Month: May 2012

Whither crumbling Modernist plazas?

Minneapolis has its own version of Charlotte’s Marshall Park, a vintage mid-century plaza of aging concrete that few love or visit. In Minneapolis it’s Peavey Plaza. “Minneapolis Tussles Over a Faded Plaza,” is the New York Times’ article.

It’s another example of the dilemma over how much unloved, unpopular mid-century Modernism should be preserved. Ardent historic preservationists point out that 50 years ago people were tearing down Victorian houses because they were so “ugly,” only to wait a decade until people began to love them. Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Historic Landmarks Commission has posted a study of the city’s post-World War II  buildings to recommend which were worth National Register designation. Note, Marshall Park is not on the list.

However, the Times article recounts, in 1999 the American Society of Landscape Architects recognized Peavey Plaza as one of the nation’s most significant examples of landscape architecture, along with Central Park in Manhattan and the Biltmore estate in North Carolina. (That, alone, may offer more insight into what’s wrong with landscape architecture in America today than any other single piece of evidence.)

Built in the early 1970s (Peavey Plaza dates to 1975) after urban renewal razed a historically black neighborhood, Marshall Park is frequented most often by Canada geese. It had a moment of national glory as a stand-in for Farragut North in the Showtime series “Homeland,” filmed in Charlotte.

I don’t think every park adds value, especially in a city downtown with so many blank spaces from parking lots, empty lots, corporate plazas and such.

At the same time, I don’t think beauty alone, or popular opinion alone, should determine whether a building or other place should be preserved, or torn down and replaced. Even though I find almost all  Modernist architecture bleak, depressing and anti-human, I still believe examples should be saved. If for no other reason, they may serve to remind us of the awful ideas some so-called designers can come up with.

Today’s reads: Urban housing, post-crisis Charlotte, and a pox on high-rises

 Steve Mouzon of Original Green fires back at what he calls Skyscraper Fetish: the idea that to increase density in cities – generally considered an environmentally desirable goal – requires high-rise residential towers (examples of some in uptown Charlotte in photo, above).

In “Uninhabitable high-rises,”  he points out some of the problems: wind speeds grow with height, making cross-ventilation difficult. Glass curtain walls either cause immense glare, or must be so strongly sun-screened that it’s tough for light to penetrate far inside. Operable windows are problematic in tall buildings. And this:”Elevator motors consume more energy than any other single piece of equipment in a high-rise building.” 

Subdivisions go urban as housing market changes. USA Today’s Haya El Nasser asks: “Why are the giants of the building industry, the creators for decades of massive communities of cookie-cutter homes, cul-de-sacs and McMansions in far-flung suburbs, doing an about-face? Why are they suddenly building smaller neighborhoods in and close to cities on land more likely to be near a train station than a pig farm?”

Her answer: The U.S. housing industry is rethinking what type of housing to build and where to build it.
I’ve wondered whether some of the news about this trend might be wishful thinking, but El Nasser has facts to buttress her point:

“Latest Census data show that population growth in fringe counties nearly stopped in the 12 months that ended July 1, 2011, and urban counties at the center of metro areas grew faster than the nation as a whole, a USA TODAY analysis found.
“Central metro counties accounted for 94% of U.S. growth, compared with 85% just before the recession and housing bust.
“A recent Case Western Reserve University study found that Cleveland’s inner city is growing faster than its suburbs for the first time.”
Fortune magazine takes a look at Charlotte after the banking crisis: “Charlotte after the bank crisis: ‘Just fine, and you?’ ” Contains this great line: “And there you have the essence of Charlotte. It is a city that knows how to move on.” 
And for long-time Charlotteans or newer residents who are history buffs, here’s a video of driving through Charlotte streets in 1986. There’s footage from Indy Boulevard but, alas, no Thompson’s Bootery and Bloomery. I lived here then, and I had a hard time identifying a lot of the scenes. There were a lot of highways and convenience stores. The car radio music is fun, too.
Meanwhile, back in the OQC (Other Queen City, aka Cincinnati): “Getting it right in the Queen City.”
Photo credit: Claire Apaliski of UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute.

No more MUMPO. Get ready for … MILUMPO?

The Charlotte-region transportation planning agency known as MUMPO (Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization) is almost certainly in for a name change.

That’s because a large piece of Iredell County, including Statesville and Mooresville, plus a decent-sized chunk of Lincoln County are now part of what’s known as Charlotte’s “urbanized area.”

I, personally, am hoping it will call itself MILUMPO. (Mecklenburg-Iredell-Lincoln-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization). Other waggish types, using the Catawba River basin as a unifying slogan, are musing about CRAMPO (as in, Catawba Regional Area MPO) or SCUMPO (Southern Catawba-Union MPO).

What is an MPO and why does it matter? See below. You may also wonder what is this “urbanized area” and why does it matter? The short answer is, “It’s complicated.”

The U.S. Census Bureau decides what an “urbanized area” is, via a complex formula that takes into account historical population centers. For the detailed answer click here. Do not expect common sense to play a large role. For instance, Gastonia, Rock Hill and Concord are not part of the “urbanized area,” but Statesville now is. Got that?

This piece by my UNC Charlotte colleague John Chesser and me last month, “A region by many other names,” goes into some of the absurdities under which the greater Charlotte metro region is divvied into this or that “region.”

Metropolitan planning areas, a.k.a. MPOs, set priorities for divvying up state and federal transportation money. They are required to take in the “urbanized area,” unless for some reason they decide to try to find another MPO who’ll agree to take it over. According to Bill Coxe, Huntersville’s transportation planner and chair of MUMPO’s technical coordinating committee, it’s possible some of the smaller non-Mecklenburg territories that are, as of this year, part of Charlotte’s “urbanized area” (examples: a very small part of western Gaston County and eastern Catawba County, and parts of northern Lancaster and York counties, S.C.) may end up becoming part of other MPOs, such as RFATS (Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study), or GUAMPO (Gaston Urban Area MPO). For that to happen, MUMPO must seek out and arrange with another MPO to take over the territory.  If MUMPO wants to keep that territory, it does. If no MPO exists to take it over, as is the case in Lincoln and Iredell counties, MUMPO keeps it. If another MPO does not want the added territory, MUMPO keeps it.

Why does any of this MPO stuff matter? Here’s why. Transportation planning, to be done well, should be undertaken at a fully regional level, with decisions made that balance needs in one area against needs in another. That is not what happens in the Charlotte region.

Depending on how you count, the region is split among as many as five MPOs, plus two Rural Planning Organizations. Those five are MUMPO, GUAMPO, RFATS plus Cabarrus-Rowan MPO (CRMPO), and, if you consider the Hickory area part of the greater Charlotte metro area, the Greater Hickory MPO (GHMPO). (An aside: in the Hickory area, the MPO is lodged in the regional land use planning agency, the Western Piedmont Council of Governments, a sensible arrangement yet to be adopted elsewhere in the Charlotte region.)

Bob Cook, MUMPO secretary, made a presentation on much of this to the Charlotte City Council’s Transportation and Planning Committee on Monday. Wednesday he’ll give a similar presentation at the MUMPO meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in room CH-14 of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.

Want to know more? Links:
MUMPO’s map of the new urbanized area.
Close-up of the Gaston County portion of the urbanized area
Close-up of the Lincoln and Catawba County parts of the Charlotte urbanized area
A summary of what new territory is in Charlotte’s urbanized area, and likely MPO scenarios

Highways, canals and how we spend our money

ULI report predicts future U.S. freeways will be tolled. Above: I-77 and Brookshire Freeway. Photo: Nancy Pierce
With some 3,000 Urban Land Institute members at the nonprofit group’s national conference in Charlotte this week, several ULI-related articles have come out taking a most rosy view of the Queen City. Links are below. 
And in a timely release, the Washington-based group of developers, planners, architects and others today issued its annual report on infrastructure, Infrastructure 2012: Spotlight on leadership. It describes the Triangle’s transit situation, and makes some important points:

– “Although governments may have greater success in finding efficiencies by doing more with less, the overall state of the nation’s infrastructure will continue to deteriorate unless the political will and funding to make the needed investments materializes”

– “Unfortunately, the United States is one of the few major economic powers lacking a national infrastructure policy direction: initiatives are left to percolate from local and state levels, often competing for resources.”

– “Freeways have seen their day – any new highway or added expressway lane will almost certainly be tolled.”

On Page 43 is a wrap-up of the Triangle area’s transit situation.  

 
And note the photo on Page 39, of Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Canal. I ran into former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys at Tom Low’s Civic By Design session Tuesday night – I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group – and Humphreys briefly described the capital city’s new canals, filled with city water.

The report explains: “Oklahoma City has developed an innovative way of funding civic projects – bundle them into short-term, focused packages, and subject them to a vote.” The third in the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects series of votes passed in late 2009 and is generating $777 million for downtown parks and other civic infrastructure. In December 2009, 54 percent of Oklahoma City voters OK’d a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for an ambitious parks and open-space agenda. The scheduled projects include a 5- to 6-mile streetcar system.
Unfortunately, a bout with the flu has kept me from attending Tuesday’s and today’s sessions. I hope to make it tomorrow. But in advance of the conference, several articles about Charlotte by ULI-affiliated writers have appeared. 
Here’s one from AtlanticCities.com, the online publication about cities from The Atlantic Monthly. It dubs Charlotte a “city of sidewalks.”  I think that may be a bit rosy for the current situation.
And the Charlotte Business Journal published “Charlotte’s on the right path” by Edward McMahon, a senior resident fellow at ULI. (Warning, article may be for subscribers only.)  He calls Charlotte the nation’s “most improved city,” and justly lauds the newly lively downtown and some praiseworthy areas such as Dilworth, Baxter in Fort Mill, and the town of Davidson. Then he maybe goes too far. Unlike cities that had to recover from disinvestment, McMahon writes, “It has recovered from fast growth, sprawl and suburbanization.” 
Recovered from sprawl and suburbanization? Er, not yet.

Weathering the downturn – or not?

For decades Charlotte was known as the metro region that simply shed recessions like water off a duck’s back. But will the current downturn belie that reputation? That’s the key question being explored today at a conference today that has drawn several dozen experts in regional resilience to Charlotte’s Duke Mansion.

Obviously the answer to that can’t be known just yet. But some interesting information has come out, particularly during a panel discussion I served on this morning. The group that came to Charlotte is the MacArthur Network on Building Resilient Regions, which has studied metro regions for years. They look at how metro regions react to major economic shocks. Are they resistent? Or do they bounce back, i.e., are they resilient? Or re they non-resistent? They studied the Charlotte region’s response to previous economic downturns – finding the region either resistant or resilient. But their study ended before 2007. They haven’t been back, and they wanted to get caught up on the situation here since the banking crisis.

One key stat we talked about: The metro region’s (that is, the MSA’s) percentage for employment in banking and finance is virtually unchanged now from what it was pre-2008. Another: The manufacturing sector in the region has gone from one-third of the employment in 1980 to, by 2005, less than 10 percent.

Another, from panelist John Connaughton, a UNC Charlotte economist: Since the downturn began, the U.S. has regained 40 percent of the jobs lost. North Carolina has regained only 25 percent of its lost jobs. The Charlotte MSA has regained 50 percent of its lost jobs. But, he pointed out, what Charlotte lost, when it lost the Wachovia headquarters when that bank was bought by Wells Fargo, was some high-paying jobs. The real issue, he said, is the loss of blue-collar jobs: manufacturing and construction jobs.

“Charlotte is a very diverse economy,” he said. He predicted the metro region will spring back. “It will be the star that it was,” he said.

The panel also talked, predictably, about the need for education. I mentioned the region’s history in the past centuries of not valuing education, especially for low-income farm- and mill-workers. And this region remains comparatively poor in post-baccalaureate education and research universities. UNCC is on the road to creating a reputation for research, but as Hal Wolman, director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy conceded, it does not now have a national reputation for research.

If cities are made more resilient to downturns by having strong education, government and health sectors, then Charlotte may be at risk. One out of three may not be enough.