or B) lived anywhere near black people, or C) was one of a variety of so-called undesirable ethnics, such as Mexican or Bohemian or D) lived anywhere near any of those so-called undesirable ethnics.

It was the federal government, again through its financing rules, that encouraged the sprawling, low-density suburban subdivision design that vanquished more urban dwelling forms.

Consider: The government is by the people, for the people and of the people. It's all of us. So maybe that worst urban thinker arrow should spin around and start pointing at all of us?

But who oughtta be 'Worst Urbanist' ?

My colleague Jack Betts, who writes our This Old State blog, read the last post – Who tops 'Top Urbanist' list? – and suggested this, "Be fun sometime to do a list of the Ten Worst urban thinkers… There'd surely be some NC nominees." And he's surely right.

I saw that a commenter on my previous posting nominated Bissell Hayes to top the "sub-urbanism list." Right away, I started thinking about other Charlotteans (Bissell Hayes is a company, not a person, and now it's part of Cottingham-Chalk/Bissell-Hayes) who might be on that "worst urban thinkers" list.

Of course, A.G. Odell leaped to mind. He was a big proponent of uptown, to be sure, but his ideas for "improvement" were derivative of Robert Moses, or maybe Corbusier-esque. One reason downtown Charlotte has so many blocks and sectors that seem dead is that our civic leaders (Hugh McColl among them) kept following Odell's 1966 master plan for uptown development, when they shouldn't have. It tries to impose a single-use pattern, as in "here is your cultural district, there is your government district, here is your entertainment district" and so on. BAD idea.

At first I thought Henry Faison deserved a spot, for Eastland and other suburban shopping malls that wither, long after he's made his money and sold to others. But then, I thought, Faison isn't really an urban thinker, per se. He's just a developer doing what the city zoning and policies allow.

Here are Betts' suggestions:

• Whoever designed the Research Triangle Park – granted, it wasn't urban then but now it's an urban fortress, with concrete moat, in the midst of one the south's largest areas of urban academic sprawl.

• And how about whoever was mayor when the old Charlotte Coliseum was built way out yonder? [The first time that happened the mayor was Victor Shaw, but this being Charlotte he appointed a committee, headed by department store executive David Ovens, to work up a plan for a coliseum-auditorium project built in 1955 way out on Independence Boulevard. And the architect for both the old coliseum and Ovens auditorium? A.G. Odell. And while its location is horrible, and the big ugly parking lots are horrible, I do like the old Coliseum itself, with that great silver dome. And this being Charlotte, we did it again in the 1980s, when Harvey Gantt, an architect and planner was mayor. Built another coliseum way out on Tyvola Road./ mn]

• Or whoever was in charge of letting Raleigh's RBC Center get built in a place that makes visitors stand around in the parking lot after games or performances looking around in puzzlement: where are the bars, the pubs, the cafes, the restaurants, the museums? What were they thinking??????

• Or Tom White when he insisted the N.C. Museum of Art be built in an area where….(see RBC, above….) but at least there was a youth prison (Polk) handily right next door for the arts-and-petty theft crowd.

Who tops "Top Urbanist" list?

The Planetizen.com votes are in and - no surprise - Jane Jacobs has topped the voting of the 100 Top Urban Thinkers. If you don't want to take the time to follow the link to all 100, here are the Top 10:
1. Jane Jacobs
2. Andres Duany
3. Christopher Alexander
4. Frederick Law Olmsted
5. Kevin A. Lynch
6. Daniel Burnham
7. Lewis Mumford
8. Leon Krier
9. William H. Whyte
10. Jan Gehl

Sad to say, Charlotte's Terry Shook dropped off the list during the voting. And am I being persnickety in wondering if there's a whiff of sexism in the No. 2 position for Andres Duany and his partner (and wife, and dean of the U. of Miami School of Architecture) Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is way down at No. 24? Yes, Andres is the showman of the pair, no doubt. But still ...

Jane Jacobs' topping the list provides me with a chance to tout a new book about the Manhattan activist's battles with Robert Moses (who also made the list, but at No. 23, just below Baron Haussmann, who remade Paris in the 1800s). It's "Wrestling With Moses," by Anthony Flint. It's an excellent and readable account, and since biographies of Jacobs aren't plentiful it helps to fill some blanks in our understanding of her life and work. Here's a link to a long and excellent article about the book in The New Republic from Harvard's Ed Glaeser (who made Planetizen's list at No. 51).

Back to Jacobs being No. 1 - Here's one intriguing thought from Rick Cole, city manager of Ventura, Calif.:

"We're all better off for more attention being drawn to the work of Jane Jacobs -- not just 'Death and Life [of Great American Cities]' but her later work on economics and cities. While I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tony's book, I don't share his view that Jane Jacobs has won the legacy battle. The widespread embrace of her work is often shallow, and developers continue to push megadevelopments that look cute, but are barren monocultures that cannot replicate the 'complexity' she celebrated."

City weapon against big box blight advances

A Charlotte City Council committee today unanimously approved a proposed new code for nonresidential (i.e. commercial) buildings. This isn't a building code – those already exist. It's akin to a housing code, only it applies to buildings that aren't housing. I'll add a link soon as the city PR folks send me a pdf version. The draft ordinance isn't posted online.

It'll likely be up for final action on Sept. 28.

The issue is important for neighborhoods where retailers have left buildings behind and the buildings sit, empty, for months. (Take a look at the photo above, of the old Albemarle Road Upton's, built in 1978, photo taken in May.) Sometimes the vacancy occurs because a retail chain goes belly up; other times the company opens a new store, typically on a suburban greenfield site, and leaves the older building. Those vacant and decaying stores have the effect of signalling to other retailers: "Don't move here, retail doom awaits!" And the aura of decay can send a clear signal to other potential investors, too, of an area in decline.

The new code has been in the works since February 2008, when the council told staff to study and develop one. The council's Housing and neighborhood Development Committee has reviewed it three times: April, May and July, and a public hearing was Aug. 24.

To their credit, the city planners have begun pushing developers of new big box stores to agree to language in the rezoning agreement that puts some requirements on the retailer if the store goes vacant: keep up the building, help market it to new tenants, don't put a noncompete clause on the property. But that doesn't give the city any leverage against abandoned commercial properties built without any such requirements.

The city currently requires vacant nonresidential properties to be secure. The new code would extend to occupied buildings, and would require properties to be sanitary and safe, too. It would require property owners to maintain exterior walls, roofs, windows, etc. Broken windows and doors, holes in roofs and walls, garbage on the site and rodent or insect infestations would be potential violations. Near as I can tell, there's very little opposition to it from anywhere, so it should pass easily in a few weeks.

(And an aside, to forestall the inevitable suggestions that abandoned big box stores should be turned into public schools: School architects have studied that suggestion and concluded that state building requirements for schools make renovation of old big box stores more expensive than building from scratch. A charter school on North Tryon went into an abandoned K mart, but charter schools don't have to follow the same building rules as regular public schools. )

Coming Tuesday ...

Much good stuff to write this week, but I was buried with Charlotte City Council endorsement research and writing. I'll dive back into blogging after Labor Day. 'Til then have a good holiday, everyone.

Updating U-City transit, street projects

As I'm spending much of today interviewing City Council candidates and editing tomorrow's Viewpoint page, I'll just offer a couple of links to information available elsewhere.


First, here's an overview from University City Partners about the planning for the northeast light rail line. It's a good summation of some of the fine point design issues they're wrestling with, such as how to deal with the North Tryon Street, Harris Boulevard intersection. The next big public meetings on the plans:


• 6-8 p.m. Sept. 29 at Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church at 101 W Sugar Creek Road

• 6-8 p.m. Sept. 30 at the Oasis Temple, 604 Doug Mayes Place in University Place


Also, thanks again to University City Partners, here's an overview of the planning for overhauling "the weave" – where N.C. 49 (North Tryon and University City Boulevard), U.S. 29 (North Tryon) and I-85 all come together.

No more 'roads' talk, OK?

I found out earlier today that my Saturday oped on "roads" vs "transportation" is getting picked up by Planetizen.com - Maybe that'll make the comments section a bit more, er, balanced.

Other tidbits:

• NYTimes looks at LEED buildings and finds not all of them are all that "green." I've been hearing for some time about dissatisfaction with LEED ratings.

• New blog, "The Avenue" is a collaboration between the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and The New Republic magazine. It's about "policies and places in America today" and "will explore what it means to be a metropolitan nation."

• Kiplinger.com declares North Carolina one of the most tax-friendly states for retirees. Check it out.

• My buddy Joe Urban (aka Sam Newberg of Minneapolis) writes about Charlotte and its light rail for Urban Land Magazine. Check it out.

Who's the anonymous symphony lover?

I'm just back from the noon rally at Trade and Tryon for the Charlotte Symphony, which was fun in a too-much-sun, humid sweat kind of way. Especially since I not only got to hear some professional musicians play, but I got to hear former Gov. Jim Martin play the tuba. Who can't love that?

For the record, he played "Asleep in the Deep" on an instrument he said he borrowed from the Salvation Army. It did indeed have a beat up, well-used look to it. I missed his performance before the official rally started, but he was nice enough to play when I asked him, afterward.

The snoopy journalist in me, of course, required that I ask around about to try to get some clues to the identity of the anonymous donor who just gave the symphony a $500,000 challenge grant. The symphony has until Dec. 31 to raise its matching money, although I was told the challenge grant will be given out in increments, as the matching money is raised.

Meg Whalen, the symphony's public relations director, told me no one at the symphony knows the donor's identity except the CSO executive director, Jonathan Martin, and board chair Pat Rodgers. But, Whalen said, the donor intends to remain anonymous forever. So we're left to speculate about local philanthropists. Leon and Sandra Levine might be atop the list, except they apparently have been busy wiring up a $1 million challenge grant to the United Way of Central Carolinas, announced this morning. And they've already been generous to the symphony, with a $25,000 grant in May.


The symphony has to give its financial turnaround plan to the Arts & Science Council on Sept. 2. If the ASC doesn't like the plan, the symphony gets only a $150,000 in ASC funding, down from $1.9 million last year. If the ASC approves, the symphony gets $900,000.

I'm obviously cheering the symphony on. I'd hate to see Charlotte become one of the largest cities in America without a symphony. Here's a column I wrote on that topic a couple of weeks ago.

Kids, cities, diversity and social trust

Update on Thursday, Aug. 27: I have a request from reporter Ann Doss Helms: She's trying to find parents of kids who'd be switched from the Myers Park High School attendance zone to East Mecklenburg. Would the person who left the comment on that effect - or anyone else in that category - please contact her at ahelms@charlotteobserver.com or at 704-358-5033? She wants to hear from people on all sides of the issue.

The comment thread about Best Cities for Kids took an interesting turn last night and this morning. Take a look (link).

Several commenters made the valid point that the U.S. News & World Report rankings appeared to favor relatively affluent, mostly white suburban-ish areas with well-funded schools and low crime. "White flight" someone said, shouldn't be rewarded.

Indeed, I believe a community with many different ethnicities is a lot more interesting, and I agree that the rankings look as if they hadn't taken into account the reality that an affluent suburb is probably going to compare well for schools and crime stats. One commenter said, "Diversity is a city like Charlotte that has a 33% black population, a large Hispanic population, and a large white population. That in itself presents quite a challenge."

Then faithful reader/commenter "Cato" brought up Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor. His recent studies have shown that as ethnic diversity in an area rises, social trust goes down. This is true, he says, for all races and ethnicities. I've heard him lecture on this phenomenon several times, and each time he said he didn't like getting those results and kept double-checking his data and coming up with the same result.

So whoever thinks Cato is misquoting Putnam is off-base.

But I think Cato, too, is off-base in saying, "Why is this [less social trust] a desirable trait in a city? Especially if you get more crime and worse schools in the bargain? Or is it that the intangible benefits of white liberal self-congratulation are enough to coutnerbalance it?"

Putnam thinks it's a good idea to be aware of the tendency toward lower social trust and figure out how to counteract it. To say, "Especially if you get more crime and worse schools in the bargain," seems to me to ignore some realities:

One: Bernie and his hedge fund ilk as well as all the toxic loan purveyors and mortgage fraud perps have proved there's plenty of crime in rich areas too, and it's certainly not "victimless." It's not someone taking your CD player. They're taking your investments, or driving up your taxes by not paying theirs, or destroying the companies in which you own stock. I'd rather have my car stolen than the worth of my 401(k).

Two: Poverty correlates with higher crime, no question. Yet to say that you get "more crime" when a city area is more ethnically and economically integrated might really mean "more crime where I live in what used to be an all white, all middle-class area." The crime is already there, and many low-income people suffer horribly from it.

Three: "Worse schools." Again, the kids with the bad teachers, crappy home lives and falling down schools are already out there, so racial and ethnic and economic mixing doesn't cause those problems, but rather brings them to the attention of people heretofore not having to deal with them.

White flight – or to be more accurate, wealthy and "bright" flight – makes public schools worse, as parents with time, means and enthusiasm to help the schools disappear from the support base. That leaves schools with disproportionately more kids from bad situations, and fewer parents able and willing to fight for better resources. So more of the parents who care about their kids' school then leave, which causes a downward spiral. But it isn't as if racial/ethnic diversity by itself "causes" bad schools, rather the effects of people fleeing the effects of poverty can cause schools to start spiralling downward.

But Cato's right in saying that an economically and ethnically integrated city will indeed have to deal with those problems more than a bedroom community of affluent educated residents.

And for the record, I'm a proud parent of a high school senior who's been at CMS since kindergarten and has top-notch schooling at Charlotte's racially and ethnically diverse public schools. Many CMS schools are excellent, safe and well-run. And yes, some aren't. But just because you see some brown faces doesn't automatically mean the school's a bad place for your child.

Best cities for kids

Now this is a list I wish Charlotte were on:

U.S. News & World Report's list of the 10 best U.S. cities and towns in which to grow up (link here) does not, sadly, include Charlotte. Here are the criteria the magazine said it used:

"First off, you'd probably want a low crime rate. A strong school system would also be key. From there, you'd need lots of other children, expansive green spaces to play in, and plenty of nearby family events. Toss in an abundance of artistic and recreational activities, and all of a sudden you've got one heck of a place to grow up."


Obviously, different people value different things. I might have put a bit more weight on the attributes of a large city, which can offer plenty of things to do without having to drive everywhere. San Jose, Boston and Denver are on the list. Public school problems probably kept New York and Washington off the list (I'm speculating, I don't have inside info). Green space probably hurt Atlanta and Charlotte. Crime probably hurt Charlotte – the city has had, comparatively speaking, a high crime rate for decades.

It's hard to tell if the list is in order of No. 1 to No. 10, but here are the cities, in order:
1. Virginia Beach, Va.
2. Madison, Ala. (a bedroom suburb of Huntsville)
3. San Jose, Calif.
4. Overland Park, Kan. (outside Kansas City, Mo.)
5. Boston
6. Denver
7. Rochester, Minn.
8. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
9. Plano, Texas
10. Edison, N.J.

They'll choose next CATS chief

Who'll choose next CATS (Charlotte Area Transit System) chief? The four-member selection panel will consist of Charlotte City Manager Curt Walton, County Manager Harry Jones, , Matthews Town Manager Hazen Blodgett and Davidson Mayor John Woods (named by Charlotte Mayor and Metropolitan Transit Commission chair Pat McCrory).

According to a memo from Jones:

"The four members of the selection panel have conferred and agreed to move forward with the recruitment process as follows. Advertisements will be posted electronically with all national transit-related organizations, with a closing date of September 25, 2009. A profile of the Chief Transit Official position, updated during the 2007 recruitment process, will be subjected to a series of focus groups for input. The profile also will be posted on the city/county website for additional public input. The process is designed to name a new CATS CEO by November 30, 2009."

Jones' memo also notes that in 2015 Charlotte will host the national convention of the National Association of Counties. Hmmmm. Whole lotta politicians will be treading our sidewalks. (Lock up the silverware?) But Charlotte hosted the event in 2000 and no mass outbreaks of oratory or political skullduggery were reported.

Charlotte architect one of 'Greatest Urban Thinkers'

The late Jane Jacobs leads the vote so far with at least 660, but Lewis Mumford (270) and Kevin A. Lynch (281) are virtually neck and neck. The horse race? An online contest by the Web site Planetizen.com for Greatest Urban Thinker. Here's a link.

I was cheered to see Charlotte architect Terry Shook (below) on the list, though rather far down it, with 7 votes last I looked. S.C.-based developer Vince Graham is also on the list, with 5 votes.

It's an interesting list and provocative intellectual exercise, because you have to ponder whether some of the anti-urbanists, such as New York's Robert Moses and Le Corbusier, were more influential than urbanists such as Mumford and Jacobs.

The Planetizen gang decided to leave a bit muddy the issue of whether "influential" should mean "brilliant thinker about cities" or "had the biggest impact." Here's what they say:

"What about Le Corbusier, who remains an influential figure in architecture but has been labeled Enemy Number One by urban planners? Like Time Magazine, we've left the definition deliberately vague to encompass those who've had the most influence on the way we think about cities and/or how cities are shaped, for better or for worse. "

I e-mailed Shook (a UNC Charlotte alum) to alert him to his appearance in company of Mumford, Lynch, Daniel Burnham and other Big Names. He replied: " Really? ... Any idea on how I got on there?" (Which I'm pretty sure means he wasn't voting for himself ... )

You can vote for up to 15. Have at it.

One last note: If you're interested in reading about how Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses fought one another in New York over a series of urban redevelopment projects (Jacobs won the battles) look for "Wrestling With Moses," by Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. I've read it; it's well-researched, well-written and quite entertaining.

Transit update from the Triangle

Interesting e-mail exchange a few days ago with Brad Schulz, communications officer for Triangle Transit, about what happens next in the places that won permission from the General Assembly to hold votes on adding a sales tax for transit. Schulz was a longtime broadcast journalist in Charlotte, mostly for WBT radio, who left to work for CATS 2000-2003 and joined Triangle Transit in the Research Triangle Park in 2003.

The new law says large counties can put a half-cent sales tax to a vote of the people; smaller ones get the option for a vote on a quarter-cent sales tax. County commissioners would have to decide to put the issue on the county ballot. And I haven't met a politician yet who thinks this year is a good one to take such a question before the voters – especially after the legislature recently popped a 1-cent sales tax increase on us to balance the state budget. But longer term, who knows?

Schulz wrote me, "It’ll be up to commissioners in Wake, Orange and Durham counties to call for a referend(um) (a) when they feel the time is right economically and when each county has a transit plan they feel adequate to answer future needs. ... Triangle Transit is assisting the counties with financial modeling right now on what sales taxes could be raised with a ½ cent and what the counties could provide in ramped-up bus service (much like CATS did) as it planned for light rail.

"The sales taxes would go for bus and rail improvements in the 2015-2025-2030 time frame for construction/completion (remember if you’re going in the federal queue [for funding] it usually takes 10-12 years from plan/design/construct/opening.

"BTW… it doesn’t take all three counties moving in tandem to begin bus and rail improvements. If one or two said yes and the other/others said no, we could still move forward with planning for that county.

But, one caveat is that all of the county plans should also fold into a rational regional transit plan that would one day allow us to connect Chapel Hill with North Raleigh with 51 miles of rail. Light rail is the preferred mode, instead of the diesel units we looked at before, for energy/fossil fuel/environmental-sustainability reasons.

A 29-member citizens commission reported out last spring that the region should be ready to go it alone if there were no federal funds available. The bill as passed ... would allow for 25% state funding – with that precedent set by NCDOT with the CATS Lynx South Corridor Project.

" ... Chances are that the Chambers (of Commerce) would be leading the charge for the ½ cent sales tax along with the business community. BTW… the owners and tenants association of the Research Triangle Park also agreed to raise their taxes in the park to help pay for transit improvements. "

'Kudzu Jesus' - De-Vine?

I was all set to write about the plans for a transit-tax referendum in the Triangle (stay tuned, I'll get to that later today) when, upon researching the News & Observer's stories on transit I found, instead, the story about Raleigh's Kudzu Jesus.

What can I say? It's August. We live in Kudzu Country, the South. Here's a link to the article, and you can check out the photo, by reporter Josh Shaffer, above.

It's a spot where the kudzu has climbed across a wire. Says reporter Shaffer, "From the rear, he looks like Christ the Redeemer, the 100-foot statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro from a pointed mountaintop." It's just off Raleigh's Boylan Avenue bridge.

Random act of nature? A message from on high? Your call.

Let's talk window shopping

The Caldwell Street item sparked some interesting back-and-forth (here's a link) about whether one-way or two-way makes much of a difference for pedestrian comfort.

One commenter points out that the newly reconfigured intersection of Stonewall and Caldwell is so wide that it isn't pedestrian friendly (or bicycle friendly or even motorist friendly) at all. Others say sidewalk width and street-level retail are more important.
Here's my take: They're all important.

If the sidewalk is narrow (one commenter mentions Seventh Street uptown between Seventh Street Station parking deck and Tryon) pedestrians will be turned off.

If there's nothing interesting to look at – that is, if you're walking on a wide sidewalk but you're going past a vacant corporate plaza, a surface parking lot, a parking deck, a blank office wall, or even windows into office buildings – pedestrians will be turned off.

And if the cars are zooming past, as they tend to do on one – way streets when the lights are timed to let you cruise at 35 and hit them all green – then pedestrians will be turned off.

So reverting one-way to two-way is a good first step but if it's the only step it may be a waste of time. I continue to maintain that street-level retail shopping (or as the late jeweler and City Council member Al Rousso used to cry, "Window-shopping! We need window-shopping!") is what's key for uptown, and it's going to be incredibly difficult to achieve because:

• We've spent two decades demolishing storefront buildings until the few that remain are too far from each other to create any retail synergy.

• The city's uptown zoning still allows new development without street-front retail. It requires ground-floor retail, not street-front. Thus we get Founder's Hall and the shops inside office towers. To window-shop requires leaving the sidewalks and streets entirely. Unless you're in an urban scene as dense with stores and lively sidewalks as, say, New York or Paris, that's anti-urban.

This Monday: Caldwell goes two-way

More back to the future: Several uptown streets are being converted from one-way to two-way.

This is, by and large, a good thing. One-way streets encourage driving fast, which is fine for highways but inside cities is A) More dangerous for pedestrians, B) More dangerous for drivers and C) Makes city streets feel like roads instead of city streets.

Below is a snippet from last week's memo to City Council, saying that Caldwell Street, from Fourth Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly Second Street) switches to two-way traffic by noon Monday.

Brevard Street is due for similar treatment, from Stonewall to Trade streets. Update: the section of Brevard from Stonewall to MLK Boulevard will convert in May 2010, and the segment from MLK to Trade will switch in 2011 – some right-of-way issues will delay that segment, says CDOT Chief Danny Pleasant.

Here's the memo:

Beginning Monday, August 17, traffic patterns will change on South Caldwell Street between Fourth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Starting at 9:00 a.m., crews will begin changing Caldwell Street from a one-way street to a two-way street. The conversion is expected to be complete by noon.
This conversion to two-way traffic is part of the Center City Transportation Plan adopted by the City Council in 2006, and has been implemented as part of the interchange and street modifications associated with the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Later phases will also convert Brevard Street between Stonewall and Trade to two-way traffic. The changes will improve traffic circulation in the area and improve accessibility and safety for pedestrians.

Bigger than Charlotte, bigger than Atlanta ...

Megaregions.

If you haven't heard the term before, you'll be hearing it more. I wrote about the idea briefly last March. (Link is here.)

Yesterday and today a group of mayors – including Charlotte's Pat McCrory and Atlanta's Shirley Franklin – plus academics, business executives and others from the Char-Lanta corridor gathered to talk about whether this giant region should start looking at itself as one connected whole, rather than disconnected municipalities and states. Not surprisingly, they agreed to keep talking.

Mega-region is a somewhat new term for the idea that U.S. metro areas are clumped in larger multi-state regions, each operating in many ways as one economic entity, and that addressing environmental, transportation and economic issues requires looking beyond municipal and state boundaries. The so-called Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion stretches from Birmingham to Raleigh (I-20 and I-85 are key connecting threads) and, they say, should be viewed as one large urban region.

Mayors at this meeting were McCrory, Franklin, Jennie Stultz of Gastonia and Robert Reichert of Macon.


Several action items emerged from the meetings (journalists were not allowed in to cover the discussion sessions):

1. The mayors agreed to short-term lobbying to press Washington for money for high-speed rail through the corridor as well as money to replace the Yadkin River bridge on I-85.

2. They'll meet again in October, probably in Greenville-Spartanburg.

3. They'll launch scenario planning to try to glimpse what the megaregion would look like with or without a large-scale regional vision.

4. They'll look to UNC Charlotte, Clemson and Georgia Tech to help develop an organizational structure to keep the group intact.

Look for more coverage from the Observer's Bruce Henderson, but here are a few quick tidbits from a noon press conference today:

- The day's best quote came from Catherine Ross of Georgia Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development and author of "Megaregions: Planning for Global Competitiveness." Ross was one of the architects of the event. "My grandma said, 'You have to put it on the ground where the chickens can get it.' " In other words, it's a complicated concept and to help people understand it you have to put it out for them so they can start to learn it.

- Mayor Robert Reichert of Macon declared with enthusiasm: "You're catching a glimpse of the future." He noted, however, that "if you think Atlanta and Charlotte are gonna have a lovefest and not compete from now on ... " well, he said, that won't happen. But cooperation and competition can co-exist.

Several times, the mayors said that in their view, mayors are better positioned than governors to work together on such urban issues. In an interview Tuesday, Georgia Tech's Harry West said, "Georgia's governor right now is like a one-armed paper hanger." In other words, busy with multiple priorities.

Interested in learning more? Here are some links:
- Georgia Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development's megaregions research page.
-Urban Land Magazine's "Think Global, Act Megaregional" (July 2006) by William Hudnut.
- "Think Locally, Act Regionally" from the Brookings Institution.

About that 'new' transit tax ...

You'll remember the taken-out-of-context flap earlier this year about whether the N.C. legislature should add Mecklenburg to a bill that would let all the other N.C. counties ask their voters whether they wanted to levy a small sales tax to support transit.

Plenty of local blowhards both in local news media and elsewhere acted as if the request to be included was the same as actually imposing a higher tax. That, of course, was either deliberate mischaracterization or, to be kinder, incredibly sloppy reporting. The bill lets voters (in other counties) decide whether to tax themselves.

Anyway, it seems the bill (House Bill 148, which does not include Mecklenburg) is about to pass the legislature (it's on tonight's calendar), giving counties in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) and the Triad (Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem) a go-ahead, if they wish, to seek voter approval for a half-cent sales tax for transit systems there. All other counties (except Mecklenburg) can seek voter OK for a quarter-cent sales tax increase.

This is mostly good news, although transit supporters in Mecklenburg had wanted to be included. They wanted to have a tool in the toolkit of transit-funding options so they wouldn't have to expend the time and effort to do what Mecklenburg did in the 1990s: get a special, local bill giving us the authority for a 1998 transit tax referendum. Mecklenburgers still could seek such a special bill from the General Assembly if they wanted to.

The good news is that surrounding counties such as Cabarrus and Iredell are now free to seek local taxing approval if they want to extend the proposed Northeast or North transit corridors beyond Mecklenburg's borders.

Here's a summary from Boyd Cauble, the executive assistant to City Manager Curt Walton, sent to City Council last Friday. (I tried for a link to his memo but couldn't manage it. If anyone can find the thing online, please share the link.)

Intermodal Transit Tax
The House passed a transit funding bill (H148) in April and some questioned whether the bill would be approved by the Senate. Last Wednesday, the Senate voted 37-9 to allow the Triad and the Triangle to have the ½ cent sales tax authority for transit which Mecklenburg currently has. Additionally, H148 allows every other county in N.C., except Mecklenburg, to levy a ¼ cent tax for transit upon voter approval.

The Triangle area did an excellent job of soliciting support from over 100 separate groups and a cross section of bipartisan support in the legislature. Prior to the Senate vote, Senator [Malcolm] Graham and Senator [Charlie] Dannelly [both Mecklenburg Democrats] explored ways to honor the MTC [Metropolitan Transit Commission] and City Council’s request to include Mecklenburg in H148. Unfortunately, adding an additional taxing authority in the bill would have been considered a "material amendment" requiring five additional days for approval. The amendment alternative was abandoned because it would have jeopardized the bill’s passage this session.

Not joining the other 99 counties in getting additional voter authority to fund future transit is very disappointing, but it is comforting to know that now Cabarrus, Iredell, and other adjoining counties have the authority to fund extensions of Mecklenburg’s transit corridors.
Representative [Becky] Carney [Mecklenburg Democrat], H148 primary sponsor, said she has the support of her colleagues to push for Mecklenburg inclusion for additional funding in the future, if local transit supporters and elected officials get behind the movement.

What's wrong with Wright Avenue?

One more thing, before I head away for a week's furlough. (Look for Naked City to resume on Aug. 10):

City Council member Susan Burgess had a good quip at Monday's council transportation committee meeting. They were discussing Wright Avenue, a street where the houses were built and sold with Wright Avenue addresses (see photo above), but that block of Wright Avenue was never built before the developer defaulted. (See "The mysterious case of Charlotte's missing street.")

The city is trying to decide what it should do. Among the issues are public safety (can police and firefighters find houses with Wright Avenue addresses when there is no Wright Avenue in front of them?), cost, design of said street, who foots the bill and what kind of precedent to set for any future developers who similarly strand homeowners.

Among the options:

1. Build a street on the taxpayers' dime.

1.A. Build a street and follow the city's own connectivity rules and connect the new street to the rest of Wright Avenue. That will cost more, because it involves crossing a creek. This is the option the homeowners prefer, although it will destroy the trees and shrubs separating their property from the adjacent Charlotte Swim & Racquet Club surface parking lot.

1B. Build a street but make like a developer and jettison connectivity in order to save money, and thus build a cul-de-sac instead of crossing the creek. Again, the green buffer vanishes.

2. Enlarge the alley behind the homes to allow emergency vehicles access.

3. Build a sidewalk in front of the houses so the residents can walk to the corner of Lomax Avenue and leave the area in front of them green, like a small park. This is the option the swim club prefers.

No decisions were made. But council member Nancy Carter suggested an inexpensive step to help with the problem of police not being able to find the part of Wright Avenue that doesn't exist, or if it gets built, that doesn't connect to the rest of Wright Avenue: Consider renaming that part of the street.

Upon which, council member Susan Burgess muttered, "What about 'Wrong Avenue'?"

Politics and East Charlotte

Several things were clear at the candidates' forum in East Charlotte on Tuesday night:

• Most of the candidates, Democrat and Republican alike, had figured out the P.C. answers for this crowd, for instance, "I support the streetcar."

• Democracy is thriving in the City Council races: 15 candidates (seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one Libertarian) are running for four at-large council seats. In three council districts (1, 2 and 5) Democratic incumbents have Democratic challengers.

• Few candidates were willing (or knowledgeable enough?) to offer truly specific proposals on such issues as how you'd bring more economic development to the area.

The forum Tuesday included all the at-large candidates except Republican Jerry Drye, and all the candidates for districts 1, 4, and 5 except District 4 candidate Gail Helms, a Republican.

Because of the huge line-up of at-large candidates, the format didn't allow much time for extensive answers, which in many ways was a blessing, though it left the audience with precious few specifics from candidates – not that many candidates typically offer them anyway.

Here's a brief rundown:

• All but Libertarian at-large candidate Travis Wheat said they supported a proposed building code ordinance for nonresidential buildings.

• None supported the idea of requiring affordable housing in all developments as a way to ensure that it's spread throughout the city. We have too much "affordable" housing already seemed to be the general sentiment.

• Everyone supported the proposed streetcar from Beatties Ford Road to Eastland Mall except Wheat, Bob Williams (D), Darrin Rankin (D), Craig Nannini (R) and Matthew Ridenhour (R).

• The proposed city landlord registry drew mixed responses with several candidates – Dave Howard (D), Edwin Peacock (R) and Jaye Rao (R) – saying "yes but with some work." Others favored it except for Nannini, Rankin, Ridenhour and Wheat.

• The most fireworks came not from candidates but from the heavens. A torrential thunderstorm briefly knocked out the lights in the Hickory Grove Recreation Center, drawing more gasps from the crowd than any of the politicans' remarks.

• Best slogan: Jaye Rao, trying to help people pronounce her name correctly (It rhymes with pow): "Vote now for Rao – like, wow!"

• Best schtick: Craig Nannini holding up a photo of his newborn son, who's now 11 weeks old, as a way to talk about what's important.

Update on majestic (or not) train station

In last night's post I noted a friend's complaint about upkeep at Charlotte's Amtrak station on North Tryon Street, but I wasn't sure who was responsible for maintenance. Got this response at 5:19 a.m. from Patrick Simmons, head of the N.C. Department of Transportation's Rail division:

Norfolk Southern owns the station and Amtrak is the responsible tenant. ... Thank you for sharing the rider/reader report. By copy of this e-mail I will pass it along to our Amtrak contacts and ask that they address the issues promptly. ... Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

And here's a note of clarification: The photo I used was of the historic old Seaboard Coast Line station. It's on North Tryon Street but closer to uptown than the not-so-majestic Amtrak building we now must use. I couldn't find an Observer file photo showing the current Amtrak station, which is not what you'd call photogenic. The historic old station is now used by the Urban Ministry Center.

I intended for the photo of the historic station to refer to the link I posted to an article about majestic train stations all over the country, many of them demolished years ago, like Charlotte's Southern Railway station on West Trade Street. I have a drawing over my desk from the late Jack Boyte depicting the old Southern terminal. I couldn't find a usable photo of it, either.

The majestic (or not) train station

A Raleigh friend called me the other day to tell about his experience driving to Charlotte recently to pick up a friend arriving on Amtrak from the south. The train, if it's on time, arrives here at 1:38 a.m. He was dismayed at the poor upkeep at the Amtrak station on North Tryon street.

(Above: Historic Seaboard station on North College, now owned by the Urban Ministry Center.)

He reports: Both the TVs on the wall in the waiting room were broken. (How hard is it, he asks, to get on a ladder and remove a broken TV?) There's a big sign, he said, but it wasn't lit. And there was no lighting in the parking lot. "I was just amazed," he reports. After all, it's a place hundreds of people go through every week. And given the schedule for the Crescent train (southbound arrives at 2:20 a.m. daily, northbound at 1:38 a.m.) that people will be arriving in the middle of the night.

Since it's after 5, I've not been able to ascertain who owns and operates the station, whether the N.C. DOT's rail division, or Amtrak, although I suspect it's NCDOT. I've e-mailed Patrick Simmons of the N.C. DOT rail division and will update this tomorrow when I hear back from him.

This observation about the bleak conditions at Charlotte's train station coincides with a recent piece in the Economist about the great passenger rail stations of the past – many of them, like Charlotte's, demolished in the last half of the 20th century. Follow the link to read it.

It's in the works for the state to build a new train station on West Trade Street uptown, near Johnson & Wales University, to be used by Amtrak and the proposed commuter rail to north Mecklenburg. Maybe the new station will be more like the grand terminals of old, and less like the squat, dilapidated Amtrak station we've had to use for almost 50 years now.

Interesting candidate forum last night in East Charlotte. I'll offer more thoughts tomorrow, when there's more time to write.

Is it Smart Growth or something else?

What does the term "Smart Growth" mean to you? It's one of those terms whose original meaning has been washed away under a deluge of rhetoric, obfuscation, bureaucratic co-option and developer-marketing brochures.

Two things reminded me of what we ought to be thinking about, if we're trying to grow in a smart way in this region.

Today, I ran across this article (link) from David Crossley of Houston Tomorrow about a Texas Smart Growth bill that Gov. Rick Perry vetoed. Crossley writes that Perry (and many large developers) prefer the status quo of land speculation and intense government subsidies of sprawl development. It's an interesting look at how another fast-growing Sun Belt state is dealing (or not dealing with) with its challenges.

That piggybacked on a discussion yesterday with Rebecca Yarbrough of the regional CONNECT effort (in which two Charlotte area Councils of Government and the Charlotte Regional Partnership are working on regional growth/environment initiatives). She was trying to describe what happens when incremental growth decisions add up to a larger, more costly future.
Imagine a Farmer Jones, she said. He's getting old and decides not to farm anymore. So he starts selling off his land, piecemeal, to developers. After all, his land is his version of a pension or a 401(k) – his retirement fund. He's perfectly free to make these decisions, of course. We all make decisions like that.

But as his land is developed over time into several subdivisions, those decisions have significant impacts on the taxpayers of his county. That's because government services to suburban subdivisions typically cost more than the government recoups in taxes. (Numerous studies bear this out, although obviously it isn't universally true. Very expensive or very dense mixed-use subdivisions would show different results.) The subdivisions also cost more than the services typically provided to farmland. So Farmer Jones' private and understandable decisions about retirement eventually add significant costs to his county government – and his county's taxpayers.

A smart county trying to make smart decisions about its growth would recognize that it needs to help the Farmer Joneses AND make growth decisions with more forethought than simply reacting to the ad hoc results of disconnected private decisions. That the challenge that many metro regions face.

'Spoofer' hits homer with flea market pitch

"The Spoofer" maybe meant it tongue-in-cheek, but it's a great idea:

One of the comments on the "Recreating Rome" posting, (scroll down to after 11 PM July 6) about how to enliven the Fourth Street-Graham Street-West Trade Street vicinity uptown, came from someone calling herself/himself "The Spoofer," who said:

"The solution is rather simple: Get city council to declare that area a 24/7 flea market and yard sale mecca. Citizens should be told that the space around those streets would be available for free on a first-come, first-served basis. Residents would be allowed to bring their own card tables any time they wish, and sell all that junk that Charlotteans spend most Saturdays driving from neighborhood to neighborhood to buy. Voila! Instant retail in center city without spending millions of taxpayer monies to alter infrastructure or to subsidize businesses.
It could turn into another Anderson Jockey Lot, only bigger. And talk about activity! There’s nothing more active than a gigantic city yard sale district. Tourists would flock there for bargains.

"Those pocketing cash at the end of the day from their efforts would no doubt spend part of it on uptown attractions or dining, further boosting center cityism. The only drawback would be the futility of trying to impose a system of sales or use tax on the vendors so that government could grow bigger from the proceeds. Gee, maybe that’s not a drawback after all."

I think it's a fabulous idea. Michael Smith (CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners) , I hope you're reading. It's akin to architect Murray Whisnant's idea a few years back (in the pre-EpiCentre era) to take the old civic center building, knock out its side walls and turn it into "the agora" – a farmers and flea market for anyone who wanted to sell there.

Seriously, small-scale retail begets larger-scale retail. And I'd love it if I didn't have to drive all the way up to the Metrolina Expo for a good flea-market experience.

Kudos to The Spoofer. (But your idea to flood uptown – see comment at 8:36 PM – for a lake is somewhat less workable, dontcha think?)

Less highway, less congestion – no, really

Uptown thinking, Part 2:

Some counterintuitive thinking comes in this blog item (link) about three cities (Seoul, South Korea; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.) that tore down four mid-century freeways and found congestion didn't get worse.

I've heard one highly placed uptown executive muse privately about the prospect of tearing down the Interstate 277 loop that encircles (and isolates) uptown Charlotte and replacing it with a boulevard. I think it's a great – albeit very expensive – idea. (And of course you'd recycle the concrete.) Maybe it's a public-private partnership kind of proposition, as it would create more on-the-tax-rolls land for development. Witness the city/state deal reconfiguring the Brevard Street/I-277 interchange into a smaller ROW footprint and selling the land to private owners. A smaller I-277 footprint puts land back on the tax rolls. Just as important it removes those vastly overbuilt, Robert-Moses-woulda-loved-'em interchanges, designed for the middle of farmland, from the heart of the city's most pricey real estate.

If you agree, please make sure the idea emerges during the upcoming Center City 2020 Plan process. After all, it was a remark at a Center City 2010 public workshop by the late Dave Ritch – picked up and championed by then-City Council member Lynn Wheeler among others – that led to the uncapping of Little Sugar Creek and the greenway along Kings Drive. Ideas with champions really do make a difference sometimes.

Uptown thinking, Part 1 is yesterday's item (link) about Rome, the Pantheon, and Charlotte.

Recreating Rome in uptown Charlotte

This month's Civic By Design discussion will be an exercise in imagining how to enliven a dead zone. Last summer, the zone was the intersection of Kings Drive and Morehead Street. This month is the "seas of asphalt of our Center City around West Trade Street, Fourth Street, and Graham Street." Click here for a Google maps/street view – and you'll see why it's an appropriate spot to re-imagine.

I want to throw this topic open for discussion early, because I want to throw out an idea into the mix of ideas people inevitably will have. Last summer, as groups of people sat around tables with big maps of the Kings-Morehead area and little photos of buildings that we were supposed to arrange, it became obvious this was an exercise less of imagination than of fantasy. Further, it was a demonstration of how what people say they want sometimes is exactly what they shouldn't want.

Everyone always suggests that what is needed is a park and open space. Well, OK. But parks and open space aren't what make the Pantheon piazza so wonderful. If you think they will enliven uptown Charlotte here in 2009, you aren't paying attention to what's really on the ground in uptown.

What makes the Pantheon section of Rome wonderful are, of course, the magnificent Pantheon itself, and the art in the churches nearby, but more than that, it's the buildings and activities that surround the piazza and its fountain (with drinkable water – that might be a start!). A big stone piazza holding a fountain but with nothing around it would be about as lively as a parking lot with a fountain in the center.

Uptown Charlotte is dying from too much open space – in the form of parking lots and large corporate plazas and small corporate plazas and fountains out the wazoo. What do we need? Stores. On the street. Good old-fashioned window-shopping-inducing retail. And many of the retail spaces in most of the uptown buildings built since 1960 – what's the technical term? – suck.

Retail likes to be around other retail. (Note shopping malls. Note downtown Asheville, and Boston's Newbury Street and Madison Avenue and Strøget in Copenhagen.) Uptown is full of large projects (courthouses, government center, Federal Reserve, arena, stadium, convention center, transportation center, performing arts center, multiple churches, and office towers all in a relatively small area). Because they are large and typically dead along the sidewalks, they kill their area for retail. The retail space that remains is fragmented, and the bulk of it is invisible from the street.

It will be hard to spark retail synergy. So that's the major challenge for uptown Charlotte, and for enlivening any area, including the incredible dead zone we'll be looking at next Tuesday night.

While the Pantheon is probably my favorite building in all the world, I don't think we ought to put one uptown. At least, not in today's uptown. What we ought to import, instead, is the Caffe Tazza d'Oro, the Giolitti and Della Palma gelaterias, the caffe Sant'Eustachio, the arts supply shops, antique furniture shops, grocery stores, shoe stores, purse stores, jewelry stores and fashion boutiques that make up the Pantheon neighborhood.

Have your say:

Civic by Design: 5:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesday July 14, at the Levine Museum of the New South. If you RSVP by Friday to brenda@dpz.com you can have gelato – alas, not from Rome.

A farmer considers freedom

I wasn't planning to write anything today – holiday and all, plus I wrote a column earlier on Beazer Homes – but my farmer friend Maria Fisher of Fisher Farms (the BEST tomatoes at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market) wrote a sparkling and moving essay about freedom and honor and stewardship of the land that is worth sharing. Happy Independence Day to all:

On the forth the blackberries are ripe, the tomatoes start to come in and for a day we go to the local fair and spend more money than I want to on short rides and sickening food.

September 12th, 2001 I went to the local t-shirt place and begged them for a flag - they were sold out and did not want to give me the one they had promised to someone else. I cried. I had lost a client in the Pentagon and was so sad that I had not taken time before to honor our country and that I had never said a proper thank you to a servicemen. They sold me the flag.

When I was teaching I had it hanging in my classroom. It is a HUGE flag. I have no place to hang it on my house - I have a little house. I will probably give it to my neighbor - she has a pole to hang it on. I will like to look at it while I am harvesting tomatoes.

We are funny about our country - no one is going to tell us what to do - we have to figure it out, figure it out, figure it out again. We have the right to PURSUE happiness - obviously, it is trite to remind anyone that we are not ENTITLED to it. We have an amazing government that most of us completely neglect at the local level and when things get out of hand - we still have the right to try to correct it and figure it out once again.

I heard the son of a farmer from another country tell me in person about their large production and how after 20 years of large production, crops went down. There was no cure and now today - there are not even birds and the land is used up. He was in his fifties when he told me this. Silent springs for the last 15 years. We as farmers, as caretakers of the land, working as much as anyone else, trying to "make it" - still need to be mindful that for all the freedom we are granted to pursue our happiness, that we are not entitled to it and that the land requires good care regardless and foremost before all else. If we as a nation continue to devalue each other and are left devaluing others - care of the land will most likely fall to the wayside and we will create silent springs. Bottom line.

Pursue wisely. Value now. Remember to THINK. OK - no more soap box - go find some fair and try not to eat too much. Happy Independence Day.

West Va. an environmental leader?

At least, that's what I'm hearing. The state of West Virginia has adopted a set of Smart Growth-oriented storm water rules. Here's a link.

Lynn Richards of the EPA's Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation Smart Growth Program said in an e-mail that was forwarded to me, "This is really big news!"

Those readers with more expertise than I in such matters, please weigh in on what you see – good rules? unenforceable rules?

It appears part of a kind of underground movement to try to bring 21st-century and urban-oriented thinking to the unavoidable subject of storm water runoff and by extension, civil engineering.

Detention ponds and the BMPs (Best Management Practices) of the 20th century are generally anti-urban in their design. How do you marry good urban design with strong measures to prevent the water pollution caused by rain water than drains off pavement and fertilizer-laden lawns? Tom Low and his DPZ and other New Urbanist-oriented colleagues are making headway with their "Light Imprint" initiative.

Sane planning? Not for transportation

BRIDGEWATER, N.H. – Gather a bunch of people interested in urban regions – as opposed to just cities – and it's only a matter of minutes before the acronym MPO comes up, and the grumbling starts.

MPO means Metropolitan Planning Organization, and it's a federally mandated way to plan "transportation" "regionally."

Those quote marks are intentional.

To too many MPOs, "transportation" means only roads, and of the highway genre, not of the city street genre and certainly not transit or pedestrian or bicycle paths.
And for an alarming number of MPOs, including in the Charlotte region, the "regional" part is a farce. The metro area most people recognize as the Charlotte metro region is home to four separate MPOs, or five, depending on how you count. So transportation planning here is completely fragmented – and Charlotte gets shorted when dollars are divvied.

Further, the Mecklenburg-Union MPO, affectionately known as MUMPO, rates about a 3 on a scale of 10, if 10 is to be completely multimodal in focus, and 1 is all-roads-all-the-time.

At a conference among members of the Citistates Group's associates – an association of writers, thinkers, practitioners and government officials who share an interest in metro regions – I heard several MPO horror stories. Consider: In San Jose's region, the largest city in the region (San Jose) in effect has no voting representative on its MPO.

But here's what Tom Downs (former New Jersey transportation commissioner, former CEO of Amtrak, among other things) suggested: Too many MPOs are in violation of Title 23 of the U.S. Code (here's a Wikipedia link), particularly the part that says the MPO should cover the whole metro area:

"Each metropolitan planning area —
(A) shall encompass at least the existing urbanized area and the contiguous area expected to become urbanized within a 20-year forecast period for the transportation plan; and may encompass the entire metropolitan statistical area or consolidated metropolitan statistical area, as defined by the Bureau of the Census."

Ahem. Mecklenburg and Union counties are most decidedly not "the contiguous area expected to become urbanized within a 20-year forecast period for the transportation plan. " Can you say, "Cabarrus County" or "Mooresville" or "Belmont-Gastonia-Mount Holly" or "Rock Hill-Fort Mill"?

What is to be done? Downs noted that the law has a process for decertifying an MPO that isn't following the code. That's a big hammer to use.

The multiple MPOs and RPOs (R as in rural) in this region – MUMPO plus Gastonia, Cabarrus-Rowan, Greater Hickory and Rock Hill-Fort Mill, S.C., MPOs and the Lake Norman and Rocky River RPOs – have not tried to consolidate, although any rational person can see that's what should happen. Is it time for the hammer?

Don't cry, I'll be back

Just an alert for whatever faithful readers are out there: I'm working on several other in-house duties this week and next and won't be posting to Naked City as often as usual. You may now begin your lamentations or celebrations accordingly.

Look for more regular Naked City blogging starting the first week in July.

Stumpf to Chamber: Banks 'don't build buildings'

This will be news to retired BofA CEO Hugh McColl, and his multiple lieutenants:

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf (left, in file photo), speaking to the Charlotte Chamber's kickoff breakfast for its inter-city visit described the role of banks. "We don't build buildings," he said. " ... We listen to dreams." (His point, to be fair, is that banks finance what others do.) But in the QC, of course, we believe that banks do build buildings, and lots of them. Indeed, the breakfast was taking place on the 40th floor of a building that a predecessor of Stumpf's bank (First Union) built. (Technically, I suppose, Childress Klein built it.)

McColl is to speak today at a Chamber lunch, on "Vision for Center City." I expect he'll mention a few buildings that banks have built around here.

Stumpf again, talking about TARP: "It was not a bailout." Hmmmm.

Interesting tidbit: Stumpf says he grew up on a farm in northern Minnesota, one of 11 children. UPDATE 11:03 a.m.: Our own Observer Minnesotan, cartoonist Kevin Siers, says "Uff da!" His Google research turns up a hometown of Pierz, in Morrison County, in central Minnesota. I told him to the rest of the U.S. anything north of the Twin Cities is Northern Minnesota.

Spotted on Realtor Allen Tate's lapel: A green sticker with a circle around an I-485 logo, saying "CLOSE THE LOOP." Who wants to bet I'll see more of those?

UPDATE: 11:05 AM: Want to see Jim Rogers on the Colbert Report: Here's a link.

More later. Follow Tweets about the trip @nakedcityblog and at hashtag: #icv09

Chamber: Don't blame us for Overstreet

Charlotte Chamber president Bob Morgan, on the eve of the Chamber's annual intercity trip (this year to – ta da! – Charlotte) called to report that an oft-repeated story that uptown's overstreet walkways emerged from a Chamber inter-visit to Minneapolis is, well, wrong.

Morgan said he, too, had repeated that story. But (because of a question from yours truly seeking other examples of Chamber-trip-inspired developments) he hauled out the entire list of Chamber intercity visits dating to 1956. The only Minneapolis trip was in 1993, two decades after the first overstreet walkway went up.

Photo: Skywalk under construction in 2001 photo

Why "blame" in that headline I wrote? (It's my word, not the Chamber's.) I'm among many who criticize the walkways for hurting the possiblities for uptown retail. They make it hard to find the stores, unless you know they're in there. And they make the street-level experience blander, because you can't window-shop because the stores are hidden. I'll be fair, now, and note that in cold, rainy weather they're very popular. Yes, I use them too, upon occasion, typically the "ice storm" occasion.

I dug into our electronic archives which date to 1985 and found a painful number of references – some written by me, others by esteemed Observer reporters such as Doug Smith, Jeff Elder and M.S. Van Hecke – to this mythological, walkway-inspiring Chamber trip to Minneapolis.

Morgan speculated that the walkways were inspired by Minneapolis, but not on an official Chamber inter-city visit.

He may well be right. Here's the earliest mention of them I found. (No, I didn't take time to visit our newsprint clips, fun though such visits can be.) This was written in a 1986 news article by Ted Mellnik who, then as well as now, is noted in our newsroom for his reportorial precision: "The Overstreet Mall was proposed in a 1971 center-city development plan by Vincent Ponte, who said it would create 'a city within a city.' Development was spurred in the mid-1970s when a group of Charlotte business and civic leaders visited Minneapolis, which has a walkway system."

Update: 6:45 p.m.: Got an e-mail from Carl Johnson who offers this info: "Mary, my recollection is the Gibson L. Smith, real estate man and civic leader (on council, I think, and ran for mayor but lost) deserves a lot of credit as a promoter (I say that in the neutral sense) for the overstreet walkways. Carl Johnson"

(I'll be going on as much of this week's Chamber "visit" as I can manage away from the job. So blog postings may be sparse. I'll try to Tweet @marynewsom or @nakedcityblog. The Chamber is asking all Twitter-users to use this hashtag: #icv09.)

My picks for best places to stand in Charlotte

I asked your opinions - and thanks for sharing, everyone - but didn't give mine.

Yesterday I pointed to a list (link here to blog, and here to list) about the best places to stand in the U.S. and asked about Charlotte spots. But I didn't include any of my own choices. These things require pondering, you know.

I concur with those who mentioned Queens Road and the cathedral of oaks, and the magnificent corner of Kingston and Lyndhurst avenues (see photo above) in Dilworth. Indeed, I spotlighted both places in a piece I wrote some years back about Great Streets in Charlotte. Brevard Court uptown was another in that series.

My favorite spots to stand in Charlotte (for today, at least) are listed below. Note, I'm including only inside the city limits, so Crowders Mountain is out, as well as various funky downtowns in other municipalities like Matthews or Davidson. And ask me tomorrow and I may have a completely different list. NoDa on a gallery crawl night is great. Looking out from the 60th floor of the BofA Corporate Center is great – but not open to the public.

Here's my list:

3. In line at Price's Chicken Coop (at left) just after you've bought a quarter-dark dinner (or chicken livers) with tater tots and the hot grease is just starting to soak through the cardboard box.

2. The vaulted passage way alongside The Green uptown – one of the best designed spaces in the city. It just makes you feel grand to walk down it. The fans overhead are a nice touch for a hot climate.

1. Inside the First Presbyterian Church sanctuary on the Sunday before Christmas, with the old burnished wood, the royal blue carpets and cushions, as the brass and timpani and cymbals play and everyone is singing "Joy To The World."

Where's best place to stand in CLT?

Stumbled on this list of the Best Places To Stand in the US.

Oddly, it doesn't mention the old abandoned Upton's near Eastland Mall (above), or anything along Independence Boulevard. Not even a peep about Dee-Dee Harris' lingering grass-covered crater at Park and Quail Hollow roads.

Or sights from the observation decks atop the bank towers uptown. Oops. There ARE no observation towers. It doesn't add anything in Charlotte. Hmmm. If only we'd taken the late cartoonist Doug Marlette's advice and at The Square uptown, instead of those insipid statues, installed the Eternal Barbecue Pit.

My two-cents-worth: The list needs more attention to the North Carolina treasures. Cape Hatteras lighthouse comes in at No. 90. I'd rank it higher than – dare I say it? – Graceland. And definitely above the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, though I confess I haven't visited that one.

My favorite place to stand in North Carolina: Atop the Art Loeb Trail (the Tennant Mountain peak) near Shining Rock Wilderness, off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Brevard. If you want your heart to expand with gladness that you're alive, that would be the spot. Another fave is a view from a peak in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.

Homes built, but no street: Did city goof?

What do you do when the developer who built your house goes out of business before he builds the street your house is supposed to sit on?

A group of homeowners caught in this mess wants the city to help them get their street built. (It probably doesn't hurt their ability to get the city's attention that they've hired former Mayor Richard Vinroot to be their attorney.)

Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble gave City Council a briefing Monday night. Some of the homeowners were in the audience. The street was to be an extension of Wright Avenue, which now dead-ends at a creek. The houses are near the Lomax Avenue entrance to the Charlotte Swim & Racquet Club off Sharon-Amity Road. Seven houses are built and have been sold. They have an alley in back, and they can roll their garbage bins to Lomax Avenue. The folks living there say their addresses are on Wright Avenue (the phonebook confirms this), and that GPS shows the street having been built. That tends to confuse the police and FedEx. They worry about whether emergency services could find them quickly in the event of a fire, crime or health problem.

But because the subdivision was laid out before the city's subdivision ordinance was adopted, Kimble said, it didn't fall under the ordinance's rules, and the builder, Mick El-Massri, didn't have to put up a street bond – to ensure the street got built. Now, the developer has defaulted and may be facing bankruptcy, Kimble said. (Locust Lumber Co. now owns some of the unsold property, but a court records search finds dozens of civil suits but no bankruptcy filing for the developer.) The houses are built – and there's no street.

A second clump of houses by the same developer, Mick El-Massri, sits on another section of unbuilt Wright Avenue off the dead end of Delane. Lisa Hunter, who's lived in one of the streetless houses for almost three years, said the developer had told her he was going to use the money from selling two of those empty houses to finally build their street. But the city wouldn't issue a certificate of occupancy – because there was no street built.

I went for a look after the council meeting. The situation is, truly, a mess. Multiple property owners are affected. The city's street policies call for Wright Avenue to connect over the creek, which will drive up the cost of building it. But the homeowners prefer that to a dead end, they say.

"It was in our contract that the road would be built within a year," Stacey Searson said. She and her husband Tom have been there about 2 1/2 years. "We thought we were legally protected."

City officials said they'll look into the quickest way to get the street built, and into preventing this situation from happening again. Indeed. Here's the scary part: Kimble said there are little infill lots all over the city that might fall into this same Catch 22.

Developer to chair planning commission

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission on Monday elected developer Stephen Rosenburgh succeed Dave Howard as chair, starting July 1.

Rosenburgh – president and CEO of US Land Investments, which does work throughout the Southeast United States – grew up in Toronto and lived there until moving to Charlotte 16 years ago. His company Web site says he founded Jordan Homes, and some of his projects included Carrington, The Greens at Birkdale, Legend Oaks and Stonebridge. He has also been on the N.C. Banking Commission.

I called Rosenburgh to set up an interview but he demurred. He said he doesn't want to talk about chairing the planning commission until Howard's term ends, and until he's had a chance to talk to Planning Director Debra Campbell and until after he returns from an August vacation.

The planning commission is a 14-member advisory body which, among other things, recommends to the City Council whether to approve or reject rezoning proposals. It has a history of being developer-friendly: Of its current members, at least eight work in real estate, development or construction. That may change as new appointees are named, but for at least the past 15 years typically half or more of its members have made their livelihoods working in real estate and development.

Howard, who is running for City Council this fall, is vice president for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, a nonprofit group that develops affordable housing, sometimes in partnership with other developers.

Slack DOT care may worsen flooding

Since we're expecting heavy rain, what are the chances Charlotte's streets will flood? Pretty high, especially since a good many storm drains on our streets have been clogged with debris since the last heavy rain – or even longer.

The photo above is a drain on a city-maintained street near where I live. It has been clogged with debris for weeks (maybe months, I only noticed it after the recent flooding). Its inability to drain is one reason a nearby low spot on Wendover Road collects water during heavy rains, often putting a lane on Wendover under water. And the drains along Wendover itself are, if anything, even more clogged.

I asked Charlotte DOT director Danny Pleasant recently about the clogged drains. He said his department clears them and to report clogged drains on the city's 311 phone line. (I confess I haven't called 311 about the drain in the photo; I wanted to see if it would get cleaned anyhow. It hasn't.) Update: I got a call about 4 p.m. from the city's solid waste services department. It cleans the tops of drains, and CDOT cleans the underneath and the catch basins. I suspect the drain in the photo above will be cleaned by tomorrow morning. We'll see.

But Wendover, Pleasant said, is state-"maintained" (quote marks mine). I wonder how many years it has been since the state has cleaned Wendover or its drains.

Note this photo of dirt in the Wendover gutters. The dirt is so deep the weeds are, in some spots, knee high. The state's road maintenance efforts are, well, the best word is slovenly. Is it this bad in other N.C. cities? Readers in Asheville, Greensboro, Raleigh, etc., are state-maintained roads in your city similarly clogged with years of dirt and debris?

I will note, however, that homeowners who aren't keen on flooded streets could always clean the storm drains in front of their houses and dig the dirt from the gutters.

Where does the dirt come from? Some of it's yard-care debris that's blown into the street (How about telling your landscapers to stop that?) and some is from construction sites, where contractors break the erosion laws and let soil run off into streets and creeks – the largest cause of water pollution. The gutter near the storm drain in the photo above is 3 inches deep in sandy sedimentation from two construction sites up the hill.