tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90476716658549596142024-03-14T00:37:30.366-04:00The Naked City BlogCities are amazing, and amazingly complicated. I explore what it all means.Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comBlogger248125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-33465546343380093542021-06-28T16:57:00.020-04:002021-06-28T17:00:26.774-04:0040 years that built today's Charlotte<p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CW64q4ktt7o/YNo2vdURrzI/AAAAAAAADGM/dMCVFPaKKkYSgsOXdC7tBkstkb-eClDowCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Drum%2Band%2BBugle%2BCorps%2Bcopy.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1644" data-original-width="2048" height="514" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CW64q4ktt7o/YNo2vdURrzI/AAAAAAAADGM/dMCVFPaKKkYSgsOXdC7tBkstkb-eClDowCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h514/Drum%2Band%2BBugle%2BCorps%2Bcopy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The early 20th century's "Watch Charlotte Grow" Drum and Bugle Corps. Because Charlotte always wants to grow. Photo courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">At 9 a.m.Tuesday, I’ll be on a panel of four long-time Charlotteans </span><span style="font-size: medium;">on NPR station WFAE 90.7, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">discussing what Big Things have influenced Charlotte in the past 40 years. It’s part of WFAE</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s celebrating its 40th anniversary. <a href="https://www.wfae.org/community-calendar/event/wfaes-40th-anniversary-celebration\" target="_blank">Learn more here</a>. I hope you can listen in, or better yet join us in person.<br /><br />My fellow panelists – historian Tom Hanchett, documentary filmmaker Steve Crump, WCNC’s Larry Sprinkle – and I aren’t likely to agree, which should be part of the fun. But since I had to reflect and ponder anyway, here’s what I listed as the most significant things shaping Charlotte since 1981. Note: To me this did not mean the biggest news stories, such as the DNC or the Jim Bakker televangelist expose for which the Charlotte Observer won a Pulitzer. I went for things that seemed, in hindsight, to have been essential in shaping the city we live in today. Here are my Top 10. They</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’re</span> in NO priority order, lest someone start quibbling that one was more significant than another.<br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Harvey Gantt elected the city’s first Black mayor in 1983</b>. I admire Gantt for all he’s contributed over the years, but I don’t know that he had more influence than any other mayor. Nevertheless this was a significant milestone for the city’s racial atmosphere and hugely significant in shaping the city’s image as, well, not as racist as a lot of other places in the South.<br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The 1989 merger of Piedmont Airlines with USAir</b>. This created a huge East Coast airline with a major hub in Charlotte. (Though I still miss the down-home customer service of Piedmont.) Ask business leaders and they’ll verify that the multiple flights in and out of Charlotte make this a very attractive place to start a business, grow a business, or relocate a business.<br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The 1996 launch of the historic Charlotte Trolley in 1996.</b> The nonprofit used historic Charlotte streetcar #85, rescued from a field in Huntersville and restored. It was run by volunteers along the tracks starting beside Atherton Mill, near what’s now Luna’s restaurant, ending at Morehead Street. This little fun run became a big demonstration project that people would ride rail transit, even when IT DIDN'T GO ANYWHERE. This, arguably, was the spark that lit the fire that eventually became today’s white hot development market in what’s now called South End.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><b>The 1998 transit tax referendum (and a 2007 re-vote).</b> Yeah, the tax doesn’t produce as much money as needed, everyone now agrees. But this was a major affirmation that Mecklenburg voters were willing to tax themselves to build mass transit. And of course<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: medium;">the Blue Line has it sparked major transit-oriented development. See previous item, re South End.<b> <br /></b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The influx of immigrants beginning in the 1980s into the 2010s.</b> This has changed the flavor of the city, broadening what had been a white-bread-and-steak-and-potatoes town, where a friend once joked that the only ethnic restaurant was the now-departed Athens all-night diner. Charlotte acquired international food, lively cultural nuances, and just got more interesting. Our new neighbors from other lands also changed the city's economics. We have mom-and-pop small groceries and pupuserias, taquerias, falafel and dim sum joints. The influx of young workers and their families has affected the city’s demographics: they kept the average age in Charlotte lower than many places. A less cheerful effect was that undocumented workers, fearful of being deported if they spoke up, could be more easily exploited, cheated of fair wages, and forced to work in unsafe situations. etc. <br /><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The 1999 ruling from federal Judge Bob Potter</b>. Potter, who years before had fought school desegregation, scrapped the 30-year-old federal court order that made CMS integrate its schools. So schools resegregated, and we are living with the results today.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><b>The UMUD uptown zoning (late 1980s? I’m still trying to verify this).</b> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“</span>Zoning,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span> you say? </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“</span>Ugh.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span> Hear me out. In an era of strictly suburban-style zoning, barely out of the Urban Renewal era, Charlotte adopted uptown zoning that was remarkably permissive. As businesses were deciding they should leave the center city, the city wanted to make life easy for those that wanted to be uptown. It adopted the Urban Mixed Use District zoning. You could build as high as the FAA would let you as long as your building didn’t get in the way of airplanes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I think this permissive zoning, beloved by both Charlotte Center City Partners and its predecessor, the Charlotte Uptown Development Corp., may have been as significant, if not more so, than the various banker CEOs building office towers. Here’s why: Yes, it made it more attractive for businesses that might have been on the brink of moving to the </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>burbs. But it meant every scrap of dirt was already zoned for a skyscraper. Property owners, a.k.a. land speculators, all wanted to think their piece of dirt would host the next office tower, so they tore down any older buildings they owned and built surface parking lots to get some income. It also put huge upward pressure on land values. UMUD zoning is a key reason uptown Charlotte lost its sense of the past, the physical reminders of memory and meaning.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And it’s a major reason uptown has little affordable housing beyond what was in pre-existing Housing Authority developments. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">By automatically giving every piece of property virtually unlimited development rights, there’s no way to offer incentives for things you’d want uptown, such as ... affordable housing. Or parks, or other public-spirited amenities. When you already have a truckload of carrots, offering a </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“</span>carrot</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span> is no incentive.<br /><br /><b> </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The 2010 election that flipped the state legislature to all Republican</b>. (Note to non-policy-wonks: In N.C., cities can’t do anything the state legislature hasn’t given them permission to do.) These weren</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>t old-school, get-it-done, bipartisan-when-needed Republicans like Jim Martin, but Tea Partiers who began demonstrating their dislike of mass transit (eventually whacking virtually all state funding for transit systems) and general hostility toward cities. This has had huge repercussions in many N.C. cities, including Charlotte. A few examples: the attempt to take Charlotte airport operations away from the city; gutting the state</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s liberal annexation law; undermining public education by giving public money to private schools and expanding charter schools; and the infamous HB2, a.k.a. the “bathroom bill.” And it means there’s no hope of mandatory zoning laws requiring a percentage of developments be affordable housing, or other tools used in other states. I could go on but I’ll stop.<br /><br /><b>Pro sports.</b> NBA. NFL. Charlotte became </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“</span></span>big league</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span></span> just like Oklahoma City, Jacksonville and Indianapolis, etc. Seriously, it</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s an image thing but to many people that image matters.<br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The Great Recession of 2007-2010</b>. It hit Charlotte harder than many places, since a massive part of our economy is based on real estate and development, not to mention mortgage banking. It wiped out a lot of wealth among first-time home-buyers, many of them people of color, who lost their homes to foreclosure. It distorted the development market because for about half of the 2010s, about all developers could get financing for was multifamily. And now we have gazillions of starter home subdivisions that have turned into rental properties.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">No, I haven</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’t mentioned the pandemic. We don</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’t know yet what its effects will be. Reading this over, I should have had an item about Charlotte</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s disinclination to rein in sprawl. To be fair most U.S. cities have not been successful at this. Charlotte basically didn</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>t even try.<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-27763240223367895712021-06-17T22:10:00.000-04:002021-06-17T22:10:08.176-04:00With Price’s closing, South End loses the last vestige from before “South End”<p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jq1KB8tBX-g/YMv9n2b5L2I/AAAAAAAADFk/hxejCmtV_cImJVmwWyNVfjpO5XtWiqz4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Prices%2Bline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jq1KB8tBX-g/YMv9n2b5L2I/AAAAAAAADFk/hxejCmtV_cImJVmwWyNVfjpO5XtWiqz4QCLcBGAsYHQ/w480-h640/Prices%2Bline.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>I took this photo Thursday, after an hour in line waiting to get into the soon-to-close Price’s Chicken Coop. Almost another hour went by before I got to order.</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iIUg1AF38O0/YMv8S9uGXnI/AAAAAAAADFc/cBX_7lReT3QJyMUnDEM_6BBZLNKyOmHbACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Prices%2BBox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="401" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iIUg1AF38O0/YMv8S9uGXnI/AAAAAAAADFc/cBX_7lReT3QJyMUnDEM_6BBZLNKyOmHbACLcBGAsYHQ/w301-h401/Prices%2BBox.jpg" title="The familiar grease-stained cardboard box of chicken" width="301" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A grease-spotted takeout box, familiar to generations<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;">I stood in line two hours today to order chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, the iconic fried chicken takeout joint on Camden Road in South End that had <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/charlottefive/c5-food-drink/article252179403.html" target="_blank">just announced it will close </a>in two days, on Saturday.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">While I waited, all nostalgic with a bunch of mostly strangers, for that familiar grease-stained cardboard box and the amazingly tender Price’s fried chicken gizzards, my friend David Walters sent some emails reminiscing about the neighborhood where he had a studio for 26 years. He agreed to let me publish it.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And yes, I got gizzards and fried chicken livers, and a 1/2-chicken dinner (dark meat) to split with friends. It was, of course, delicious.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Price’s Chicken and Memories of “South End”</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">From David Walters:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The loss of Price’s Chicken Coop on Camden Road in Charlotte’s South End has brought forth an outpouring of regret for the passing of the “old South End.” This echoes a similar flood of emotion when the old Common Market location closed in 2016, just a few yards away from Price’s.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It was particularly striking, then and now, that the predominant feeling was one of angst that “South End wouldn’t be South End” any more. As someone who worked in an art studio for a number of years before that invented name and brand surfaced, I feel those emotions rather miss the point that Price’s was there long before South End was a twinkle in a developer’s eye.<br /><br />When my wife, painter Linda Luise Brown, and I moved into our studio on Camden Road in 1990 (where the large bulk of Dimension Fund Advisors now sits) the area was an urban wasteland, vacant sites, weeds, barbed wire, and corner drug deals. Just few small brick buildings bravely faced this bleak landscape, most notably the offices of <i>The Charlotte Post,</i> the city</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s African-American newspaper, the design and fabrication workshops of Gaines Brown Design, some artists</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span> studios (rented out by Gaines Brown at rates artists like us could afford), and two places to eat a few yards from our studio door: Price’s Chicken Coop and a little blue plate special place, the New Big Village (lamb on Thursdays!) run by an elderly Greek couple.<br /><br />For several years my wife and I made art in our Camden Road studio, surrounded by the detritus of urban neglect, venturing out only to eat either at Price’s Chicken or the New Big Village. Above our studio, a videographer lived illegally in a self-made bedsit in the old 1900s building. Back then, Charlotte zoning made it illegal to live in a “commercial” district. So everyone was very circumspect about this fledgling, guerrilla, mixed-use urbanism. But we needn’t have worried. No one came down south from uptown in those days, fearing crime and violence. So we were left on our own. <br /><br />But a series of individual initiatives the 1990s saw the emergence of what we call South End today.<br /><br />The Greek family eventually sold to Jennifer and Steve Justice, who started Phat Burrito (where Flower Child is now). Then Gaines Brown, who had cleverly assembled a lot of property that no one else considered valuable, sponsored a series of artist</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span> street fairs on Camden Road, and helped lead the effort to renovate an old, pre-war Charlotte streetcar #85. Volunteers crewed the streetcar and rolled it up and down the rusting tracks for a few hundred yards, pushing or pulling a small wheeled generator.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This historic forerunner of our light rail line became a tourist attraction, and combined with the art fairs, began to change the public perception of this former slum-like district.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, at the south end of Camden Road, local developer Tony Pressley renovated the old knitting mill buildings around the water tower and he, Terry Shook, and others got inspiration from a visit to Dallas’ “West End,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span> where old industrial buildings had been repurposed into an entertainment district, and the McKinney Street trolley was a tourist attraction. Charlotte’s trolley ran weekends for six years, carrying thousands, and building enthusiasm for the future light rail. Trolley service ended in 2002 to allow construction of the new light rail track.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Thus were the seeds of “South End” cast upon the cracked asphalt, and the new, invented district arose from the weeds.<br /><br />Price’s is truly the last functioning survivor of the old business district that served the Wilmore and Dilworth neighborhoods along Park Avenue in the block between Camden and South Boulevard. What is now “South End” was once a thriving industrial district between the residential neighborhoods of Dilworth and Wilmore before it fell into decay, with Park Avenue the retail spine connecting the two neighborhoods. Doug Smith, a retired Observer business writer who previously worked at the long-defunct Charlotte News, once told me how as a boy growing up in Wilmore in the early 1950s he and his family would shop daily and weekly along that one-block stretch of Park Avenue. It had everything they needed, a grocery store, a pharmacy and several local small businesses.<br /><br />That local lifestyle was not to last. Doug Smith explained how he and others were lured away by the glitzy delights of the new, ultra-modern Park Road Shopping Center (opened in 1956), just a few minutes away by car. White families moved away from Wilmore, the industries closed, and the once thriving connections between Wilmore, the Park Avenue commercial district and Dilworth decayed and slumbered for a generation.<br /><br />Linda and I fell victims to the inevitable displacement of urban gentrification, losing our studio in 2016 after 26 years. But we still have a studio in South End (now at C3 Lab on Distribution Street). After 31 years we are still in the </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>hood. The area is so different of course – unrecognizable is probably the best word – but we find it’s still a good place to work and create art.<br /><br />The main difference, other than the physical environment, is that now we appear to be the oldest folks around! But in many ways, those of us like Linda and I <br />who’ve spent decades in and around academia find these new battalions of artistic Millennials and Gen-Z-ers oddly comforting. We are simply used to being surrounded by young, creative minds. <br /><br />It is getting harder to keep up (and dodge the scooters!) but there’s still a lot of fun in trying. <br /></span></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-76546168757598951172021-05-09T10:01:00.004-04:002021-05-10T07:30:02.258-04:00Bulldozers and the failure – or success – of imagination <p style="text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4i5a3ilvmW4/YJfYSd2WAhI/AAAAAAAADCE/EteK1zWWox4QgGd4Y0-sQaZXxeSVKjROQCLcBGAsYHQ/s635/Scranton%2BMasonic%2BTemple%2B-%2Bwide%2Bangle%2Bcrop.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="635" height="437" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4i5a3ilvmW4/YJfYSd2WAhI/AAAAAAAADCE/EteK1zWWox4QgGd4Y0-sQaZXxeSVKjROQCLcBGAsYHQ/w660-h437/Scranton%2BMasonic%2BTemple%2B-%2Bwide%2Bangle%2Bcrop.jpeg" width="660" /></a></td></tr><tr align="center"><td class="tr-caption"><i><span style="font-size: small;"> The 1930s Masonic Temple in downtown Scranton, Pa., is now the city's Cultural Center. Apologies that the photo doesn’t do the building justice (thank you, electric wires).</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">SCRANTON, Pa. – I’ll get to why I'm in Scranton a bit later. I went for a Saturday morning stroll around downtown Scranton on a cloudy, temps-in-the-’40s day. Headline for those unfamiliar with northeast Pennsylvania: Scranton is not a booming Sun Belt city. One clue among many: There is an <a href="http://www.anthracitemuseum.org/visit/" target="_blank">Anthracite Heritage Museum</a> here. The city’s population is about 77,000, down from a peak of 143,000 in 1930. The surrounding Lackawanna County has also lost population, from 310,000 in 1930 to about 210,000.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SF2V_FVvZsc/YJdFCnidj8I/AAAAAAAADB0/dr4fXY8W9mAal4HDk7z0QxMfC1Hh7jwrwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Scranton%2B-%2BMasonic%2BTemple.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="482" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SF2V_FVvZsc/YJdFCnidj8I/AAAAAAAADB0/dr4fXY8W9mAal4HDk7z0QxMfC1Hh7jwrwCLcBGAsYHQ/w362-h482/Scranton%2B-%2BMasonic%2BTemple.jpg" width="362" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Probably not coincidentally, 1930 was the year the Masonic Temple and Scottish Rite Cathedral was built a couple of blocks from the large courthouse square in downtown Scranton. (<a href="https://www.scrantonculturalcenter.org/index.php/general-info/" target="_blank">More history here</a>. The architect Raymond Hood, was one of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rockefeller-Center" target="_blank">Rockefeller Center architects</a>.) I spotted it as I walked past and was struck by the different fates of Scranton’s Masonic Temple versus Charlotte’s. Today, Scranton's Masonic Temple is a well-used Cultural Center. <br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Charlotte</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’</span></span>s Masonic Temple was built in 1913 – designed by architect C.C. Hook, whose works, while nowhere near as famous as Rockefeller Center, were well known and admired locally, including the old City Hall on East Trade Street and the Duke Mansion in the heart of Myers Park. But even though it was a local historic landmark, the temple was not preserved and turned into a valuable community space.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Charlotte's Masonic Temple met the fate of so many of the older buildings filled with memory and character in uptown Charlotte. It was demolished for a development project. To be specific, the bank known then as First Union (subsequently known as Wachovia and now Wells Fargo) and its real estate division decided it needed a fancy plaza in front of a vast, shopping mall-esque atrium on South Tryon Street. So they tore down the Masonic Temple and built a green metal kiosk in its place. For a time it held a sort of Chick-Fil-A outpost. It's an appropriate metaphor for the imagination skills of a bank partnering with an office tower developer in the 1980s: thinking a national franchise fast-food joint is a better use of uptown space than a building that could have another century or so of useful community life. For instance, a cultural center. Or maybe, as the town of Shelby did with its Masonic Temple, renovate the building to become residences overlooking their uptown square.<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ay5SKo7Zcqs/YJffcVM_fkI/AAAAAAAADCM/-fyd49VbGhIjE8PlnwJxwIWAfoiAbCS5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s401/Scranton%2B-%2BCLT%2BMasonic%2BTemple%2Bcrop.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="308" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ay5SKo7Zcqs/YJffcVM_fkI/AAAAAAAADCM/-fyd49VbGhIjE8PlnwJxwIWAfoiAbCS5gCLcBGAsYHQ/w308-h400/Scranton%2B-%2BCLT%2BMasonic%2BTemple%2Bcrop.jpg" width="308" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course the demolition proposal drew protests from many, but local protests are no match when millions of dollars in development profit are on the table. In hindsight, the loss of that preservation battle pretty much told office tower developers they had carte blanche to demolish any old building in the way of mega-developments. So they did. The columns were hauled off to the neaaarby small city of Rock Hill to become welcoming totems to the city. (Not my faavorite idea but still a bit of aa thumb in the eye to its larger neighbor to the north.<br /></span></span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Like the temple, the Chick-Fil-A is gone and now you see just a sort of small, useless green structure. To the right is </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">a postcard photo of the old temple, courtesy of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s website. Below is </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">a Google Street View image (2018) of what replaced it. The larger lesson – to my observation barely half-learned (and that</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’s generous estimate)</span></span> by Charlotte</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’s development and regulatory powers – is that when haste to build whatever is the architect-planner-developer fad of the moment means demolishing of older buildings, opportunities are lost.</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZsnrhPHwUU/YJfgeC3xaDI/AAAAAAAADCU/HMe6Wp6GNGsgGCxDk4IFCGUMATvLehNpACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Scranton-Masonic%2BTemple%2Bsite%2Bin%2BCLT.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1343" data-original-width="2048" height="427" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZsnrhPHwUU/YJfgeC3xaDI/AAAAAAAADCU/HMe6Wp6GNGsgGCxDk4IFCGUMATvLehNpACLcBGAsYHQ/w651-h427/Scranton-Masonic%2BTemple%2Bsite%2Bin%2BCLT.png" width="651" /></a><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A kiosk, typically unused, sits on the site of the Masonic Temple.</span></span></span></span></i><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Observe how the local economy</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’s entrepreneurship scene is strengthened by the new enterprises that flock to the spaces in Optimist Hall and Camp North End, both of them restored former industrial sites. Observe the brewery scene in South End, made possible by the unused old industrial buildings that once languished there. Observe the fledgling artsy area north of NoDa – itself possibly the most lauded example of how old buildings nurture both the arts and new businesses – as old buildings become home to new projects. </span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A5EdFJZbdj4/YJfoxIRk-JI/AAAAAAAADCc/g8trSaEL0OwSnBXg_bm1lMimuSgooyV4ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Scranton%2BCultural%2BCenter.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="530" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A5EdFJZbdj4/YJfoxIRk-JI/AAAAAAAADCc/g8trSaEL0OwSnBXg_bm1lMimuSgooyV4ACLcBGAsYHQ/w706-h530/Scranton%2BCultural%2BCenter.jpg" width="706" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Scranton Cultural Center</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></span></span></span></span></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pw2CJu7jEQ4/YJfo2tzFREI/AAAAAAAADCg/geUQrJbuM_sJjqXI1jrRI0moFlCtDZ7sgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Scranton%2B-%2Bname%2Bof%2Btemple.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="509" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pw2CJu7jEQ4/YJfo2tzFREI/AAAAAAAADCg/geUQrJbuM_sJjqXI1jrRI0moFlCtDZ7sgCLcBGAsYHQ/w678-h509/Scranton%2B-%2Bname%2Bof%2Btemple.jpg" width="678" /></a></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* * * <br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> So ... why Scranton? I</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’m here for a festival to celebrate the city where urbanist thinker and writer Jane Jacobs grew up and learned her keen powers of observation. It was her intellect and ability to <i>notice</i> that led her to recognize the chasm between the theories and proposals from architects, planners, developers and traffic engineers and how their projects worked in the real world: what was lost, what if anything was gained, and what</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> cities and city economies really need to thrive.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The festival, <a href="https://observescranton.org/" target="_blank">Observe Scranton</a>, was organized by a nonprofit whose board I chair, the <a href="https://centerforthelivingcity.org/" target="_blank">Center for the Living City</a>, and whose executive director, Maria MacDonald, grew up and still lives in Scranton. It</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’s been <a href="https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/so-much-to-celebrate-in-scranton-first-friday-returns-along-with-new-festival/523-5e69778d-41d6-4268-9687-6447d911963b" target="_blank">several days of events</a>, starting with the book launch on May 4 (the late Jane Jacobs</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’s birthday) of <a href="https://janejacobsfirstcity.com/" target="_blank"><i>Jane Jacobs</i></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://janejacobsfirstcity.com/" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">’</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>s First City: Learning From Scranton, Pennsylvania</i></a> by Glenna Lang. The idea is to encourage residents to look at their own city, observe what's working, see its possibilities, and get engaged. Next up is to help other cities that might want their own Observe event.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><br /></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-12324651044688816462021-03-22T11:57:00.001-04:002021-03-22T11:57:41.603-04:00I guess we’e reimagining uptown Charlotte again<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fsx0hfG-iiI/YFi74k83-cI/AAAAAAAAC-c/NqYRXZC0hLMNBVHVfbbTlY4RVPOq2u7cACLcBGAsYHQ/s1012/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-22%2Bat%2B11.33.33%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="1012" height="381" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fsx0hfG-iiI/YFi74k83-cI/AAAAAAAAC-c/NqYRXZC0hLMNBVHVfbbTlY4RVPOq2u7cACLcBGAsYHQ/w630-h381/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-22%2Bat%2B11.33.33%2BAM.png" width="630" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Image
from draft of the 2040 Center City Vision Plan, of what might (in some
distant future) be a large park where the Norfolk Southern rail yard is
today, on North Tryon Street</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A few thoughts follow, after I listened this morning as Michael Smith of Charlotte Center City Partners briefed the City Council’s Transportation, Planning and Environment Committee on the <a href="https://www.allin2040.com/" target="_blank">2040 uptown plan</a>, known as the All In 2040: Center City Vision Plan. (<span style="color: #cc0000;"><a href="https://youtu.be/BgQp1AeuD0Q" target="_blank">Watch the meeting here</a></span>.) That plan will be part of the massive Charlotte Future: 2040 Comprehensive Plan. (<a href="https://cltfuture2040.com/" target="_blank">See draft here</a>.) The Center City plan is still being drafted with a final draft due in May.</span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I love the idea of a new Second Ward High School, as this plan proposes. This keeps being proposed by the city, and hasn</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>t happened. Maybe the city council and the staffs from the city planning department and the Charlotte Department of Transportation should burrow into why. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has its own elected school board; do they favor this idea? If yes, maybe the problem is that the school board doesn</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>t raise its own tax revenue; the board of county commissioners must fund school building construction.</span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The idea for a high school uptown is not new. I recall at one point – maybe 15 years ago? – the concept arose, paired with the proposal that the new high school be a magnet school with curriculum focusing on the arts, and banking/finance. It always made me chuckle to think about the students who</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>d go there. I imagined a Venn diagram of that student body with no overlap whatsoever.</span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Another proposal Smith talked about, saying the idea was afloat in the community: a big park on the site of the Norfolk Southern rail yard on North Tryon Street. That would be awesome indeed. <a href="https://plancharlotte.org/display/charlotte-urban-designers-propose-mixed-use-village-atop-old-railyard" target="_blank">Here</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://plancharlotte.org/display/charlotte-urban-designers-propose-mixed-use-village-atop-old-railyard" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s a story I wrote</a> about it in 2018 when some UNC Charlotte urban design students proposed it. But I didn</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>t just chuckle. I guffawed at the idea that Norfolk<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> Southern Railroad would just move if asked. Or sell. Ask the frustrated-for-15-years planners of the Red Line commuter rail to north Mecklenburg County about Norfolk Southern cooperation. “This might be a longer horizon,” Michael Smith said with no visible expression. Uh, yeah.</span><p></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The uptown 2040 plan will propose capping I-277 between uptown and South End. Again. This was proposed in
the uptown plans for 2010 and 2020. Smith listed other cities that had successfully capped parts of their downtown freeways, among them Dallas; Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta and Boston. This would create not only some connection, but land for a park. It</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s not easy, obviously, but I would take substantial bets that this would be accomplished before that rail yard is moved. I</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>m not saying the N.C Department of Transportation is yoga-teacher-style flexible but compared to Norfolk Southern railroad, NCDOT is practically a contortionist</span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If this idea gets into the plan (again) and it should, how about some real action on it? Come up with a realistic way forward. What agencies would have to OK it? If they're balky how could they be persuaded, and by whom? Get preliminary engineering studies. (I'm looking at you, CCCP.) Come up with some realistic funding strategies. Who would be the political champions? How could NCDOT be brought on board? And so on. </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It's fair to mention here that many plans come with lengthy implementation sections, and I</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>m sure the Uptown 2040 Plan will, also. This should be a part of it.</span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Read <a href="https://www.allin2040.com/plan-preview" target="_blank">what</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.allin2040.com/plan-preview" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span>s posted so far</a> about the Center City Vision Plan. </span></p><p class="js-tweet-text tweet-text txt-size-variable--18 margin-b--10 with-linebreaks padding-t--10" lang="en" style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="1070" height="488" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qlkCcBZzTOU/YFi5vYN0yiI/AAAAAAAAC-U/2MphEaLPGk4OKFE6o_RHxgNIkRSS5CPFACLcBGAsYHQ/w682-h488/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-22%2Bat%2B11.34.28%2BAM.png" title="Image of proposed cap over I-277 freeway in uptown Charlotte" width="682" /><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span>Image of proposed cap over the I-277 freeway encircling uptown.</span></i></span><br /></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-30930139835927092862020-08-20T19:58:00.003-04:002020-08-20T19:58:48.791-04:00Weedy obstruction gets whacked<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zqsi38Q_YXY/Xz8ND0DUl_I/AAAAAAAACws/gYgK7MAN72YBQKCkgZ5aCY-IARYC8FrWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/ProvRd%2Bweeds%2Bcleared.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zqsi38Q_YXY/Xz8ND0DUl_I/AAAAAAAACws/gYgK7MAN72YBQKCkgZ5aCY-IARYC8FrWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/ProvRd%2Bweeds%2Bcleared.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Weeds that blocked the sidewalk have been removed. Now, anyone want to report that campaign sign illegally posted in the right-of-way? Photo: Mary Newsom</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s a quick update to “A good walk spoiled," about the problem of vegetation, leaves and mud obstructing sidewalks. (Headline: Report it to the city via 311, via the “CLT+” smartphone app, or online <a href="https://servicerequest.charlottenc.gov/service/SIDEOBS" target="_blank">here</a> – it’s considered a nuisance report).<br /><br />After reporting it to 311 on Aug. 11, I got a call Monday, Aug. 17, from a city code enforcement inspector. He needed a specific address for the perennial problem on the Runnymede Lane sidewalk – he had to know which inspector’s territory it was in. Google Maps provided addresses for several houses that back onto Runnymede, whose owners may well not know they’re responsible for cleaning the sidewalk on the other side of a large stockade fence at the rear of their lots. It’s a spot where leaves, mud and other debris have stacked up for years.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So, hopeful sign!</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Then I asked about the weeds invading the sidewalk on Providence Road where it crosses Briar Creek. The inspector told me that Duke Energy owns the property. He indicated that sometimes Duke is not speedy in getting things like this taken care of.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So I decided to appeal to the City Council member for that district - Tariq Bokhari. I emailed him about it, and got a nice reply from a staffer, who said she had reported it to Duke.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It was cleared out on Wednesday.</span></p><br /><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I can’t say for sure that getting an email from a City Council member lit a fire under the power company or whether they’d have gotten to it anyway.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">But … good for Duke for clearing that sidewalk. The sidewalk is now passable, if not pretty, and you can even see the creek. (Its water this morning was reasonably clear.)</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And in the future, let’s hope the city can make that sidewalk language in the city code less troublesome.<br /><br /></span></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-41131130123607438142020-08-11T18:18:00.005-04:002020-08-19T21:25:00.505-04:00A good walk spoiled<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ENv9DfAqUig/XzMSR5pIIeI/AAAAAAAACvo/WeLpWyEy97kCt7VL5qHSEO3U2o1Kl1BjACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Providence%2Bat%2BBriar%2BCreek.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ENv9DfAqUig/XzMSR5pIIeI/AAAAAAAACvo/WeLpWyEy97kCt7VL5qHSEO3U2o1Kl1BjACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h480/Providence%2Bat%2BBriar%2BCreek.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>At least there</i><i>’s a sidewalk. But shouldn</i><i>’t walking be more comfortable than getting slapped in the face with overgrown weeds? Photo: Mary Newsom</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;">It was a morning walk along pandemic-cleared Providence Road. That means the street was seeing dramatically fewer vehicles than the 32,000-some it normally carries. And for once the pandemic was helpful, because the sidewalk was so obstructed in several spots that a couple of times I had to walk in the right lane of Providence Road. During rush hour. I was briefly – only very briefly – thankful for Covid-19.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">That morning walk in late July spotlighted an under-reported but notable flaw in the City of Charlotte’s management of pedestrian life. Yes, the city to its credit has more than 1,900 miles of sidewalks. And yes, the city long ago stopped charging property owners for sidewalk repairs.<br /><br />But what about keeping sidewalks passable? That’s iffier territory. My experience along Providence shows why, too often, walking is uncomfortable. That’s one reason people with options will opt to drive. It matters. Unless we want to live with ever-growing traffic and ever-worsening climate change from burning fossil fuels, we should be encouraging more people to walk, not drive.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Providence is a major artery (it’s a state highway, N.C. 16), but for about 6 miles through the city it acts like a neighborhood street (not a “road.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">”</span>) It’s flanked by front lawns, homes, churches, stores, a park, etc., many of which<span><a name='more'></a></span> have been there three-quarters of a century or more. Yet it still lacks sidewalks on both sides on key stretches. Worse, the side with a sidewalk switches back and forth. Example: from where it crosses Briar Creek south to Wendover the sidewalk’s on the west side. From Wendover to a block before Sharon-Amity Road, the sidewalk is on the east side. Along that whole side-switching stretch you find one lone stoplight to get you across.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">I was heading north, toward uptown. The first sidewalk blockage was due to a brick retaining wall plus overgrown shrubbery on my left, and on my right a mountain of clipped branches awaiting curbside recycling. There was no clear passage between wall, shrubs and branch clippings. <br /></span><p></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3K-0JkL5LUM/XzMTT7SvIFI/AAAAAAAACv0/FZ7PIkTLky01KfSEbk87toVaeUnYMCD-ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Providence%2Bat%2BWendover.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="452" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3K-0JkL5LUM/XzMTT7SvIFI/AAAAAAAACv0/FZ7PIkTLky01KfSEbk87toVaeUnYMCD-ACLcBGAsYHQ/w307-h410/Providence%2Bat%2BWendover.JPG" width="338" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>How do you walk past this? Photo: Mary Newsom</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">With no options, I did some impromptu hand-pruning, meaning I broke off some of the shrub’s branches. The bushes looked robust enough to survive the breakage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">I walked on. A runner approached on that narrow sidewalk. In these pandemic times we’re supposed to stay 6 feet or more apart to avoid infecting others or being infected by them. Typically when meeting people on a narrow sidewalk, I step to the side. You’d have the same problem when two people walking abreast meet a third, or you meet someone with a stroller, or a bicyclist. And many cyclists use the sidewalk on this section of Providence with its jammed, narrow lanes and motorists going 50 mph in the 35 mph zone. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Stepping aside here was impossible. To my right was Providence Road. To my left, the land plunged down into a ravine carrying a creek. The property owners had planted monkey grass along the sidewalk edge, which would have been fine, except it was laced with poison ivy. So I had to walk in the traffic lane on Providence Road. I was lucky – less traffic due to the pandemic. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Miffed, I walked on. Within 200 feet I faced another problem. Literally. Rampant weeds slapped me in the face. Where Providence Road crosses a creek (Briar Creek), weeds were overtaking the sidewalk. Pedestrians are poked with waist-high pokeweed, while vines dangle in their faces. I ducked and twisted and – lucky again to find no poison ivy or right-lane traffic – hopped into Providence Road for the second time.</span><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">What would someone in a wheelchair have done? A kid on a bike?<br /><br />Wondering how the city handles these random sidewalk obstructions I checked in with Scott Curry, the active transportation coordinator at the city’s Department of Transportation. He sent me a pertinent section of the city’s 2017 pedestrian plan, <a href="https://charlottenc.gov/Transportation/Programs/Documents/Charlotte%20WALKS%20Adopted%20Plan%20-%20February%202017.pdf" target="_blank">Charlotte WALKS</a>. It says:<br />“For matters of routine maintenance however, like cutting grass and clearing debris, the city does not have sufficient resources to maintain its 1,900+ miles of sidewalks. As such, the city relies on individual property owners to maintain sidewalks. <b>There are some problematic gaps in the current interpretation/language of the city’s code of ordinances however, that lead to some confusion about maintenance responsibility</b>.” (Emphasis mine.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">One part of the city code requires property owners to trim trees on their property so they don’t obstruct pedestrians on sidewalks. (Trees in the public right-of-way, such as planting strips, are maintained by the city.)<br /><br />Another part of the code make it unlawful “to place or maintain an unnecessary obstruction in the public right-of-way,” though it isn’t clear what’s an “unnecessary obstruction.” Another section prohibits abutting property owners from allowing “the accumulation of leaves, grass clippings, or any other debris” on a sidewalk.<br /><br />But … what if the property owners don’t obey? I’m thinking of the sidewalk on the south side of Runnymede between Sharon and Colony roads, near three public schools. Most of that sidewalk has been cluttered with leaves for at least a decade. A goat path of sorts is visible where pedestrians scuff through the leaves and debris. I have never seen that sidewalk cleaned.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Curry’s advice: Call 311. If the obstruction is from city street trees or in a city right-of-way, the city will clear it, he said. But if it’s private property, it becomes an issue “for code enforcement,” he said.</span><br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SXIjkbJcDzc/XzMUUUu5XpI/AAAAAAAACwI/LxdYaRIEM4gqfhzrVxgaiIL8XCzOWpe8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Poison%2Bivy%2Bat%2BProvidence%2Bsidewalk.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="401" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SXIjkbJcDzc/XzMUUUu5XpI/AAAAAAAACwI/LxdYaRIEM4gqfhzrVxgaiIL8XCzOWpe8ACLcBGAsYHQ/w307-h410/Poison%2Bivy%2Bat%2BProvidence%2Bsidewalk.JPG" width="301" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Poison ivy threatening pedestrians</i><i>’ ankles. </i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I emailed the city’s code enforcement folks, asking what they do. The reply from Jane Taillon, code enforcement division manager: “A private property owner will be cited (mailed a notice) if they have vegetation protruding from their property that is impeding the vehicle or pedestrian way, this includes leaves accumulating on the sidewalk in front of their residence.”<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Can the city actually punish people if they don’t comply? Taillon responded: “If they [property owners] do not abate the violation a contractor is hired to abate the violation. The owner of the property is then billed for the expense.”<br /><br />And what about poison ivy encroaching? Her reply: “Code Enforcement does not have the authority to enforce specific types of vegetation.” Sigh.</span><br /></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I’ve called 311 and reported the weed invasion at the Providence Road bridge over Briar Creek, as well as the never-ending leaf debris on the Runnymede sidewalk. We’ll see if they’re ever cleared. <br /><br />You can report problems to the city by calling 311. Taillon recommended also <a href="https://charlottenc.gov/HNS/Code/Pages/Report.aspx" target="_blank">trying online</a>, but that page offers no obvious way to report sidewalk obstructions. So good luck.</span><br /><br /></p>Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-27691746017867307132020-07-07T11:07:00.002-04:002020-07-07T11:16:09.070-04:00Sun Belt cities are driving much of our urban growth. Let’s study them<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7omCcCKAkto/XwSLKREJuvI/AAAAAAAACtg/LGF96QJfZrQiifW1MUCpW403mGiq5_k0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/daniel-weiss-aj2Os9mYgJU-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7omCcCKAkto/XwSLKREJuvI/AAAAAAAACtg/LGF96QJfZrQiifW1MUCpW403mGiq5_k0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/daniel-weiss-aj2Os9mYgJU-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Charlotte shares many urban problems with other boomimg Sun Belt cities. Photo: Daniel Weiss/Unsplash</i></td></tr>
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<i>This article has also been published by my former employer, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. <a href="https://ui.uncc.edu/" target="_blank">Read more of the institute’s offerings.</a></i><br />
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The U.S. population, like that in Charlotte, is growing, and much of the growth is in the cities of the Sun Belt. A new report from a Houston university research center says the country should be paying more attention to Sun Belt cities like Charlotte – treating them as a specific genre that needs its own body of research.<br />
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“Unfortunately, much of American urban policy is crafted – and, indeed, much urban policy research is conducted – with traditional Northeastern and Midwestern cities in mind,” says the report from the <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/" target="_blank">Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University</a>.<br />
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Released June 11, <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/research/urban-sun-belt-overview" target="_blank">“The Urban Sun Belt: An Overview,”</a> (<a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs1676/f/documents/KIUR%20-%20The%20Urban%20Sun%20Belt%205.pdf" target="_blank">download it here</a>) lays out reasons why Sun Belt cities differ in key ways from other regions’ cities and deserve more attention – including the cities’ dramatic growth in recent decades.<br />
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Here’s one small example of why Sun Belt cities may need their own research: The term “Sun Belt” itself has no official definition. It was coined in 1969 by political analyst Kevin Phillips. So demographers and others must craft their own. For this report, the Kinder Institute defined the Sun Belt as spanning the continent from Los Angeles to Miami, below the 36’30º parallel. That takes in metro areas in North Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma but leaves out, for instance, California cities north of the Los Angeles metro area and Nevada cities north of Las Vegas. The report focuses on metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) of 1 million people or more.<br />
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And it concludes with an ominous analysis: Sun Belt cities may be particularly hamstrung, compared with older cities, in dealing with urban problems.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NgTWfakxQTk/XwSLyqjaflI/AAAAAAAACtw/nvAya2A_GUIyUnTFFJuQHI-iqC4U0A41QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/population%2Bgrowth%2Bfig%2B4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1040" data-original-width="1600" height="416" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NgTWfakxQTk/XwSLyqjaflI/AAAAAAAACtw/nvAya2A_GUIyUnTFFJuQHI-iqC4U0A41QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/population%2Bgrowth%2Bfig%2B4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Chart: Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research</i></div>
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Why should the rest of the nation care? For one thing, more and more of the nation now lives in those Sun Belt cities. The report offers some astounding facts:<br />
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Between 2000 and 2016, the 22 Sun Belt metro areas with more than 1 million people accounted for<br />
<a name='more'></a>41% of the nation’s net population growth. Of the top 10 most populous U.S. metro regions, seven are in the Sun Belt: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix.<br />
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In addition to booming growth, the report says, demographic changes Sun Belt cities have seen for years – such as racial and ethnic diversification – are now taking place in much of the rest of the nation. But some of the things that formerly spurred Sun Belt growth are changing:<br />
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<b>CHEAPER HOUSING.</b> Comparatively affordable housing in cities like Phoenix, Houston and Charlotte was a selling point for years. But, the report says, Sun Belt cities are losing their affordability edge. Indeed, housing affordability has been a significant problem in Charlotte in recent years, as well as other cities.<br />
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In many Sun Belt cities, the cost of living has been rising at a faster rate than income. “Today, cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and Austin, which once had relatively low housing costs, are looking for ways to provide more attainable housing and solutions to gentrification and displacement,” the report says. <br />
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One measure of housing affordability is the proportion of households that are “cost-burdened,” paying 30% or more of their income for housing, or “severely cost-burdened,” paying more than 50% of their income. Of the 10 large U.S. cities with the highest proportion of severely cost-burdened households, six are in the Sun Belt.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LWcyEe68iJU/XwSMWJa8TFI/AAAAAAAACt4/NXJAst93tPIM1LEhgh4mJiQuSEntW11aACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/housing%2Bburden%2Bfig%2B26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1164" data-original-width="1374" height="542" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LWcyEe68iJU/XwSMWJa8TFI/AAAAAAAACt4/NXJAst93tPIM1LEhgh4mJiQuSEntW11aACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/housing%2Bburden%2Bfig%2B26.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Chart: Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research</i></td></tr>
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<b>STRONG ECONOMIES</b>. Yes, Sun Belt metro areas are thriving. If you look at the percent growth in real GDP among large U.S. metro regions, 2012-2017, the top 10 list holds seven Sun Belt metros.<br />
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However, the report says, “The economies of large Sun Belt metros are growing fast but job growth is increasing fastest in the high- and low-paying sectors.” That points to a rising income gap.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QI4oU-TcZs4/XwSMaXXo1lI/AAAAAAAACt8/hFuH_VKFN60I7inSFQCUEQf0vx9Vx7dNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/low%2Bincome%2Bpop%2Bchange%2Bfig%2B21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1518" data-original-width="1518" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QI4oU-TcZs4/XwSMaXXo1lI/AAAAAAAACt8/hFuH_VKFN60I7inSFQCUEQf0vx9Vx7dNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/low%2Bincome%2Bpop%2Bchange%2Bfig%2B21.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Chart: Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research</i></td></tr>
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Also, poverty appears to be growing faster in the large Sun Belt metro areas. Of the 10 large U.S. metro areas with the highest percentage increase in low-income population 2010-2016, nine were in the Sun Belt, with Raleigh at the top of the list and Charlotte fourth.<br />
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<b>GOOD WEATHER.</b> For decades – basically since central air-conditioning became common – warm weather has been a powerful lure for people weary of shoveling snow. Indeed, Harvard economist Ed Glaeser <a href="https://www.csus.edu/indiv/c/chalmersk/ECON180FA08/GlaeserBoston.pdf" target="_blank">published a study</a> in 2005, which found that from 1920 to 1980, the warmer a state’s average January temperatures, the more the state grew; for every 1% increase in January temperatures, the expected growth rate rose by 2.3%.<br />
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Although the Kinder Institute report doesn’t directly address climate change or the weather, the topic arose in <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/events/urban-sun-belt-setting-agenda" target="_blank">a June 11 panel discussion</a> about the report. (Disclosure: I was one of the speakers for the discussion.) Marissa Aho, chief resiliency officer for the City of Houston, talked about the growing cost to Sun Belt cities of weather-related disasters, and the problem of rising urban heat.<br />
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In 2017 and 2018, she said, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) records showed Texas led the nation in billion-dollar climate disasters. In 2019, Texas and Florida were tops. “The Sun Belt cities are being further and further impacted by a whole range of disasters, from hurricanes to wildfires to flooding to drought,” she said. <br />
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<a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/" target="_blank">NOAA records for the Southeast</a> (not including Texas) show the cost per year of billion-dollar weather disasters has risen from $4.7 billion in the 1980s to $13.5 billion for 2010-2019, in inflation-adjusted dollars. And for the previous three years alone (2017-19) the average cost per year was $33 billion.<br />
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Aho also said that by 2100 it’s predicted that every place in the Sun Belt will have at least 50 days a year of 100-degree-plus temperatures.<br />
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In other words, blistering heat and dangerous storms may shrink the appeal of warm winters.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b8oxTYB904g" width="590"></iframe><br />
<br />
The report details other factors distinguishing Sun Belt cities, such as racial and ethnic diversity, and auto-oriented development patterns. <br />
<br />
<b>DIVERSITY.</b> “In many ways, America’s future now can be seen in the Sun Belt,” the report says, “which is more diverse demographically and has been diversifying faster and longer than the rest of the nation.”<br />
<br />
Between 2000 and 2016, population changes among major racial/ethnic groups were more pronounced in the Sun Belt metros, for most groups. For example, between 2000 and 2016 Sun Belt metros ceased to have a white majority, dropping to 45% white. And while racial segregation is found across the U.S., including in the Sun Belt, the Sun Belt metros have the lowest black-white segregation (though many Sun Belt cities, such as Charlotte, still reflect historical patterns of segregation, redlining and other discrimination).<br />
<br />
<b>AUTO-ORIENTED:</b> Since most large Sun Belt cities had their growth spurts after World War II, they’re dominated by late 20th-century urban forms: wide arterial streets with fast-moving traffic; low-density, large-lot residential areas; and single-use zoning that separates workplaces and store from homes. All that makes walking difficult – and dangerous. Sun Belt metros large and small have the highest rate of pedestrian deaths, according to a recent analysis by Smart Growth America, “<a href="https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/" target="_blank">Dangerous by Design.</a>” Of the top 20 most dangerous cities, all but Detroit are in the Sun Belt. <br />
<br />
That development pattern is one reason transit ridership lags in the Sun Belt, despite a few cities with comparatively strong mass transit systems such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and San Diego. That’s another drag on household incomes.<br />
<br />
Finally, the report raises serious cautions about Sun Belt cities’ capacity to address urban problems. In older cities, government and philanthropic institutions are go-to sources for problem-solving. But in Sun Belt cities, per-capita government spending is significantly lower, as are philanthropic resources. For instance, the philanthropic capacity of Cincinnati ($10.6 billion) is larger than that in any Sun Belt city other than Los Angeles ($20 billion). Pittsburgh's philanthropic base ($6.5 billion) outflanks Charlotte’s ($6.1 billion), and is larger than that of bigger cities such as San Antonio and Phoenix.<br />
<br />
With problems such as growing income inequality and rising housing costs, and lacking the traditional means to tackle such issues, the report concludes that Sun Belt cities may have to devise new ways of addressing those kinds of urban problems. And finding new ways to address those problems might offer a way forward for the whole nation, as we face challenges this century that range from a changing climate to a yawning income gap.</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-49224587933321106042020-06-11T18:22:00.001-04:002021-03-18T00:28:38.759-04:00After Covid-19, what happens to cities? What we know – or think we know<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LnpT6JUYVyo/XuKslFi5JpI/AAAAAAAACrc/dJn9ZcNAD0gL8zvGHPKZly4TYm_n773jACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Brevard%2BCourt%2Bbike.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="700" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LnpT6JUYVyo/XuKslFi5JpI/AAAAAAAACrc/dJn9ZcNAD0gL8zvGHPKZly4TYm_n773jACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Brevard%2BCourt%2Bbike.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Uptown Charlotte</i><i>’s Brevard Court, before Covid-19 shut down bars. Photo courtesy of the <a href="https://ui.uncc.edu/" target="_blank">UNC Charlotte Urban Institute</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After Covid-19, cities will change forever. Here’s a sampling of predictions I’m seeing:<br />
<br />
People will avoid close physical encounters. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll flock to crowded bars and restaurants after weeks of lockdown. <br />
<br />
Stores, bludgeoned by pandemic closings and high rents, will close. So will smaller, non-chain restaurants. Cities will become blander and more homogenized. <br />
<br />
Or maybe this: For a while small businesses will die and renters will flee. But that will reduce demand, so landlords will lower rents. Newly cheap spaces will lure innovators and entrepreneurs, artists, restaurants and shops to formerly homogenous, high-dollar areas. Their return will reinvigorate neighborhoods once dominated by national chains and luxury homes.<br />
<br />
People will move to small towns, smaller cities or suburbs because they’re afraid – even more than before – of urban density and urban protests. Or, maybe, they’ll move after enduring years of extreme housing costs.<br />
<br />
At the same time, more workers will telecommute – willingly or not – and office real estate will go begging. That, too, will change property values in cities, and hurt stores and restaurants catering to office workers.<br />
<br />
As more workers telecommute, rush-hour congestion will melt away. Or maybe, rush-hour congestion will spike as people who once commuted on transit will opt to drive to work. And as more people move to suburbs, traffic there will get worse.<br />
<br />
Or maybe none of those things happen. <br />
<br />
We who write about cities are quick to make predictions. Some will prove prescient. Some won’t. But nobody really knows. Cities aren’t all alike. New York’s texture, way of life and pandemic experience are not Charlotte’s, or <br />
<a name='more'></a>Houston’s, or Seattle’s. And this: We humans have a long history of behaving both predictably and unpredictably.<br />
<br />
Of course cities will change. They’re already changing – witness the widespread protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, other police killings of unarmed black citizens and over-the-top reactions in many cities as police tear-gas peaceful protesters, mow SUVs into crowds and shoot rubber bullets and pepper balls at journalists. Those peaceful protests, not to mention the window-breaking, brick-throwing acts of a few, will probably lead to change. But will that change mean efforts to end police bullying and racism, or the militarization of public spaces? We never know how cities will change until we see the changes.<br />
<br />
It’s always tempting to accept conventional wisdom when making policy decisions. But conventional wisdom may not be based on observed reality. An example to remember: urban “renewal” and “blight clearance,” widely touted by presumed experts as improving the lives of the poor by bulldozing slums, proved to be the opposite of “renewal,” clearing away people (mostly people of color) and neighborhoods lacking money or power to stop it. <br />
<br />
It’s likely the Covid pandemic will accelerate trends already happening: Even as the lure of urban spaces remained powerful, high housing prices had been pushing some people out of expensive cities toward less expensive places. For example, the city of Charlotte’s population grew 21% from 2010 to 2019 – despite an affordable housing shortage, but one that pales in comparison to New York or San Francisco.<br />
<br />
You can make a good case that the country as a whole will be stronger if cities like Memphis (city growth 2010-19 was only 0.65%) and Kansas City (city growth 2010-19 was 7.7%) develop more of the strong urban magnetism that for the past few decades funneled hundreds of thousands of newcomers into New York, Washington, the Bay Area and even Charlotte. The re-urbanization and allure of smaller cities is another trend predating Covid that’s likely to speed up.<br />
<br />
Brick and mortar retail was already ailing from online shopping in general and specifically Amazon. It’s convenient, and Americans have repeatedly proved willing to jettison even things they love like independent bookstores or browsing boutiques, in favor of convenience. (Need proof? Takeout coffee in Styrofoam cups.) We have, by many accounts, a surplus of per capita retail square footage. According to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/" target="_blank">Derek Thompson in The Atlantic magazine</a>: “By one measure of consumerist plentitude – shopping center “gross leasable area” – the U.S. has 40% more shopping space per capita than Canada, five times more than the U.K., and 10 times more than Germany.”<br />
<br />
With extended closures from the pandemic, even more stores will probably close. However, it’s possible enough Americans will decide they like real stores – having been barred from them for months – that their behavior will change. After all, Starbucks made a fortune when Americans realized coffee can taste better than gas station joe in Styrofoam.<br />
<br />
Cities evolve, and not always for the better. Should we be pessimistic? I go there probably more often than is mentally healthy. But sometimes changes are for the better. Here are a few of my optimistic hopes for cities, including Charlotte, post-Covid:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>People will keep up outdoor activities. With gyms closed and Covid transmission believed to be weaker outside, people went walking, bicycling and hiking so much the state and the county closed the crowded parks and greenways for a time. I’m rooting for those habits to continue. </li>
<li>I envision residents (see above) growing more vocal pushing for accessible public outdoor spaces – parks, greenways and well-designed plazas. The national Park Score measure from the Trust for Public Land annually finds Charlotte, where parks and greenways are a county responsibility, hugging the bottom of the list. And with outdoor dining encouraged, many cities are giving over street spaces and relaxing parking requirements to let restaurants move outside. Those changes are welcome.</li>
<li>As sunshine and fresh air are found to inhibit Covid transmission, and HVAC systems suspected as enablers, the value of windows that open and easy access to sunlight may change workplace building design.</li>
<li>Pedestrian and bicycle needs may get more attention. During the lockdown, people who wanted exercise noticed Charlotte is not built for pedestrians. That led to crowded parks and greenways (see above). I’m hopeful more residents will pressure the city – and the state, which owns many thoroughfares in the city – to improve things.</li>
<li>The reality that Covid is more of a threat to black and Hispanic people than others is sobering evidence of health care, employment and income inequalities all around the nation. A continuing spotlight on the health risks low-income service workers face could open more people’s eyes to the need for systemic changes. </li>
<li>We may pay more attention to pollution. With traffic reduced, the air has cleared remarkably around the globe. Will people simply resume fossil-fuel-burning ways, or will the prospect of cleaner air and water inspire changes?</li>
</ul>
Will cities change after Covid-19? Absolutely. Anything as traumatic as this pandemic will change us, and our surroundings. We'll mourn not just the people we've lost, but the places – the stores, coffee shops, restaurants, dive bars, art house theaters and everything being taken from us seemingly so fast. <br />
<br />
But cities are always changing, and would have changed regardless. We would have lost some, and maybe many of those places anyway from the forces of finance and gentrification and real estate speculation.<br />
<br />
I keep thinking of this quote from Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river. And he is not the same man.” <br />
<br />
The city won't be the same after Covid. And we won’t be the same. That’s the prediction I’m most<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
<br />
(This post ran originally on the <a href="https://ui.uncc.edu/story/coronavirus-charlotte-city-us-changes-urban-development" target="_blank">website of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute</a>. My thanks for their permission to republish it here.)</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-69296400862128074982020-05-08T18:20:00.000-04:002020-06-11T18:24:37.309-04:00Anti-vaxxers. Boosterism beating science. Sound familiar?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UdRVkYX4Bi4/XrXTQV3igaI/AAAAAAAACok/GlYIpndvAt44FT9u2vjmUHmpv8E3ATDpwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Charlotte%2B1947%2Bzoning%2Bmap.-crop%2Bcopy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1573" data-original-width="1600" height="628" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UdRVkYX4Bi4/XrXTQV3igaI/AAAAAAAACok/GlYIpndvAt44FT9u2vjmUHmpv8E3ATDpwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Charlotte%2B1947%2Bzoning%2Bmap.-crop%2Bcopy.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Charlotte's first zoning map from 1947 shows development patterns that continue today almost 75 years later. Hanchett's book, with a new preface, describes how government actions like zoning shaped today's racial and economic segregation. Today's wealthiest area of south and southeast Charlotte appears here in green at the lower right corner, because the map is not oriented north-south.</i></td></tr>
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<b>“Today’s decisions, consciously or unconsciously, rest on the platform of the past.” </b><br />
–– Tom Hanchett, <i>Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975, second edition</i> <br />
<br />
People who find history boring and irrelevant must have scars from repeatedly touching hot stoves. The past has lessons, if we’ll listen. This is about a couple of century-old events in my city, Charlotte.<br />
<br />
My original plan here was to write about the second edition of historian Tom Hanchett’s <i>Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975</i>. It’s a stunning book, one I regularly recommend when people ask what to read to learn about Charlotte. When I first read it in 1998, it was like having a light flick on in a darkened room; you see things you previously sensed only in shadowy outlines.<br />
<br />
The meticulously researched look into how Charlotte’s neighborhoods went from racially diverse after the Civil War to strictly segregated told a story new to many of us – not the fact of segregation but how it happened across decades. He described how government – local, state and federal – was a key actor in creating and enforcing racial segregation. (To learn more about government’s role in U.S. housing segregation, see Richard Rothstein’s <i>The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America</i>.)<br />
<br />
Hanchett, the retired historian for the Levine Museum of the New South, today is historian-in-residence at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. His powerful new preface brings his work up to date and makes the point that since current inequities of wealth, well-being and education resulted from deliberate government action, then government action can help reverse them.<br />
<br />
But … pandemic. Most Americans are now stuck at home, trying to stay 6 feet from anyone outside, many having lost jobs. We’re all viewing the world through a coronavirus lens and living through a history-making pandemic, the most serious since the 1918-19 flu, estimated to have killed at least 40 million people globally.<br />
<br />
These days some politicians urge reopening stores and businesses, and not a few Americans agree, saying the cost to the <br />
<a name='more'></a>economy is so cruel it counterbalances the obvious cost in suffering and death. Many states are re-opening, some more speedily and others, like North Carolina, more gradually.<br />
<br />
So here is history caution No. 1: A remarkable <i>Charlotte Observer</i> article in April – “<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article241812591.html" target="_blank">The Big Lie: 102 years ago Charlotte leaders downplayed devastation of Spanish flu</a>” – offered a powerful look at government deceit, medical advice ignored, and the resulting death toll. Reporter Mark Washburn studied death certificates, obituary reports and local newspapers. He found that Charlotte Mayor Frank McNinch and Mecklenburg County health director Dr. C.C. Hudson brazenly misled the public about the flu’s deadly impact, under-reporting deaths by at least half. “At the height of the epidemic, when citizens were dying at the rate of more than 10 a week,” he wrote, “they under-reported the scope of the crisis by two-thirds.”<br />
<br />
After a one-month quarantine in October 1918, as flu cases receded, the city, pressured by businesses and churches and hearing an inaccurately low total of fatalities, lifted its quarantine against the advice of the medical society. “And influenza roared back into the community,” Washburn wrote, “killing hundreds more.”<br />
<br />
Why did they do it? Washburn has no definitive answer, but recounts how the city and county later bragged for decades of escaping the worst of the flu. Was it boosterism? Civic braggadocio? Or a way to keep businesses open, despite the deaths it caused?<br />
<br />
Read Washburn’s full story. A complacent press took the mayor’s and doctor’s accounts as truth. Politicians cared more about commerce than people dying. Apply these lessons as you will to today’s situation.<br />
<br />
History caution No. 2 comes straight from Hanchett’s book. It shows what happens when a marginalized community distrusts and resists health advice from the establishment. <br />
<br />
The time was the 1890s and early 1900s. Southern agriculture hit hard times, and Charlotte’s textile mills lured thousands of workers and families from the farms. The era saw sometimes violent labor protests, a piece of the city’s past that today is all but ignored – a topic for another day. Hanchett tallies walkouts: 45 workers at the Louise Mill in 1897, 100 at Charlotte Clothing Co. and 150 at Highland Park Mill in 1900.<br />
<br />
The mill workers lived in company-owned villages lacking city water and sewers and endured 60-hour work weeks and child labor. Wealthier Charlotteans saw how diseases spread easily in the crowded, unsanitary mill villages and among workers with “a pallor peculiar to the cotton mill.”<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aYAB5otAugk/XrXSYeFKy5I/AAAAAAAACoY/MGRC3nSAbFgvIdZujnPrdw8dLCrbxY2JgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/GirlsAtMachineLoray-Hine-Loray1908.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="1024" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aYAB5otAugk/XrXSYeFKy5I/AAAAAAAACoY/MGRC3nSAbFgvIdZujnPrdw8dLCrbxY2JgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/GirlsAtMachineLoray-Hine-Loray1908.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i>In the early 1900s, work at N.C. textile mills was harsh, with 60-hour work weeks and, often, child labor. In November 1908 photographer Lewis Hine visited Gastonia's Loray Mill to depict typical scenes like this. His notes say, "Girls
running warping machines in Loray mill, Gastonia, N.C. Many boys and
girls much younger. Boss carefully avoided them, and when I tried to get
a photo which would include a mite of a boy working at a machine, he
was quickly swept out of range. 'He isn't working here, just came in to
help a little.' " </i><i>Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [reproduction
number, LC-DIG-nclc-01342]. See more of Hine's photos at the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/nclc/" target="_blank">Library of Congress</a>. </i></td></tr>
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<br />
Prosperous residents showed open disdain for millhands and their families, Hanchett writes. “They talked of “textile ‘trash’ and ‘the ignorant factory set.’ ” He quotes one Charlottean: “Mill operatives are responsible themselves themselves for the disgrace that seems to rest upon them.”<br />
<br />
The owner of Charlotte Clothing Co. triggered a walkout when he used profane language in the presence of female employees. Workers objected, but the owner responded, “There are no ladies working here.” <br />
<br />
Into this climate in 1900 arose fears of a smallpox outbreak. After a few reports of smallpox among black visitors to Charlotte, Hanchett writes, officials began a vaccination campaign. Such vaccinations were relatively new and involved scratching the arm to give a mild form of the disease, which could create flulike symptoms for a few days.<br />
<br />
The campaign started with public schools. But when the vaccination team moved into the mill villages they met resistance. Some workers were afraid of the vaccination, saying they had been sick. (Taking time off for illness would likely cut into their pay). Some of those early-day anti-vaxxers were even jailed, including a woman and her 4-year-old boy.<br />
<br />
The next day doctors went to the Gingham Mill with the police chief and a squad of officers. Seeing them coming, workers scrambled out doors and windows and would not return until the medical officials left.<br />
<br />
Distrust. Misinformation leading to flawed government decisions. Resistance to health advice among people who felt scorned by the powers-that-be. Hmmm.<br />
<br />
As Mark Twain is reported to have said, history does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.<br />
<br />
⬨ ⬨ ⬨<br />
<br />
<b>WANT TO BUY THE BOOK AND SUPPORT AN INDEPENDENT LOCAL BOOKSTORE?</b><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="https://www.parkroadbooks.com/contact-us" target="_blank">Park Road Books</a> </span>at Park Road Shopping Center is taking orders and delivering curbside. See the website for hours and details. For now, the store is closed Saturdays and Sundays.<br />
<br />
<b>WANT TO DISCUSS HANCHETT</b><b>’S BOOK?</b> <span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="https://www.historysouth.org/sortingbook/" target="_blank">Here’s a discussion guide</a></span> </div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-16822958617076708932020-03-10T17:14:00.000-04:002020-03-10T17:35:22.155-04:00When North Charlotte turned into NoDa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_xw2qSU7HnM/XmgBCz5bzfI/AAAAAAAAClY/HGDfDrdTf3kz2QlT8WgYNtw51jQcpgORgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/NoDa%2BFatCity%2Bsite.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1030" data-original-width="1600" height="412" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_xw2qSU7HnM/XmgBCz5bzfI/AAAAAAAAClY/HGDfDrdTf3kz2QlT8WgYNtw51jQcpgORgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/NoDa%2BFatCity%2Bsite.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>The corner in NoDa where a scruffy deli-live music venue called Fat City once lived. Where the dumpster sits in this photo is where, 20 years ago, you would find bongo circles on Friday nights. Photo: Google Street View</i></td></tr>
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<i>Through a roundabout way, someone emailed me something I wrote in 2002 for <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/" target="_blank">The Charlotte Observer</a> about the NoDa neighborhood. It seems, today, oddly prescient.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Almost two decades later, I can look at the neighborhood, which retains some of its original spirit, and at the column I wrote and see a description of organic, urban change, the kind where small investments create a diversity of uses, and where over time you see what Jane Jacobs called “the self-destruction of diversity,” or “the tendency for outstanding success in cities to destroy itself – purely as a result of being successful.”</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I tried to add a link to the piece in the The Observer’s archives but a Google search didn’t turn up anything. So instead of helping my friends there with a few clicks, I</i><i>’</i><i>ll make a pitch for daily metro newspapers, which are essential to understanding the place where you live and holding your government (which is, in reality, all of us) accountable. <a href="https://account.charlotteobserver.com/subscribe" target="_blank">Here</a></i><i>’</i><i><a href="https://account.charlotteobserver.com/subscribe" target="_blank">s how to subscribe</a>. Better yet, buy an ad.</i><br />
<br />
Feb . 22, 2002: <b>Loving NoDa to death?</b><br />
<br />
The first time I saw the NoDa arts district, it wasn’t NoDa and it wasn<i>’</i>t artsy. It was the early 1980s, and I was looking for a bakery up on 36th Street that someone had recommended.<br />
<br />
I found the bakery, just off North Davidson Street, in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood of emptied-out storefronts. Next door was an aging theater, which I think housed a church, though my memory on that point has dimmed.<br />
<br />
The neighborhood was a memorable remnant of another time and an older Charlotte. It was obviously a mill neighborhood, with a nucleus of half-century-old store buildings and, lurking a block or so away, the hulks of a couple of brick mills. Surrounding it clustered small, almost identical wood-frame mill houses.<br />
<br />
By the ’80s a ghost-town air was seeping into the mortar. Its businesses were fading; their location far from booming south Charlotte meant the aging buildings weren<i>’</i>t even being demolished but were settling into a twilight of abandonment.<br />
<br />
As it happened, I knew that the little mill neighborhood had a name: North Charlotte. North Charlotte is singled out in The Observer’s stylebook, the official reference we use for capitalization, punctuation, spelling and other usage. North Charlotte merited its own entry because of its capital-N North, which recognized it as a distinct neighborhood, not just anything in the general northern part of town, which would be lower-case-n north Charlotte.<br />
<br />
The cake I bought at the bakery wasn<i>’</i>t all that great. But having discovered North Charlotte, I kept an eye on it over the years. I thought it had potential. It seems I was right.<br />
<br />
Around 1985 an artist couple bought a dilapidated block of buildings on North Davidson and in 1990 opened the Center of the Earth Gallery. Other arts types followed, including former used-car salesman Terry Carano, who opened a populist gallery in a scruffy building across Davidson.<br />
<br />
People in this buttoned-down, money-hungry banking city flooded North Charlotte for gallery crawls, concerts, coffee houses and off-the-wall theater. The place was unique in Charlotte: It was scruffy – the opposite of upscale – and it had a sense of place. You could find weird art, people playing bongos, vegetarian food and other deviant urban pursuits. People loved it.<br />
<br />
After a few years, people started calling it NoDa, as in North Davidson. I guess they thought it would be hip, like SoHo in New York. Looking back, that might have been the clearest sign that North Charlotte’s authenticity was at risk.<br />
<br />
NoDa is booming. Real estate signs uptown hype NoDa lofts. New restaurants and bars are open.<br />
<br />
Last week came news of a development proposal. The scruffy building housing the un-slick Pat’s Time For One More bar and two weirdly populist galleries is to be demolished. In their place would go a well-designed three-story building with stores and condos.<br />
<br />
As urban buildings go, this one will be better than about 98 percent of everything getting built in Charlotte. Yes, it will bring investment to the neighborhood. Yes, cities evolve, and this evolution is a sight better than what is evolving out on the outerbelt. And yes, amazingly, über-suburban developer Crosland will do this little urban infill.<br />
<br />
But. But.<br />
<br />
Can you tear down the blue-collar bar and the most avant-garde and wacko gallery and still hold on to what attracted the young, alternative thinkers to start with? The cheap gallery space and the bar serving truckers, punks and artists are an essential part – though not the only part – of the formula that turned North Charlotte into NoDa.<br />
<br />
Can NoDa survive the loss? Maybe. I hope so.<br />
<br />
But of course, that’s NoDa. I think North Charlotte may be gone for good.</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-27320783517165341452019-07-17T19:56:00.000-04:002020-06-11T18:26:43.087-04:00Open Streets, funding culture and arts, densifying single-family zoning, etc.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQJ3uriipZ8/XS-z6vvllOI/AAAAAAAACas/QdEyX5wjZU0elPjDX9mxwG__qW4c2ZplwCLcBGAs/s1600/Manhattanhenge-7-12-2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1222" data-original-width="1600" height="488" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQJ3uriipZ8/XS-z6vvllOI/AAAAAAAACas/QdEyX5wjZU0elPjDX9mxwG__qW4c2ZplwCLcBGAs/s640/Manhattanhenge-7-12-2018.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>This photo shows the event known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the east-west street grid in New York City. I took it July 12, 2018, at Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan. It has nothing to do with this blogpost. I just like the picture. And I like the idea of Manhattanhenge, named after England’s Stonehenge. And I like a good street grid.</i></td></tr>
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I haven’t posted for weeks, due to a variety of life events including travel, the flu and a <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article231492258.html" target="_blank">death in the family</a>.<br />
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So to give Naked City Blog readers something to read that is not Trump news, here’s some of my writing from recent months published in <i>The Charlotte Observer</i> and <i>Charlotte Five</i>, which some non-Charlotte readers may not have seen:<br />
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<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article226749009.html" target="_blank">How should Charlotte pay for the arts?</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article229174404.html" target="_blank">Does Charlotte really need an environment committee?</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.charlottefive.com/opening-up-charlotte-streets/" target="_blank">This festival is just the start of opening up Charlotte’s streets</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article230767824.html" target="_blank">The racist roots of single-family zoning</a><br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-29754912887021053482019-06-08T17:35:00.000-04:002019-06-08T17:35:38.334-04:00‘Charlotte doesn’t have a brand’? Here’s an idea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The famed Excelsior Club, possibly to be demolished, in keeping with local tradition. Photo courtesy Dan Morrill</td></tr>
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Even in the chest-pumping venues of deep-booster Charlotte, an inkling of the problem sometimes creeps in. Janet LaBar, the new CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance even said it out loud <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article231303573.html" target="_blank">in an interview with the Charlotte Observer</a>. “I think Charlotte doesn’t have a brand,” she told reporter Deon Roberts.<br />
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The comment came up today at a regular weekly rump session over eggs, biscuits, livermush and bacon with a group of mostly long-time Charlotte residents, several of them Charlotte natives. I recalled the one-time civic discussion of a possible monument at The Square, the symbolic heart of the city at Trade and Tryon uptown. There was a time when folks were trying to figure out what could be an image that would capture the city’s essence. The late Doug Marlette, then the Observer’s editorial cartoonist, proposed an Eternal Barbecue Pit. Of course, other N.C. barbecue fans noted that Charlotte was famed, not for barbecue, but for being a place <i>without</i> authentic N.C. barbecue joints. Whatever.<br />
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What got put up at The Square was four didactic, symbolic statues representing Commerce, Industry, Transportation, and The Future. Visiting poet Andrei Codrescu once described them on NPR as Socialist-Realist and noted that the gold nuggets pouring on a symbolic banker’s head looked like turds.<br />
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And there’s a nice old-fashioned-looking clock in a small park on one corner. That park is modeled on the terrain of the Pacific Northwest, or maybe it was the Appalachian mountains – neither of them exactly representative of Charlotte’s terrain. It was built after the city used eminent domain to take and demolish the only antebellum store buildings uptown, which were offering not a heavily symbolic statue but actual Commerce.<br />
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Which leads me to the idea our rump session this morning devised. Because when asked, what iconic image does “Charlotte” bring to mind, people said: There isn’t one because Charlotte tears everything down.<br />
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After discussion digressed for a short time into various houses folks had owned and raised kids in only to see new owners tear them down for bigger houses, the idea emerged organically. The iconic image of Charlotte is of buildings being torn down.<br />
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Hence this modest proposal: Create a monument to Charlotte that is a building. It might be a small model of a historic building that should have been preserved. Maybe the Hotel Charlotte. Maybe the Independence Building. Maybe the Masonic Temple. I hope <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/development/article230957368.html" target="_blank">the Excelsior Club</a> does not join this list.<br />
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Then every year on the city’s birthday, the model building is demolished. A new one goes in its place. It will last one year, and then, with pomp and ritual, it too is demolished. And so on. Erasing the past, year after year after year.<br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-37175691551443198522019-03-15T17:54:00.003-04:002019-03-15T17:54:34.265-04:00Greening the greenway<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YZx0CImdIjI/XIl6zJlPCkI/AAAAAAAACRg/Cji8IjKlvrwP98iZX_kv-1zm9ZQH8N8NwCLcBGAs/s1600/TreesCharlotte%2Bplanting.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YZx0CImdIjI/XIl6zJlPCkI/AAAAAAAACRg/Cji8IjKlvrwP98iZX_kv-1zm9ZQH8N8NwCLcBGAs/s640/TreesCharlotte%2Bplanting.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<i> Trees about to be planted beside Briar Creek Greenway. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></div>
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I was walking a short new segment of greenway beside Briar Creek on a sunny day and, about a mile south of the Mint Museum Randolph, I spotted a mass of young trees in plastic pots.<br />
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Of course I had to inspect them. Each plant had a TreesCharlotte tag identifying the species. I had stumbled on a large planting project destined for later in the week for that section of the greenway.<br />
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This was a cheerful discovery. The greenway, built by the Mecklenburg Park and Recreation Department, runs generally beside a stretch of Briar Creek, from the Mint Museum Randolph and its park downstream to Meadowbrook Road. That creek segment has just been re-engineered in a project by Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Storm Water Services. The project aims to improve water quality and mitigate flooding. But it left the creek banks bare.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Looking upstream along toward the Mint Museum Randolph, with the Eastover neighborhood at left. The Storm Water Services creek project left the Briar Creek banks bare. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
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The planting is a partnership among <a href="https://treescharlotte.org/" style="color: #1155cc;">TreesCharlotte</a>, the <a href="https://catawbalands.org/" style="color: #1155cc;">Catawba Lands Conservancy</a>, which protects several dozen acres of wetlands woods through which the greenway runs, and Piedmont Natural Gas, which paid for the trees and which will help with tree stewardship.<br />
TreesCharlotte’s goal is to protect and expand Charlotte’s tree canopy, which is diminishing because of development as well as the aging out of trees planted a century ago.<br />
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It was good to note that the more than 200 trees planted were almost all native species. Here’s a partial list, based on labels on the trees I saw:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wn_iAVkhnKU/XIwesrP6-KI/AAAAAAAACTQ/yXhewR3wQR0TnSfVfn1EN7yoN1fez4J8ACLcBGAs/s1600/witch%2Bhazel%2Bcrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1279" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wn_iAVkhnKU/XIwesrP6-KI/AAAAAAAACTQ/yXhewR3wQR0TnSfVfn1EN7yoN1fez4J8ACLcBGAs/s400/witch%2Bhazel%2Bcrop.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Witch hazel blossoms in late winter.</i></td></tr>
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Paw paw (<i>Asimina triloba</i>)<br />
Little Gem magnolia (<i>Magnolia grandiflora</i>)<br />Persimmon (<i>Diospyros virginiana</i>)<br />Fringe tree, and spring fleecing fringe tree (<i>Chionanthus virginicus</i>)<br />Scarlet oak (<i>Quercus coccinea</i>)<br />White oak (<i>Quercus alba</i>)<br />Burgundy hearts redbud (<i>Cercis canadensis</i>)<br />Oklahoma redbud (<i>Cercis canadensis</i>)<br />Overcup oak (<i>Quercus lyrata</i>)<br />Cherokee princess dogwood (<i>Cornus florida</i>)<br />Red buckeye (<i>Aesculus pavia</i>)<br />Arnold promise witch hazel (<i>Hamamelis mollis</i>).<br />
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Of that list only the witch hazel (pictured at right) is a non-native. This particular variety is a cross between a Japanese and Chinese witch hazel. Other species to be planted include tulip poplar and black gum.<br />
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Why does it matter that they’re native species? Invasive plant species are a huge and growing threat to our environment and its biodiversity. They crowd out native species – think kudzu or wisteria – which alters food sources for wildlife, including insects. Among the major problem plants are privet, English ivy, Japanese stiltgrass and honeysuckle. (Learn more <a href="https://ui.uncc.edu/story/ridding-redlair-invasive-plant-species" style="color: #1155cc;">here</a> and <a href="https://ui.uncc.edu/story/invasive-vine-porcelain-berry-eats-trees-charlotte-nc-park" style="color: #1155cc;">here</a>.)<br />
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Piedmont Natural Gas’ participation is part of a required mitigation for environmental disruptions elsewhere.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuiIR69CKd0/XIweYQ0K0ZI/AAAAAAAACTI/4KeE9GZtNVgP-UUnb2XnIeP77hhJ1CTsQCLcBGAs/s1600/Magnolia%2B-%2BLIttle%2BGem.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuiIR69CKd0/XIweYQ0K0ZI/AAAAAAAACTI/4KeE9GZtNVgP-UUnb2XnIeP77hhJ1CTsQCLcBGAs/s640/Magnolia%2B-%2BLIttle%2BGem.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Magnolia trees awaiting planting. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></div>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-74135524099538194832019-03-11T19:54:00.001-04:002019-11-05T13:36:16.888-05:00Is the “economic development” tail wagging the transit dog?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Map from Charlotte Area Transit System shows current plan for the Silver Line light rail, which would be built after funding is found for it. A closer view of the west section of the route is below.</i></td></tr>
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Some controversy continues over the decision by the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) to route the proposed Silver Line light rail outside of the heart of uptown Charlotte, bypassing the most convenient transfer points with the existing Blue Line. ) See <a href="https://nakedcityblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/five-key-takeaways-from-charlottes.html" target="_blank">“Five key takeaways from Charlotte’s newest transit plan”</a>)<br />
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The Silver Line would run from Matthews, through uptown, out Wilkinson Boulevard to the airport and west to the Gaston County town of Belmont. One idea studied would have run it through uptown via a tunnel under Trade Street. That would add roughly $1 billion to construction costs. In my reporting, I referred to the tunnel idea as costing less to operate over time and shortening travel time considerably. But Brock LaForty, the Carolinas area manager for the consultant WSP, which CATS hired to study Silver Line routes, contacted me to make clear that WSP’s analysis found the tunnel route would save two minutes per trip, a difference he and CATS officials both called marginal, and he said WSP had not analyzed whether the tunnel would cost less to operate over time.<br />
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The statements about travel time and lower operating costs were the personal opinions of Ron Tober, a former CATS CEO with extensive transit planning and operating experience in multiple cities, who was working for WSP as a consultant on the project.<br />
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Tober’s remarks created a bit of a stir between WSP, CATS and Tober. Tober told me he was deliberate in speaking out about CATS’ decision to opt for a route bypassing the heart of uptown Charlotte and the Charlotte Transportation Center in favor of one farther north, along the side of the Brookshire Expressway. Tober said he recognized there might be blowback if he went public with his concerns. And there was. Tober was to have left WSP at the end of March. Instead, he left last week.<br />
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CATS Chief Executive John Lewis t<a href="https://www.wfae.org/post/airport-train-route-stirs-concern-because-it-avoids-center-city#stream/0" target="_blank">old Steve Harrison of WFAE,</a> Charlotte’s public radio station, that the decision not to select the tunnel option was influenced by the city’s goals for economic development. “From a purely mobility standpoint, the tunnel was a great alternative for us,” Lewis told Harrison, but said CATS couldn’t look only at mobility. “Lewis said CATS is a part of the city of Charlotte and the city has other goals, like economic development. The area around I-277 is mostly empty today,” Harrison reported.<br />
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He quoted Lewis: “And being a part of the city, we had to look at it beyond just the mobility aspect of, how do we move people from one point to another” Lewis said. “There were the economic development goals, there was supporting affordable housing.”<br />
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Remember, Lewis works for City Manager Marcus Jones. And the City Council, as well as many others in the community, have deep and appropriate concerns about the city’s need for more affordable housing. Putting affordable housing along the city’s new light rail lines is a longtime – if under-realized – goal.<br />
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But look at the areas near the Brookshire and North Tryon Street where the Silver Line would go. The area is already redeveloping and gentrifying. Residents and small businesses in Belmont, Optimist Park, Druid Hills, Lockwood and the Greenville neighborhood are already worried about land prices zooming upward. (See “<a href="https://www.wfae.org/post/finding-home-north-end-hot-can-it-handle-coming-change" target="_blank">North End Is Hot, But Can It Handle Coming Change?</a>”) It isn’t as if those areas will see no new development without the light rail. To contend the Silver Line is needed for “economic development” is – to put it diplomatically – misguided. Some might even say untethered from reality.<br />
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Plus, there is no funding to build the Silver Line. Today’s GOP leadership at federal and state levels are either virulently anti-transit or just not interested in spending more money on it. Any new taxes to support CATS and the Silver Line would need a state legislative OK and would presumably involve surrounding counties which have not in the past two decades offered to tax their own residents for transit. Do not hold your breath that anything will happen until well after 2020, and quite possibly 2030. In other words gentrification will have swallowed the area now being eyed as needing economic development long before the Silver Line gets built. A deep concern that development needs a boost is, to my eyes, misplaced.<br />
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Is this just the latest impatient development push from Charlotte’s uptown leaders, who have not in my 40 years of residence here ever met a glitzy development project they did not welcome? Are they embarrassed that North Tryon Street is not yet glossy enough? After all, there are two facilities for the homeless on North Tryon near where the Silver Line would run, and the area can look at bit down at the heels. Can’t have that, can we?<br />
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I’m not a transit analyst and not equipped to say whether long-term cost savings of the tunnel would make up for the extra cost to build it, or whether the inconvenience of the Silver Line bypassing the heart of uptown will be a serious impediment to ridership, or not. That deserves clear-eyed study. The local nonprofit Sustain Charlotte contended just that <a href="https://www.sustaincharlotte.org/silverlinealignment" target="_blank">in comments to the Metropolitan Transit Commission</a>. Assessing the way the route will affect real estate development deserves some clear thinking as well.<br />
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“Economic development” brings higher land prices to an area. That makes affordability even harder to provide. The city has not to date ensured that any affordable housing gets built near its existing light rail line. It hopes to rectify that, which is admirable and I wish them well. But so far those plans are embryonic, not a proven and successful strategy.<br />
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So do they want “economic development,” or do they want affordable housing? It is very hard to have both at the same time in one place, especially if that place is in an extremely hot development market, like Charlotte.<br />
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I’m left with this question: Should the city reject without further study what may be a better mobility option – which would benefit all transit riders – in hopes that its still elusive transit-oriented affordable housing wishes bear fruit?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>A closer view of where the Silver Line would run through west Charlotte, across the Catawba River and into the town of Belmont. Map courtesy of CATS</i></td></tr>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-14213509256926333212019-02-28T20:59:00.000-05:002019-11-05T13:36:57.862-05:00Five key takeaways from Charlotte’s newest transit plan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>The chosen Silver Line route is shown in green, at right, along 11th Street. The blue line shows where the Trade Street tunnel would have run. Other options not chosen are a surface route along Trade Street (purple) and a route along the existing Blue Line.</i></td></tr>
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No tunnel uptown. A light rail line crossing the Catawba River into Belmont. Finally light rail to Pineville?<br />
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When the Charlotte Area Transit System’s policy body on Wednesday unanimously adopted an update to its 2030 Transit System Plan, those optimistic visions became part of the official CATS planning process.<br />
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Note to readers: CATS doesn’t currently have money to build any of those things, estimated to cost $6 billion or more. Just so you know.<br />
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But here are some key takeaways from what the <a href="https://charlottenc.gov/cats/about/boards/Pages/mtc.aspx" target="_blank">Metropolitan Transit Commission</a> adopted.</div>
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<b>1. No tunnel uptown.</b> CATS hired consultants WSP (the former Parsons Brinckerhoff) to study a tricky issue – how would the proposed Silver Line (formerly known as the Southeast Corridor), get across all the freeways encircling uptown, then through uptown and head west on its route to Charlotte Douglas International Airport and over the Catawba River?<br />
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CATS’ existing light rail line, the Blue Line and Blue Line Extension, travel through uptown on a pre-existing rail corridor. The proposed Silver Line would not. It’s planned to run alongside Independence Boulevard and then head west, thereby adding the former West Corridor to the Silver Line. Any way you look at it, getting that sucker through uptown will mean complicated engineering and high costs.<br />
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One option WSP proposed was to tunnel under Trade Street to the existing Charlotte Transportation Center, a hub for most bus routes as well as a Blue Line light rail stop, and up West Trade Street to the not-yet-built Gateway Station, which would also hold a new Amtrak station. Gateway Station is also envisioned as the terminus for the long-proposed-but-still-distant Red Line commuter rail to north Mecklenburg. More about that later.<br />
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The MTC opted not for the tunnel but for a route running the Silver Line above ground, beside 11th Street, then alongside the existing Amtrak route beside Elmwood Cemetery, over to Gateway Station and then heading west to the airport. It’s less expensive to build,<strike> although the tunnel route would have cost less to operate, over time, the consultants said, and would have shortened Silver Line travel time considerably</strike>. (Update as of March 8: Brock LaForty, the Carolinas area manager for WSP, says the consultants’ analysis found the tunnel route would save two minutes per trip, a difference <br />
<a name='more'></a>LaForty called marginal, and said WSP had not analyzed whether the tunnel would cost less to operate over time. The statements about travel time and lower operating costs were the personal opinions of Ron Tober, a former CATS CEO who was working for WSP as a consultant on the project until this month.)<br />
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<b>2. At long last, Pineville welcomes light rail.</b> Ever wondered why the Lynx Blue Line ends where it does, just outside the south Mecklenburg municipality of Pineville? The stated reason from Pineville officials when the Blue Line was planned almost two decades ago was that the town didn’t want the high-density, transit-oriented development that would, rail boosters proclaimed, spring up all along the line. So the Blue Line ends at I-485, just outside Pineville. </div>
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“Saved us $30 million,” recalled Ron Tober, who was CATS CEO at the time and who happened to be sitting next to me Wednesday night.<br />
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For the record, to date no high-density, transit-oriented development has yet come anywhere near Pineville.<br />
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And on Oct. 9 of last year, the Town of Pineville adopted a resolution to support the prospect of CATS someday extending its light rail line to Pineville’s Carolina Place Mall and then to Ballantyne in far south Charlotte. “Pineville stakeholders now recognizes (sic) the need to extend the line into Pineville, the Ballantyne area and beyond to ... improve the accessibility of rapid transit and provide a faster link to and from other parts of the Greater Charlotte area ...” the resolution states.<br />
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<b>3. Finally, light rail to the airport, and into Gaston County. Someday. </b>The proposed transit corridor formerly known as the West Corridor, and (sort of) planned to be a streetcar is now officially part of the proposed Silver Line. It would be light rail along Wilkinson Boulevard past the airport, across the Catawba River and end in the Gaston County town of Belmont. This would be CATS’ first light rail venture across county lines. Further, an ongoing Regional Transit Study would evaluate light rail to downtown Gastonia.<br />
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Gastonia Mayor Walker Reid III on Wednesday presented a city proclamation supporting the idea of light rail to Gastonia. Politically, Gaston County has been deep red, with Republican county commissioners less than a decade ago complaining that greenways were, in essence, creeping socialism. So this is progress of a sort.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94wZ-b8CdKw/XHiIafJ7_hI/AAAAAAAACPw/9w1_yRF0L1Q6VfcXvP7ZMAlEr0nHTxCNgCLcBGAs/s1600/MTC-West%2BCorridor%2Broute%2Boptions.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1085" data-original-width="1600" height="434" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94wZ-b8CdKw/XHiIafJ7_hI/AAAAAAAACPw/9w1_yRF0L1Q6VfcXvP7ZMAlEr0nHTxCNgCLcBGAs/s640/MTC-West%2BCorridor%2Broute%2Boptions.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>The West Corridor, now renamed part of the Silver Line, would run along Wilkinson Boulevard (the route shown in purple) and cross the Catawba River into Belmont in Gaston County.</i></td></tr>
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<b>4. Still no commuter rail to north Mecklenburg, for now.</b> The updated plan calls for short-, medium- and long-term options heading north. Short-term would be enhanced express-lane bus service along I-77 to and from the north Mecklenburg towns, using the soon-to-open I-77 toll lanes. Medium term would be bus rapid transit from Gateway Station to Mooresville in southern Iredell County. This service would be all-day, including nights and weekends. Bus rapid transit (a.k.a. BRT) uses dedicated lanes so it’s faster than regular bus service.<br />
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Long-term, the plan would be to keep talking with Norfolk Southern about using its rarely used rail right-of-way from uptown Charlotte to Mooresville for rail transit – maybe commuter rail as was originally proposed.<br />
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<b>5. Even some Union County enthusiasm.</b> If Gaston County is red, then Union County is, if such a thing is possible, even deeper red. Nevertheless, the town of Stallings passed a resolution asking CATS to at least study the possibility of extending the Silver Line from Matthews into Union County and to a potential terminus in Stallings. So CATS will study that.<br />
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Remember, though, there’s no money for CATS to build any new light rail. And to date not one of the surrounding counties has proposed taxing its own residents, as Mecklenburg does with its half-cent sales tax for transit, to help build out the transit system.<br />
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<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article215031055.html" target="_blank">Read more details here: “Charlotte unveils new transit options.”</a><br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-12114263233806876812019-02-06T20:46:00.000-05:002019-02-28T21:16:34.503-05:00Hate tax revaluation time? Then let’s do it more often. Seriously.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6vcPoKvXXLU/XFuLjGppXyI/AAAAAAAACNg/glMr9gkyiyM-GRovYMUR7PacgVnvEWIhACLcBGAs/s1600/cherry%2Bgentrification.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6vcPoKvXXLU/XFuLjGppXyI/AAAAAAAACNg/glMr9gkyiyM-GRovYMUR7PacgVnvEWIhACLcBGAs/s640/cherry%2Bgentrification.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Tear-downs that make way for large new houses, like these in the Cherry neighborhood, drive up property values of smaller, older houses nearby. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
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It’s tax revaluation time! Are you excited? We aren’t either. Seeing your property value skyrocket is only fun if you are planning to sell it ASAP. For most of us who aren’t real estate speculators, higher values don’t mean more money shoots into our bank accounts, because we can’t easily convert property into extra income unless we decide to raise goats, chickens or marijuana in the back yard.<br />
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Nevertheless, revaluations are an important equity tool. If you wait years to do them, you’re giving a tax benefit to wealthier property owners with rising values and giving a comparative tax penalty to properties whose values did not go up as much, or not at all.<br />
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If that sounds confusing, read on.<br />
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Mecklenburg County has been revaluing its property every seven or eight years. That means someone whose mansion was valued at (we’ll keep to round numbers here) $1 million at the last valuation has been paying taxes on that figure, <br />
<a name='more'></a>even though that same mansion is now valued at $3 million. So $2 million of its value has been, essentially, tax free for some of those eight years.<br />
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Now, consider someone whose house was worth $100,000 eight years ago and is now worth $150,000. Yes, they’ve gotten $50,000 in value tax free for some of those eight years. But ... compare that with $2 million.<br />
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Finally, someone whose property value went down has been paying taxes on a value that’s too high. For this particular revaluation there aren’t likely to be many who fit that description, since the 2011 revaluation came amid a deep real estate slump with hundreds of foreclosures, followed by recent years of dramatically higher land prices.<br />
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In 1990, then-Charlotte Observer reporters Liz Chandler and Foon Rhee did an exhaustive comparison of land sales prices versus assessed values from the previous revaluation in 1983. They wrote:<br />
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“Thousands of Mecklenburg County homeowners will pay more than their share of property taxes this year. And their extra taxes will allow tax benefits for a smaller group of homeowners – most with higher-priced homes. Property is being taxed unfairly because county officials are not keeping up-to-date tax values on homes, according to an Observer study of 3,425 home sales last year. That’s because the tax office only appraises property countywide once every four years.” [In recent years the county has revalued every seven or eight years.]<br />
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The reporters explained:<br />
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“If the tax burden was evenly spread this year – the last year before a new appraisal – all homeowners would pay taxes on 83 percent of the market value of their homes, the study indicates. But that isn’t the case. Areas where home values have risen sharply are likely to be taxed on less than 83 percent. And slower-growing, low- and middle-income areas are more likely to be taxed on more than 83 percent.”<br />
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The Observer research, comparing sales prices to assessed tax value, found that during those years county tax officials generally undervalued commercial property more than residential property. That means residential property owners were, in essence, subsidizing business properties. Commercial properties were, on average, assessed and taxed at 65 percent of their market value, the newspaper found, compared to an overall property valuation countywide of 79 percent of its market value. (County tax officials responded that commercial property was harder to assess.)</div>
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Some important caveats are needed:<br />
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One: A tax revaluation does not automatically mean everyone’s tax bill rises. Elected officials set a tax rate, and they can lower the rate so that, on average, no one’s bill goes up. But if your property is above or below the average, your tax bill would still change, going up or down, depending. If you’re a politician, you know rising property values will have many voters angry, even before the tax rate is set. So if they’re going to be angry regardless, it’s tempting to go ahead and bring in a bit more revenue by not setting a so-called “revenue-neutral” tax rate, since city and county needs are growing along with the population.<br />
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Two: According to <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article225323030.html" target="_blank">analysis from Charlotte Observer writers Ely Portillo and Gavin Off</a>, some of the highest percentage increases in value this year are in close-in, predominantly black areas: Grier Heights, Washington Heights, Druid Hills, Villa Heights and Belmont. “On average, property values in those neighborhoods increased by 126 to 156 percent. Many individual properties doubled or even tripled in value,” the Observer wrote.<br />
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That means “equity” in property assessments this year could look inequitable, if low-income and minority property owners are hit with proportionately higher tax values. (See <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article225295175.html#navlink=SecList" target="_blank">Her home’s tax value nearly tripled.</a>)<br />
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There is a better way. Revalue property more often. Every two years would be more equitable and prevent the heart-stopping (and for some people, budget-busting) increases that come from long delays between revaluations. Since 1983 the county has for a variety of reasons mostly deviated from its every-four-years revaluation goal, although they say they plan to resume it.<br />
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The 1990 Observer article found that across the country, many local governments revalue more often than every eight years. The reporters wrote:<br />
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“In Phoenix, Maricopa County tax assessor Ira Friedman, said: ‘If you have spiraling increases in values, it makes sense from an equity standpoint to revalue property every year. It’s commonly done nationwide. It’s really a simple system.’ ”</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-13865756459125904012019-01-16T21:15:00.001-05:002019-02-28T21:17:25.724-05:00How did Charlotte’s big bike-ped trail run out of money?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x2Uk63nFBRg/XD_eT1pPMiI/AAAAAAAACLk/baCnoW6oVfsPWs1lyD7rNWOKwH0dYtbzgCLcBGAs/s1600/Shoppers%2Bon%2Btrail_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x2Uk63nFBRg/XD_eT1pPMiI/AAAAAAAACLk/baCnoW6oVfsPWs1lyD7rNWOKwH0dYtbzgCLcBGAs/s640/Shoppers%2Bon%2Btrail_4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Not for recreation only: The Little Sugar Creek Greenway beside Kings Drive in Midtown makes a convenient route for shoppers. The Cross-Charlotte Trail is envisioned as both recreation and transportation. Photo: Nancy Pierce</i></td></tr>
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What should we make of the news this month that the proposed Cross-Charlotte Trail, a joint city-county project, is some $77 million short of the city money it needs to be finished?<br />
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That’s essentially what the Charlotte City Council was told Jan. 7 – that to complete the 26-mile bike-pedestrian trail across the county would require an estimated $77 million beyond the $38 million in city money previously allocated (and mostly spent).<br />
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Did costs balloon along the way? Why was the council seemingly blindsided? And what happens next?<br />
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Plenty of finger-pointing has ensued. City Manager Marcus Jones <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article224282005.html" target="_blank">told the Charlotte Observer</a>, “I’m going to own this.”<br />
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After talking with a variety of folks about the trial and its funding problem, my conclusions:<br />
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No. 1: Not enough people were paying enough attention to the original cost estimates for a trail through the heart of the city, or to how rising construction and land costs everywhere would inevitably drive up costs.<br />
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No. 2: City and county governments still work in separate silos. Early city estimates, dating to 2012, relied too heavily on what the county had spent to build greenways, apparently with city officials not realizing the county greenways generally only get built where land acquisition is free or cheap and where topography is not complex.<br />
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No. 3: The City Council wasn’t updated regularly enough, especially as land and construction costs began rising after 2012, as the city finally pulled out of the recession.<br />
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No. 4: Turnover in city leadership probably did not help.<br />
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<b>How a city trail is related to the county’s greenway program</b><br />
<b><br /></b>Some background. One essential fact to understand is that Charlotte has no park and recreation department. In 1992, the Charlotte parks department was absorbed into the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department. Whether that was a good move is a topic for another day. The county park department plans, funds, builds and maintains greenways, which typically run beside creeks, in large part because land there tends not to be developed, or else a candidate for the county’s floodplain buyout or creek restoration programs. In other words, getting right-of-way hasn’t required a lot of county greenway money.<br />
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It also helps to know that in 2010, in the depths of the economic downturn here, the cash-strapped county slashed its park department budget by almost half. It has not restored staffing to 2010 levels, despite a county population increase from 2010 to 2017 of more than 157,000 people – larger than the entire population of Charleston, or Asheville.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2enM8LepgeY/XD_eUPicgdI/AAAAAAAACL4/j0JK5lujapcxD8zwT8-W1xwV7YhGXhxyACEwYBhgL/s1600/Toby%2BCreek%2BGway_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2enM8LepgeY/XD_eUPicgdI/AAAAAAAACL4/j0JK5lujapcxD8zwT8-W1xwV7YhGXhxyACEwYBhgL/s640/Toby%2BCreek%2BGway_001.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>The Toby Creek Greenway near UNC Charlotte is an already-open part of the Cross-Charlotte Trail. Photo: Nancy Pierce</i></td></tr>
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Because the county’s greenway expenditures haven’t been robust, large gaps exist in the county greenway master plan. (See <a href="https://plancharlotte.org/story/mecklenburg-should-support-greenways" target="_blank">“</a><a href="https://plancharlotte.org/story/toby-creek-greenway-plan-mecklenburg" target="_blank">The long, long path for one Charlotte greenway</a><a href="https://plancharlotte.org/story/mecklenburg-should-support-greenways" target="_blank">”</a> about the Toby Creek Greenway.) In 1999 Mecklenburg County adopted a 10-year-master plan goal of 185 greenway miles. By 2008 only a cumulative total of 30 miles had been built. By 2018 the number had inched up to 47 miles of developed greenways. (For more on the slow rate of greenway building, see <a href="https://plancharlotte.org/story/mecklenburg-should-support-greenways" target="_blank">“Why does greenway vision remain unfulfilled?”</a><br />
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In 2012 the city – which considers greenways part of the transportation system but which hasn’t really built any – proposed helping the county build some of those unfinished miles of its greenway plan, generally along Little Sugar Creek, to create a 26-mile bike-pedestrian trail from the S.C. border near Pineville to the Cabarrus County line north of UNC Charlotte. It would be a $38 million project, the proposal said, paid through a series of bond issues. To date, three bond issues have funded $38 million.<br />
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<a href="https://plancharlotte.org/display/cross-charlotte-trail-map" target="_blank"><b><i>Follow the Cross-Charlotte Trail across this map</i></b></a></div>
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<b>Why was the budget estimate so far off?</b><br />
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<b></b>Put together the puzzle pieces and what emerges is a picture of a project with too few people paying attention to its budget.<br />
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The city proposed the trail in 2012, says Charlotte Department of Transportation Director Liz Babson. But anyone who was following construction costs in Charlotte and familiar with the county’s greenway methods (with as little capital outlay as possible) should have known a construction estimate dating to 2012 might have a few problems. Further, the parts the city agreed to build are through much more intensely developed areas, and areas where no easy trail routes can be found.<br />
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<b>Did city transportation staff know much about county greenways?</b><br />
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<b></b>Further complicating that 2012 budget estimate from the Charlotte Department of Transportation is that they based it on the county’s per-mile greenway construction costs. Both Babson and former CDOT Director Danny Pleasant, now an assistant city manager, described that as one of the problems. Remember, the county was building on cheap or free land, and not where land or construction costs would be high. As Babson told me this week, “We had never built a trail before.” The city applied county per-mile construction estimates to greenway segments the county “had chosen not to build,” she said. “And now we know why.”<br />
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<b>Changing faces among city staff and elected officials</b><br />
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<b></b>In addition, city government was seeing plenty of turnover in high places. City Manager Curt Walton retired in 2012, as the Cross-Charlotte Trail plans were being hatched. Three more city managers have come since then: Ron Carlee (2013-2016), interim Ron Kimble (half of 2016), and Marcus Jones (December 2016-today). Department heads have changed as well. Today’s CDOT director, Babson, has been in that job only a year.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCqZVbBFJjw/XD_jazxieGI/AAAAAAAACMQ/bR7uwGv-K6wQeNufVAFtD793RUyigCDOQCLcBGAs/s1600/LSCG%2B%2540%2BParkwood__003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCqZVbBFJjw/XD_jazxieGI/AAAAAAAACMQ/bR7uwGv-K6wQeNufVAFtD793RUyigCDOQCLcBGAs/s400/LSCG%2B%2540%2BParkwood__003.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Little Sugar Creek Greenway at Parkwood </i><br />
<i>Avenue. Photo: Nancy Pierce</i></td></tr>
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Further, five more mayors have served since 2012. Anthony Foxx left in 2013 to become U.S. Transportation Secretary. Succeeding him were Patsy Kinsey, Patrick Cannon, Dan Clodfelter, Jennifer Roberts and now Mayor Vi Lyles. It probably didn't help that Cannon was indicted, resigned and pleaded guilty in 2014, creating months of upheaval in city government.<br />
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Even the 11-member City Council has seen unusually large turnover. Six of the 11 council members were new to the job in 2017.<br />
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<b>Should City Council members have been so surprised?</b><br />
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It’s clear from their reactions that City Council members didn’t understand the scope of the funding shortfall.<br />
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You can’t help but wonder whether more robust cooperation across the city-county governments (can you say “tall silos”?) might have left council members more informed about the overall greenway program and its budget-constrained approach.<br />
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Hints were dropped here and there, but it’s hard to fault council members for not picking up on them. Several council members recall being told early in 2018 at a council retreat that the $38 million couldn’t fund the whole Cross-Charlotte Trail. But remember, six new council members were still in the drinking-from-a-firehose-of-information stage.<br />
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In addition, the <a href="https://charlottenc.gov/charlottefuture/CIP/Documents/XCLTMasterPlanChapter3.pdf" target="_blank">2016 Cross-Charlotte Trail Master Plan</a> refers to the need for more money. “It is anticipated that resources in addition to the bond proceeds will be required to construct and maintain the trail,” it says. And, “We recommend that future bond allocations be considered as the primary funding opportunity to pay for large remaining gaps in costs.”<br />
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But come on. Those warnings are in the text on pages 149 and 150.<br />
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Babson conceded to me this week, “I don’t think we were in front of council as often as we needed to be.”<br />
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<b>What happens next?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>City Manger Jones, in an interview with local NPR station WFAE, said, “The commitment is to finish the Cross Charlotte Trail in its original version.” He said he’s looking at options, including possibly using a portion of the city’s tourism tax funding to pay for some of the trail.<br />
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Another likely possibility is that as development occurs along the unfinished portions of the trail’s route, such as along the Blue Line Extension light rail, the city would work with developers and encourage them to build some segments or to dedicate land to the trail project, the way they’d get developers to build a sidewalk or pay for a traffic signal.<br />
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There could be more bond issues, since the city holds bond referendums every few years for other infrastructure projects such as street widening and intersection expansions. State or federal grant programs might help with some of the costs.<br />
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Council member Greg Phipps, a veteran of the council’s transportation and planning committee, predicted Monday the council would continue to support the trail. “The vision of the trail hasn’t changed. We’ve come this far. We have to find a way to complete this thing.”<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_Yr-78I2tpg/XD_eTyKfe6I/AAAAAAAACL8/GOkhkQ3tjr08IBnVdNGk26B7jePIOoSTgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Walk%2Bto%2BSchool_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_Yr-78I2tpg/XD_eTyKfe6I/AAAAAAAACL8/GOkhkQ3tjr08IBnVdNGk26B7jePIOoSTgCEwYBhgL/s640/Walk%2Bto%2BSchool_02.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Students use Torrence Creek Greenway in Huntersville as a transportation route on a Walk To School Day in 2015. Photo: Nancy Pierce</i></td></tr>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-50074425516430848312019-01-03T19:40:00.002-05:002019-01-07T16:03:50.776-05:00Time to have that uncomfortable talk. I mean about parking.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FP_qIVq59nk/XC6pgw2HlpI/AAAAAAAACJ4/8xBCJDU2OJsEu-mCE04tltwAgbstehYrwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Walmart%2Bon%2BAlb.Rd%2B.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="1003" height="374" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FP_qIVq59nk/XC6pgw2HlpI/AAAAAAAACJ4/8xBCJDU2OJsEu-mCE04tltwAgbstehYrwCEwYBhgL/s640/Walmart%2Bon%2BAlb.Rd%2B.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>A Walmart in east Charlotte offers a gracious plenty of parking. Photo: Google Maps satellite view</i></td></tr>
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It’s a question without easy answers. But that just makes it even more important to confront, and find a guiding strategy. It’s time for Charlotte to talk about parking.<br />
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Parking is both blessing and curse for any city built – as Charlotte mostly was – around private automobile use. <br />
<br />
There’s a lot to curse. An admittedly incomplete list of problems parking lots cause would include the way they devour valuable land space that could hold housing, stores, workplaces, parks, community gardens, tree canopy, pretty much any use valued by city residents. (See below for a short list of what could go into one parking space.) They send storm water runoff cascading into local surface waters (i.e. creeks), polluting them and causing more frequent flooding onto the floodplains where foolish development was allowed. Remember Hurricane Florence in September? Get used to it, as climate change brings more heavy rainstorms. They add to the urban heat island effect, pushing the rising summer temperatures even higher. And the need to provide parking creates significant headaches for small businesses.<br />
<br />
<div>
And finally this: With so much parking both “free” and available, we almost always hop into the car instead of asking, could we walk? Bicycle? Take a bus or light rail?<br />
<br />
But parking lots can also be a blessing in a city built to make driving the automatic choice for almost all of us. For most residents here, any alternatives to private automobile travel – walking, bicycling, scootering, transit or ride-shares – aren’t available or competitive in terms of time, hassle and cost. And when we drive, we need temporary lodging for our vehicles.<br />
<br />
I was reminded of this late last month. Rain was pelting the asphalt as I wheeled into what looked like the last available parking spot at Cotswold shopping center, then sloshed across the asphalt for last-minute Christmas shopping. I was glad to find even that terrible parking place.<br />
<br />
But should two weeks in December really determine the size of parking lots year-round? It’s January now, and across <br />
<a name='more'></a>most of Charlotte those huge lots at our shopping centers revert to their 50-other-weeks-a year condition: plenty of open, “free” spaces.<br />
<br />
It’s time for Charlotte policy-makers to figure out how to get a handle on parking. How can we encourage smarter use of our land while admitting cars will be with us, even if, we hope, in smaller numbers? Can we acknowledge the social inequities embedded in our autopilot acquiescence to providing all the parking anyone needs for the Saturday before Christmas? Can we ask:<br />
<br />
• How much parking should be required? How much should be allowed?<br />
<br />
• Why isn’t more parking shared between day- and night-time uses, and how can the city encourage more sharing?<br />
<br />
• Why should churches, schools and other institutions get a free pass to expand surface parking lots into nearby neighborhoods almost without limit? <br />
<br />
• How in terms of parking regulations, do we treat places differently, since places in the city are different? Ballantyne is not NoDa, and University City is not Myers Park.<br />
<br />
• Can the city lead on this issue? Could it assist with financing private, shared parking decks, more space-efficient and environmentally prudent but more expensive to build?<br />
<br />
• Couldn’t some parking lot and meter revenue help fund something helpful?<br />
<br />
City planners <a href="https://charlotteudo.org/transit-oriented-development/" target="_blank">are rewriting ordinances</a> governing development in light rail station areas, called Transit Oriented Development (TOD) zoning. They propose eliminating any required minimum number of parking spots except for restaurants within 200 feet of single-family homes. They believe (with reason) that providing easy, “free” parking close to light rail stops encourages people to drive when they could walk, cycle or take transit. <br />
<br />
The problem, of course, is that not offering easy parking doesn’t stop people from driving in from areas where transit isn’t readily available and walking isn’t safe or efficient. Yes, I personally will sometimes drive 15 minutes to get to a light rail station where I can “park for free”<span style="font-size: large;">*</span> and then ride to South End or NoDa, but I am not a typical Charlottean. Example: For me to leave home and arrive at the Evening Muse in NoDa for an 8 p.m. event would be a one-hour transit trip, and that’s with a bus stop a quick, 5-minute walk from our house. Driving is 15-20 minutes.<br />
<br />
Further, developers will tell you that lenders require a certain amount of parking, even if the city doesn’t. Yes, easing the TOD parking requirement may well be a smart thing, but it’s no silver bullet that kills the parking monster.<br />
<br />
Just imagine what could go in one 220-square-foot parking space: room for 10 bicycles, space for lunch with 15 friends, 3 office work spaces, or one small studio in Paris. That fun factoid comes courtesy of author Taras Grescoe (@Grescoe on Twitter) and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York (@ITDP_HQ on Twitter). <br />
<br />
So as Charlotte dives into a new comprehensive plan, <a href="https://charlottenc.gov/charlottefuture/2040Plan/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">Charlotte Future 2040</a>, can we please take a harder look at parking? We’re going to need some of that space for other things.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
————</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">*</span> Why is “free” in quote marks? Because parking is never really free. The cost is embedded in rents you pay, the cost of goods you buy from merchants who must build those parking lots or pay the cost in their leases. <br />
<br />
Planner and author Daniel Shoup studies parking and believes it’s been subsidized in a way that’s inequitable. “Wherever you go – a grocery store, say – a little bit of the money you pay for products is siphoned away to pay for parking," Shoup says (as quoted in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-bad-for-everyone" target="_blank">this 2014 article in Vox</a>). "My idea is simple: if somebody doesn't have a car, they shouldn't have to pay for parking.” <br />
<br />
Shoup estimates the national tally for public subsidies for parking at $127 billion.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dzY0yTa_iLk/XC6qnuMEznI/AAAAAAAACKE/D0E8WdqP1L8U99OYMgjQ8RjAJPzcyd1MwCLcBGAs/s1600/Church%2Blot%2Bon%2Ba%2Bnon-Sunday%2Bmorning.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1018" height="409" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dzY0yTa_iLk/XC6qnuMEznI/AAAAAAAACKE/D0E8WdqP1L8U99OYMgjQ8RjAJPzcyd1MwCLcBGAs/s640/Church%2Blot%2Bon%2Ba%2Bnon-Sunday%2Bmorning.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Apparently Google's Satellite View camera did not take the photo of this south Charlotte church lot on a Sunday morning.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-38958746992985505882018-12-04T16:09:00.000-05:002019-01-03T20:17:52.580-05:00Charlotte fantasies, past and future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ek8BY8ock2k/XAbo9X6VoJI/AAAAAAAACIE/DO3X3zpC21clsZuD1RreAQfzdvS8g92UACLcBGAs/s1600/NorthPark%2BMUD%2Bstudent.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ek8BY8ock2k/XAbo9X6VoJI/AAAAAAAACIE/DO3X3zpC21clsZuD1RreAQfzdvS8g92UACLcBGAs/s640/NorthPark%2BMUD%2Bstudent.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>UNC Charlotte design student presents plans imagining a transit-oriented neighborhood, North Park. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
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It was 250 years ago this week, Dec. 3, 1768, that the City
of Charlotte was officially born with an act by the royal governor of the
colony of North Carolina. (<a href="https://www.cmstory.org/exhibits/history-timeline-rural-beginnings-1730-1772/1768-charlotte-chartered" target="_blank">Read that charter here.</a>) Monday, the city celebrated in a ceremony uptown with
a sound stage and music so extremely amplified that you couldn’t talk to
anyone, with birthday cake and food trucks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QT_4OKMuEDU/XAbrBcH_mxI/AAAAAAAACIc/bzr1uN2kFC8Q89s1aMnw7Wr7wAbmApYQwCLcBGAs/s1600/CLT250-JimWms-ThosPolk%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1580" data-original-width="821" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QT_4OKMuEDU/XAbrBcH_mxI/AAAAAAAACIc/bzr1uN2kFC8Q89s1aMnw7Wr7wAbmApYQwCLcBGAs/s400/CLT250-JimWms-ThosPolk%2Bcopy.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Jim Williams as Thomas Polk</i></td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t a fancy, planned-for-two-years kind of celebration
– no fireworks, parades with visiting dignitaries, planes flying banners
overhead. But of course, officialdom in Charlotte for as long as I’ve lived
here has been more interested in pushing future growth and prosperity than in examining
and learning from the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That 1768 charter designated five white men to be “city
directors,” and one of them, Thomas Polk, was loitering near the sound stage Monday,
waiting for the noon speechifying. Polk, or really, local history enthusiast
Jim Williams, was resplendent in a black tricorne hat, buff-colored waistcoat,
and knee breeches and frock coat of the color that 200 years later would be known
as Carolina Blue. Polk – the real one – was a shrewd fellow of Scots-Irish ancestry who before eventually moving on to Tennessee played a key role in the city’s first – but by no means last – spec development.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Polk and a few others, on their own dime, built a log
courthouse where two trading paths intersected, in hopes of giving the young
town a competitive edge to be designated the Mecklenburg County seat. Which would,
of course, make their own property more valuable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It worked. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And for a city on the make, what could be a more fitting
foundational story?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b>WE MOVE FROM 1768 TO ... SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
After the noontime birthday festivities that celebrated the past, I headed off to hear, instead, about an imagined future – <br />
<a name='more'></a>one that would transform an unattractive, car- and truck-filled intersection into a neighborhood of shops, sidewalks, fruit trees and, of course, a brewery.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
First-year Master of Urban Design students at UNC
Charlotte’s College of Arts + Architecture were presenting their fall semester
project: Envisioning a transit-oriented neighborhood near the Old Concord Road
light rail stop. It’s just northeast of the Eastway Drive-North Tryon Street
intersection, one of the city’s many areas built solely for the benefit of car
and truck drivers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The assignment from Professor Deb Ryan was to draw a plan
for the area generally within a 10-minute walk from the station. After she assigned it, Ryan said, she learned that Mecklenburg County had bought a large chunk of the area – the almost-defunct old North Park Mall site, with its vast potholed asphalt parking lot and derelict empty spaces – and planned to turn it into community services offices.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although such student plans are essentially just theoretical
exercises of the imagination, the students opted to incorporate some of the
county’s plans into their own – in hopes the county staff might see some ideas
and cooperate in helping transform the whole area. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ojJfDobuyI4/XAbrXfEVq-I/AAAAAAAACIk/GIKgiLglDqAhnhpCQ_Ag0PvDUi1j-Ct2gCLcBGAs/s1600/NorthPark.model.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ojJfDobuyI4/XAbrXfEVq-I/AAAAAAAACIk/GIKgiLglDqAhnhpCQ_Ag0PvDUi1j-Ct2gCLcBGAs/s640/NorthPark.model.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i>Cardboard model of the envisioned North Park neighborhood. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The students offered a vision – and a nifty cardboard model arrayed on the floor – of a walkable neighborhood with plenty of trees, housing and offices set out along streets lined with stores. They envisioned an elementary school, a research campus outpost of UNC Charlotte, which is 4 miles to the north, and a generous helping of affordable housing.<br />
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“What we tried to do is push the idea of health and
walkability,” Ryan told a small audience of community members and professional
urban designers. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The area today has few attributes of walkability. Although
it has some begrudging sidewalks, things are built far enough apart that
walking isn’t attractive. The stores and restaurants are splayed out along busy
thoroughfares with parking lots in front and between them. Many of the smaller
streets don’t connect to anything. It’s hard to cross the busy streets. More
walkable areas, by contrast, have nearby places you’d want to walk to,
interesting shops and businesses set along the sidewalk, lots of connections,
and plenty of residents close by so enough people are out and about to make the area
feel safer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As one student said,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“We had to kind of merge reality with fantasy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So they proposed, among other things:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>12 new connections for streets that, today,
dead end.</li>
<li>Both a main street running through the area, and a perpendicular market street that would cross Eastway Drive.</li>
<li>A brewery in an old warehouse.</li>
<li>Flats, town homes, and single family houses</li>
<li>Mixed-use buildings with parking decks hidden on the inside, a form known as a "Texas doughnut."</li>
<li>Reconfiguring the Eastway-Tryon intersection to slow the cars bulleting from Eastway onto Tryon.</li>
</ul>
<br />
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Possibly the most controversial proposal (or it would be, if this was truly being proposed rather than an in-class exercise) was to reduce by almost half the existing "park" land nearby. </div>
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Those quotes are because the “park” – <a href="https://www.mecknc.gov/ParkandRec/Parks/ParksByRegion/NorthRegion/Pages/EastwayPark.aspx" target="_blank">Eastway Park</a> – is
disconnected from everything around it. Its 90 acres are reached via a long driveway (lacking
a sidewalk) off the busy Eastway Drive thoroughfare, with no crosswalk or
pedestrian light to allow pedestrians to get there. The driveway leads to a
grassy area with two soccer fields, a big surface parking lot and a disc golf
course.</div>
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Although the park is directly next to the railroad, and only a short distance from the Old Concord road light rail station, you can’t walk between the station and the park, thanks to some fenced-off freight rail lines running directly beside the park.<br />
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In other words, Eastway Park is a design fail. In my few visits
there, admittedly a highly random sample, it’s only lightly used unless there’s
a ball game going on. The county park department plans to build a new
recreation center there – although that won’t do anything to improve
the park’s unwalkable, isolated site.</div>
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Hence the students’ idea to take some of the unused park
land and built affordable housing there, to improve the “eyes on the park” for
safety, and to give lower-income residents a way to easily access a rec center
and park. They propose the same for the Hidden Valley Park in the nearby Hidden Valley neighborhood.</div>
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Farther down the fantasy end of the spectrum, although
intriguing, was this idea: a series of “productive greenspaces” where trees and
other food-producing plantings line streets and small parks. You could walk
down a sidewalk and pick an apple. Or a peach, or maybe pawpaws.</div>
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Will any of it get built? There’s no way to know, because
it’s currently just a gleam in the eyes of a group of graduate students. But as Thomas Polk might have advised back in 1768, when he was building a courthouse on spec with visions of town growth: Why not dream big?</div>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-76785437571476147342018-11-13T13:46:00.000-05:002018-11-13T13:46:16.402-05:00Do women pay a transportation ‘pink tax’?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is a quick note, following my previous post, “<a href="https://nakedcityblog.blogspot.com/2018/11/cities-for-women-transit-and-gendered.html" target="_blank">Cities for woman: Transit and gendered spaces,</a>” which raised the question of whether city planners and designers take women’s experiences and needs sufficiently into account.<br />
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A survey from <a href="https://wagner.nyu.edu/rudincenter" target="_blank">New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management</a> concluded that women in New York pay, on average $26 to $50 a month more for transportation due to concerns about harassment and safety.<br />
<br />
According to an article in <a href="https://www.amny.com/" target="_blank">amNewYork</a>, the survey took place during September and October and asked New Yorkers about travel habits. <a href="https://www.amny.com/transit/pink-tax-nyc-transportation-1.23342540" target="_blank">Read more here</a> and <a href="https://wagner.nyu.edu/rudincenter/2018/11/pink-tax-transportation-womens-challenges-mobility" target="_blank">here</a>. Of the women who responded, 75 percent had experienced harassment or theft on public transportation, compared with 47 percent of male respondents.<br />
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And 29 percent of the female respondents, compared with 8 percent of men, said they avoided taking public transportation late at night because of “a perceived safety threat.” From that figure, the report authors estimated women’s higher transportation costs.</div>
Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-26814135305836235452018-11-05T16:48:00.000-05:002019-02-28T21:18:42.584-05:00Cities for women? Transit and gendered spaces<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3Z8MTrEZX_I/W-C1dNPv5cI/AAAAAAAACF4/XpokWw7jp-MfLK0TIa2iKDh84IQt0Q66QCLcBGAs/s1600/CATS%2Bbus-Willamor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1024" height="456" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3Z8MTrEZX_I/W-C1dNPv5cI/AAAAAAAACF4/XpokWw7jp-MfLK0TIa2iKDh84IQt0Q66QCLcBGAs/s640/CATS%2Bbus-Willamor.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bus route changes that force longer walks, especially at night, can be particularly discouraging to female transit passengers. Photo: Charlotte Area Transit System bus, in 2010, by James Willamor via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I recently found myself listening in on a group call with <a href="http://people.virginia.edu/~dgs4g/" target="_blank">Daphne Spain</a>, author of <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807843574/gendered-spaces/" target="_blank"><i>Gendered Spaces</i></a> (1992) and <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/how-women-saved-the-city" target="_blank"><i>How Women Saved the City</i></a> (2002). Spain, a sociologist at University of Virginia, studies and writes about ways women and men historically have been treated differently in both public and private spaces. And I now have two more books on my To Read list.<br />
<br />
Spain talked about public transit, among other topics, and at one point noted India has created women-only trains because of the extreme harassment women there can experience.<br />
<br />
As it happened, the conversation came a few days after I saw the viral video, <a href="https://youtu.be/N34hehRgw9g" target="_blank">“A Scary Time,”</a> by Lynzy Lab. With more than 1.3 million views as of Nov. 5, the video from Lab, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/10/10/a-scary-time-a-texas-womans-catchy-youtube-song-mocks-trump-and-goes-viral/" target="_blank">a dance lecturer at Texas State University</a>, mocks some discussion that arose after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings in Congress that men’s fear of being wrongly accused of sexual improprieties dwarfs the fears women live with over sexual assault, harassment and not being believed.<br />
<br />
Accompanied by a ukulele, and ending with a plea to vote Nov. 6, Lab sings, in part:<br />
<br />
<i>“I can’t walk to my car late at night while on the phone / I can’t open up my windows when I’m home alone / I can’t go to the bar without a chaperone … / I can’t use public transportation after 7 p.m. / … And I can’t ever leave my drink unattended / But it sure is a scary time for boys … / I can’t live in an apartment if it’s on the first floor … / I can’t have another drink even if I want more … / I can’t jog around the city with headphones on my ears. … / </i> And so on.<br />
<div>
<br />
But back to Spain. She noted that women are more dependent on public transit than men. She also mentioned that if bus route planning took greater notice of women’s concerns that bus service would run later into the night to accommodate night-shift workers at places like hospitals. (This, obviously, applies to male night-shift workers, too. But women are <br />
<a name='more'></a>disproportionately more likely to use transit, and more likely to live in poverty, meaning they can’t afford to own a car.)</div>
<div>
<br />
This resonated loudly. The Charlotte Area Transit System recently redesigned some of its routes, to make them speedier and more convenient to more passengers. It’s adding more cross-town routes. Without a massive infusion of funding – not possible in an era when federal transit funds are shrinking and the transit-hostile N.C. state legislature must OK any new sales taxes for places like Charlotte – this means trade-offs are required. The route changes dropped some stops on neighborhood streets and moved them to thoroughfares. That means some riders must walk farther.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article219730885.html" target="_blank">A Charlotte Observer article</a> on the pluses and minuses of the changes has this passage, with echoes of Spain’s remarks:</div>
<div>
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<i>One rider impacted by CATS’ changes is Alberta Alexander, who works nights at a restaurant. Her bus stop on a residential street near Tuckaseegee Road has been eliminated by the changes. </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>“It’s my only transportation,” she said. “If I do not drive, and they’re changing these buses and changing these routes, I have no other option.”</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Now, if she gets off work late, she’ll have to walk from Tuckaseegee to her house at night, instead of getting off much closer on State or Sumter streets.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>“Before the changes, I had a bus stop in a 2-1/2 block radius,” she said. “I wasn’t afraid to walk home.”</i></div>
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<div>
Men as well as women walking alone on a dark, deserted street are vulnerable to muggings, robberies, etc. But women, often less physically able to overpower any attacker, make easier targets. Plus they experience the additional fear of sexual assaults. Consider this, as reported in a Next City article, “<a href="https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/designing-gender-into-and-out-of-public-space" target="_blank">Designing Designing Gender Into and Out of Public Space”</a>: “A 2014 Hollaback!/Cornell University study found that 93.4 percent of women surveyed globally had experienced verbal or nonverbal street harassment in the last year, and more than half had been groped …”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This isn’t meant to say the CATS bus route changes were, on balance, a mistake. As CATS chief operations planning officer Larry Kopf told The Observer, while some riders might have a longer walk or lose a stop nearby, the majority will benefit from faster bus trips and more efficient routes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
But it’s important to ensure that the concerns of women – about walking to bus stops along well-lit, not deserted streets, for instance – are treated seriously when changes are proposed.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
And this is not just an issue for CATS. The city of Charlotte should pay more attention to, and put more money into, making streets safer for all pedestrians, for the disabled, and for people riding bicycles (and today, scooters). Fewer than half the streets in Mecklenburg County have a sidewalk on even one side.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dLBklM-2KF0/W-C5QbE14KI/AAAAAAAACGQ/7O9oQEQpxrYPQYdffHZmOg0ohDJxw_BbACLcBGAs/s1600/Shoreham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dLBklM-2KF0/W-C5QbE14KI/AAAAAAAACGQ/7O9oQEQpxrYPQYdffHZmOg0ohDJxw_BbACLcBGAs/s640/Shoreham.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Charlotte has many streets without sidewalks, like this one in a neighborhood near SouthPark. That can make pedestrians, especially women, feel unsafe, particularly in the dark. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Building a well-used, safe transit system means more than better and more frequent routes. It requires more sidewalks, improved sidewalks, better street-lighting (with energy-efficient LED lights that point downward so as to avoid blinding glare), and requiring development that creates “eyes on the street,” to reduce deserted areas.</div>
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Daphne Spain, in the conversation last month, mentioned that she serves on the Albemarle County (Va.) planning commission. In her time on the commission, she noted she hasn’t worked with a single female developer. “The people building our cities,” she said, “are still men.”</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MORE ABOUT CITY DESIGN AND GENDER:</span></b></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/designing-gender-into-and-out-of-public-space" target="_blank">Designing Gender Into and Out of Public Space (Next City)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/09/how-design-city-women/6739/" target="_blank">Vienna: How to Design a City for Women (City Lab)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/your-city-has-a-gender-and-its-male" target="_blank">Your City Has a Gender and It's Male (Nautilus)</a></li>
</ul>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-22304501598523125772018-09-15T21:27:00.000-04:002018-09-26T09:42:01.287-04:00Waiting for the creek to rise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LcMPDuoRnRw/W52jaTtCb9I/AAAAAAAACCQ/YLpJoAi9hmUrU6oGv0LIW4Iep3GeE3JQwCLcBGAs/s1600/FloodShot3-midtown02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="603" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LcMPDuoRnRw/W52jaTtCb9I/AAAAAAAACCQ/YLpJoAi9hmUrU6oGv0LIW4Iep3GeE3JQwCLcBGAs/s640/FloodShot3-midtown02.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Now demolished, the Midtown Sundries building was in a floodplain and flooded regularly. Photo courtesy Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services.</i></td></tr>
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Now and then, during extremely heavy rainstorms, my daughter and I used to hop in the car and drive about a quarter-mile away to see if what we call the Creek House was inundated.<br />
The house was built in the 1990s on a you-can’t-believe-it’s-legal site: within about 6 feet from a small creek.<br />
<br />
That creek (one of about 3,000 miles of creeks in Mecklenburg County) has the boring official name of Briar Creek Tributary #1 and is neither large nor impressive. Except during a heavy rain. Then it deepens and widens – muddy and dangerously fast-flowing.<br />
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At one point, when the Creek House was being built, it was so close to the creek there was a two-by-four propped between an exterior wall and the far side of the creek.<br />
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It was a shocking example of how slack Charlotte and Mecklenburg County environmental regulations were, even though they were in some significant ways stricter than the state’s. I sent a copy of the photo to a fellow I knew in the county water quality program; he used it in a slide show urging Charlotte-Mecklenburg elected officials to require undisturbed vegetative buffers beside creeks. I can’t claim that photo is what led the county commissioners to enact the buffer ordinance. But I hope it helped.<br />
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Tonight, in Charlotte, N.C., we’re awaiting what may be 10 inches or more of rain from what’s left of Hurricane (now <br />
<a name='more'></a>Tropical Storm) Florence. Flooding is on everyone’s mind. It’s not likely to be as big a disaster as what we are seeing in Eastern North Carolina. But however bad it is here, it’s probably not going to be as bad as it might have been, because of some welcome environmental regulations and government programs.<br />
<br />
Floods here tend to be different from those in North Carolina’s flatter, Coastal Plain, or in Houston after last year’s disastrous Hurricane Harvey flooding. Charlotte is a city of ridges, ravines and creeks, and our rainwater and storm drains head straight into the county’s 3,000 miles of creeks and then, usually rapidly, into nearby rivers.<br />
<br />
But we’re also a car-oriented city. We have a lot of pavement: streets, highways, surface parking lots as far as the eye can see. It all creates runoff, polluted runoff.<br />
<br />
One inch of rain on one acre of impervious surface pavement creates 27,000 gallons of storm water runoff. A few years back I calculated how much runoff one inch of rain on all of Mecklenburg County’s impervious surfaces would create: roughly 2.4 billion gallons. That’s hard to visualize. Think of it this way. If you put 2.4 billion one-gallon milk jugs atop one another, they’d reach to the moon and halfway back.<br />
<br />
That's one inch. Not 10 inches. It’s safe to conclude that 10 inches will likely cause flooding in places here that don’t usually flood.<br />
<br />
As in many cities, in Charlotte people have built a lot of things in floodplains – like that Creek House – because they’re flat, which makes building easier. Houses, stores, offices and parking lots perch next to creeks throughout the city. <br />
<br />
Even with a floodplain ordinance – which the real estate and developer lobby fought bitterly – houses are still built in floodplains. Today, though, they’re perched on piled-up dirt so floodwaters don’t get in but are, instead, displaced and spread farther out, thus causing flooding in places that used not to flood. But whatever.<br />
<br />
After some heavy rains and floods in the late 1990s, the county began using federal funds to buy flood-prone properties and demolish them. In some spots greenways and eco-gardens have been created.<br />
<br />
Will the buffers, the floodplain ordinance and the eco-gardens reduce the flooding? Will the Creek House, after all, survive another torrent of rain? That’s the hope. But for the results, ask me later, after Florence moves on. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g8AYLkFOupY/W52qPDfIi8I/AAAAAAAACCs/zfImSATl-C4ufCZ9SS_9z46AEbjvQKu-ACEwYBhgL/s1600/ChantillyEco-Garden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="640" height="312" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g8AYLkFOupY/W52qPDfIi8I/AAAAAAAACCs/zfImSATl-C4ufCZ9SS_9z46AEbjvQKu-ACEwYBhgL/s640/ChantillyEco-Garden.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i>The Chantilly Ecological Sanctuary at Briar Creek, in the Chantilly neighborhood, was once the site of an apartment complex that flooded regularly. Today it's a more natural area, where floodwaters can spread without causing the damages they once did. Photo: Mary Newsom</i></td></tr>
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-17960963993891215442018-08-06T15:46:00.000-04:002018-08-08T18:04:18.884-04:00Should affordable housing be treated as basic city infrastructure?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: small;">Here's an interesting piece in The Washington Post today that should be provoking some discussion among people concerned with housing affordability: <b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?noredirect=on&silverid=MzEwMTkxMTU2MDAzS0&utm_source=citylab-daily&utm_term=.ebd2a0844d40" target="_blank">In expensive cities, rents fall for the rich <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">– </span>but rise for the poor.</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The conventional wisdom is that a housing oversupply will cause the costs to go down <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">–</span> the famous law of supply and demand. If we just allow developers to build plenty of housing, rents will sink. But that appears not to be happening.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The article, which is pegged to information from Zillow, does not address Charlotte specifically. So while maybe the same is true here it′s also possible that given the growth pressures in this fast-growing city – named by Zillow as the nation's fourth-hottest housing market – the top rents here are staying high.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The most significant ponderable here, I think, is whether – if that old law of supply and demand appears not as reliable as we′ve been led to think – the free market on its own can provide enough housing at a price more city residents can afford. The City of Charlotte is helping with its housing trust fund, but it seems doubtful we can simply build our way out of the problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">I was talking last week with a zoning and planning lobbyist in Charlotte – a guy whose planning background doesn′t stop him from generally hewing to a basic free-market approach. He said he′s starting to believe cities should consider housing affordability as part of the basic package of infrastructure the local government provides like streets, police and fire service, parks, public health services, etc. Maybe the city builds it, maybe it helps other people build it, maybe it helps people afford it, or maybe there′s another way to accomplish this, he said. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">For a generally fiscally conservative guy to propose that speaks, I think, to the reality Charlotte and many other cities face: Too many residents don′t earn enough money to afford much of the available housing. And beliefs about how the marketplace can provide it may need some readjusting. </span><br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-89642625574737888942018-04-18T18:23:00.000-04:002018-04-18T18:24:19.037-04:00Want to know why Charlotte traffic is bad? One reason: You can’t get there from here <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-akC5v6bR6Io/Wte8oT2CXTI/AAAAAAAAB9k/yAJfMOr1eqYRRImI2kBxhlTnVieAhR0zwCLcBGAs/s1600/WTHarris-4-17-18.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="359" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-akC5v6bR6Io/Wte8oT2CXTI/AAAAAAAAB9k/yAJfMOr1eqYRRImI2kBxhlTnVieAhR0zwCLcBGAs/s640/WTHarris-4-17-18.PNG" width="358" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The lack of a connected street grid leads to congestion.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So there I was, heading to an 8:30 a.m. meeting near UNC Charlotte. Zipping up W.T. Harris Boulevard <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">– </span>which I note is nothing like an tree-lined boulevard you might stroll down if you were a boulevardier <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">– </span>I saw that ahead of me, traffic had stopped.<br />
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You expect it on some Charlotte streets <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">–</span> Providence Road, for example, or I-77 at rush hour. But usually the drive up Harris Boulevard is smooth and, if not congestion-free, at least mildly and manageably congested. Not this day. My Google maps showed the section ahead as blood-colored, meaning extreme congestion. As I sat there, or crept forward, I watched the clock, fretting that I would be late for the meeting.<br />
<br />
I cast about mentally for ways to get around the congestion. Being fully stopped, and not having reached the Old Concord Road interchange, I looked at the maps on my smart phone in search of escape routes. <br />
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There were none. My only realistic options were to get on Old Concord Road and drive far out of my way, braving either the morning university traffic or go even farther out of my way over to North Tryon Street with its multiple traffic lights, both options likely to make me arrive even later. (I screenshot the map at right about 10 minutes later.)<br />
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The map told the story. Each subdivision was cut off from its neighbors. You could not get anywhere except on Harris Boulevard. That part of the city was developed from the mid-1980s through the 2000s, and no ordinances required a connected street grid. It was a perfect illustration of why Charlotte thoroughfares get congested so easily. <i>Everyone has to drive on them to get anywhere</i>. In an alternate universe <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">– </span>or at least a city that grew up believing it would be an actual city <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">–</span> we'd have been able to easily get around the wreck-caused mess.<br />
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Can the city do better in the future? As Charlotte works to rewrite its zoning and subdivision ordinances, pay attention to more than just density and land uses. Other than transit, one of the best ways large cities handle the traffic that comes with a lot of people living nearby (i.e., population density) is with connected street grids. Will Charlotte figure that out? <br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9047671665854959614.post-45260382347143193432017-05-30T12:34:00.003-04:002018-04-18T18:25:32.255-04:00More parking? Less parking? The debate continues.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vOAVr0K9dCU/WS2aIm6QY0I/AAAAAAAABxg/qnpvZSUjuPoeeSAkfF3tIkgvTzX5CVmWACLcB/s1600/CATS%2Bdeck-Newsom.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vOAVr0K9dCU/WS2aIm6QY0I/AAAAAAAABxg/qnpvZSUjuPoeeSAkfF3tIkgvTzX5CVmWACLcB/s640/CATS%2Bdeck-Newsom.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Tobe Holmes of University City Partners describes changes coming to the UNC Charlotte part of the city when a light rail extension opens early in 2018. In the background is a new parking deck with retail on the ground floor, built by the Charlotte Area Transit System. Photo: Mary Newsom </td></tr>
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In the playbook for transit-oriented development, as a city adds more transit service it needs less parking. Here's the reasoning: Building too much parking is an incentive to people to keep driving. Parking lots and decks create large, unfunded environmental and health costs, including but not limited to the heat island effect, water pollution from gallons of storm water runoff and the American obesity epidemic from too much driving.<br />
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As Charlotte’s Blue Line Extension light rail project nears completion (March 2018 is the projected opening), parking decks are rising along the line, including two huge decks near the UNC Charlotte campus where the line will end. People who pay attention to such things ask whether we’re overbuilding parking. One recent example is this opinion piece from Charlotte Five – “<a href="http://www.charlottefive.com/stop-overbuilding-parking/" target="_blank">It's insane to keep building huge parking decks along the light rail line.”</a><br />
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The piece responded to a previous article - “<a href="http://www.charlottefive.com/it-would-be-insane-for-charlotte-to-stop-building-parking-for-apartments-right-now/" target="_blank">It would be insane for Charlotte to stop building parking for apartments — right now</a>.”<br />
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Three thoughts about all that:<br />
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1. I think both arguments are right. We need less parking in the long run, but for now we continue to need parking. (There is a whole other topic to be addressed, not here and not today, on how to shrink the number of surface parking lots being built.)<br />
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2. In this case it’s not planners who should feel the most heat but lenders – who may not even know<br />
<a name='more'></a> where Charlotte is and who won’t finance a project if the parking spots don’t fit their math formula. From what I see and hear most lenders don’t give a rip about good urbanism, diversity of uses, protecting surface waters, reducing obesity or any of that. They have their formula.<br />
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3. This is an opportunity for creative, innovative building design – a flexible parking desk structure that could adapt, as the city becomes easier to navigate without a car, into something else.<br />
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Here’s why we can't instantly get rid of parking, happy though I would be to be arguing the other side of this. Most of the acreage in Charlotte, like most Sun Belt cities, was built to make driving easy, not walking or biking or transit. In huge parts of the city only the brave, the masochistic or the desperate choose to walk or bike to destinations. Yes, a few older neighborhoods break that pattern – Dilworth, Plaza Midwood, NoDa, etc. Most Charlotteans don't live there.<br />
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Consider: UNC Charlotte is nearing 30,000 students, plus 4,000-some faculty and staff. We can all agree that encouraging more of them to use transit is ideal. With more people taking transit the campus can build fewer large expensive parking decks. But people live all over the city. Using transit to get to the campus is huge time investment requiring walking long distances to a bus, which may run only every 30 to 45 minutes, then riding to campus or to a light rail station. Only two bus routes serve the campus; one originates uptown, the other at SouthPark mall (that route will probably change as part of other transit changes to campus). Most people will not choose to invest 90 minutes or more for a trip they can drive in 20 to 30.<br />
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The city's bus service is better than in 1998, but nowhere near what it needs to be. The Charlotte Area Transit System is studying its bus routes, but is not well-funded enough to simultaneously build light rail and dramatically improve bus service.<br />
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Consider people living near the light rail. Some did opt to live there so they can take the rail to work. But people change jobs and the new one may not on an easy transit route. Jobs are spread all over the city, with only a sliver of them easily reachable by the lone light rail line. And people acquire roommates, partners and spouses whose jobs may not be transit-friendly. (See this 2014 piece, <a href="http://plancharlotte.org//story/charlotte-walk-transit-no-car" target="_blank">Car-free in Charlotte? It isn’t easy</a>, by a writer who gave up on South End as too hard to manage without a car.)<br />
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So for the foreseeable future, driving is necessary even for those of us who wish we could drive less. That means parking is necessary. For now. No, we don't need as many spaces as lenders require to be built. We should figure out how to incentivize shared parking, and work to minimize surface lots. But still.<br />
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Yet couldn’t some of those ugly decks be repurposed in time? I’m not an engineer so maybe this is nuts, but I have to think that with innovative design and engineering, a parking deck could be designed to transition at a later time into residences or retail, with a much smaller share of parking.<br />
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As the city densifies and transit grows more robust – we can always hope! – we can get by with less parking. And those ugly decks could sprout other, more congenial uses.<br />
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Mary Newsomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12202416766614180007noreply@blogger.com