Author: marynewsom

North Carolina’s emptiest city, according to Forbes magazine, is:

Don’t ever let people tell you the idea of the Great State of Mecklenburg is dead. If it was, it was just raised from the dead by Anita Brown-Graham of the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State. In introducing state Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, who’s moderating a panel, she (of course!) said:

“He is from the Great State of Mecklenburg, then he moved to the Great State of North Carolina.”

I spent the first 20 years of living in Charlotte just chuckling at the term. After all, Charlotteans do tend to be a bit more self-absorbed. But 20 years is enough. Now I think it’s demeaning.

I mean, is any part of North Carolina more self-absorbed than the Triangle? In Charlotte, not being the state government center or higher education center, you ALWAYS have to think about what’s happening in Raleigh. In Raleigh, unless you’re thinking about finance, you may well never have a need to think about Charlotte.

Live-blogging again from “North Carolina: The Good Growth State,” in Raleigh, N.C. State’s Emerging Issues Forum. You can listen in here.

Brookings Institution’s Bruce Katz is speaking now. He’s not nearly as wittily satirical as N.Y. Times pundit David Brooks, who opened this morning with a great disquisition on “go-go suburbia.” But it’s stern good medicine for all N.C. policy- and law-makers to hear:

“There is no such thing as the North Carolina economy or the American economy.”

Katz’s key points:

• Despite the economic trauma we’re living through, the economic fundamentals haven’t changed: The drivers of an economy are metro-region economies.
• We have no national economy. We have a network of metro economies.
• We don’t have a national or state governance that recognizes that reality.
• National and state policies reward wasteful forms of development and policies. (More later about his comments on roads spending.)
• North Carolina is a metro state. It doesn’t think of itself this way.

This is essential stuff for the state’s leaders to hear. N.C. culture – once you get outside Charlotte – thinks of itself as a place of farms and small towns. The legislature and state government attitudes all accept this as truth. It’s tradition, it’s nostalgia and it distorts the way state resources and policies are used.

“I’m talking about a different way of thinking,” Katz is saying, about economies and governance.

The last of today’s live blogging from the forum on North Carolina: Good Growth State, in Raleigh, put on by the N.C. State Institute for Emerging Issues. Disclosure: Not really live now, the forum’s ended for the day and I lost my Internet connection about 3 p.m. ….

The day’s last two speakers were Rand Wentworth, president of the Land Trust Alliance, a national group providing services to the nation’s 1,500 land trusts, and New Urbanist architect/planner Andres Duany.

From Wentworth:

• North Carolina leads the nation in loss of farmland and open space.
• North Carolina’s strongest draw for tourism is “scenery.”
• In the future, the best-paying jobs will go where the most talented people want to live.
• The belief that new growth brings in enough revenue to pay for itself is “fool’s gold.”

Duany was trying to find silver linings in the bad economic situation. “So many certainties are broken,” he said. “It’s going to be a marvelous period for ideas.”

He talked a lot about how to retrofit the post-1980s suburbs. “What do we do with this mess?” he asked. “They’re going to be the albatross around our neck. Also the great possibility.”
His pitch No. 1: Fill in the expanses of space at the fading malls with housing, offices, schools, churches, post offices, etc., and create town centers. They’re all located at key intersections already, and so easier to serve with good bus or even rail transit service. Local governments should just grant the density needed to them, and allow as-of-right development (well, with a few rules), he said.

• Another pitch: Add mixed use at the entrances to subdivisions. Buy about six houses and the big “entrance sign” areas to build some multistory, multi-use buildings.
• No. 3: “You have to think of parking garages as ‘infrastructure,’ ” he said, responding to the topic of the day. “I don’t see what’s so hard about that.”

More live blogging from the forum on North Carolina: Good Growth State, in Raleigh, put on by the N.C. State Institute for Emerging Issues.

Spotted in the audience or lobby: Rep. Ruth Samuelson, R-Mecklenburg, Charlotte DOT Chief Danny Pleasant, UNC Charlotte Urban Institute has several folks, including its director, Jeff Michael.

Keith Parker, CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System, told me the biggest take-away for him, hearing the ex-mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, came when Livingstone described how London added lots of bus service between 2000 and 2004 and was able to attract millions more transit riders. The city targeted the middle-income workers, to try to lure them out of their cars.

Parker’s heading back to Charlotte to give a presentation to the City Council this evening about
whether the city can or should fast track the proposed streetcar project that would run from Beatties Ford Road to Eastland Mall.

London’s ex-Mayor Ken Livinstone, nearing the end of his address, talking a little about how people in Europe were watching the November elections last fall:

Most people there, he said, had never heard of North Carolina until it got publicity for: A) Its very close Obama-McCain race, and B) the Senate race, with the Elizabeth Dole ad using hinted-at atheism to attack Kay Hagan.

“I came out as an atheist at the age of 12. It’s never done me any harm politically,” Livingstone said. “In London, no one cares. If you get the buses running on time, they don’t care what you’re doing in bed.” (Wikipedia tells us he’s had several affairs – with women – and is a noted bon vivant. Also, it deadpans: “He is known for his enthusiasm for keeping and breeding newts.^[11]” Presumably not of the Gingrich variety.)

Back to policy – A country can’t borrow its way to prosperity, he said. You make money by making things and selling them, and shouldn’t ever lose sight of that.

Want to listen in to the discussion on whether N.C. is the Good Growth state?

The Emerging Issues Forum has both a live audio stream – here – and will have a virtual workshop 2-3 p.m. today. Also on the web site.

Right now CATS chief Keith Parker is introducing London ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone – Mr. Congestion Pricing Guru.

Lots of Big Names here: Ex State School Board Chairman and ex-Chapel Hill mayor Howard Lee just sat down next to me. He left though. Probably didn’t want to be next to a blogger, and can’t say as I blame him.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., at the N.C. State Emerging Issues Forum made cogent arguments for not just aiming for “shovel-ready” projects but “future ready” projects. He also pointed out (as if you hadn’t heard) that the nation’s infrastructure got graded mostly a D by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Where’s the leadership for transformative projects, he asked, akin to the Erie Canal or the first transcontinental railroad, rural electrification or the interstate highway system?

For North Carolinians, two key points: He lavishly and extensively praised Charlotte’s transit system, especially the way the city created incentives for transit-oriented development.

AND, he mentioned an idea from a Connecticut constituent: Build a high-speed transcontinental rail corridor from Long Beach, Calif., to Wilmington, N.C. That certainly got the attention of the North Carolinians in this room!

He pitched a major rail initiative – connecting the nation’s major urban areas with high- or higher-speed rail – and let Detroit build the rail cars and buses the nation will need to refocus its transportation system to a more inclusive one – i.e., not just highways.

He pitched a National Infrastructure Bank, to create a new funding stream and competitive process. As it is, transportation in America is basically carried out by 50 states with 50 different plans.

In 2007, 10 billion trips were made on public transit. Yet the U.S. DOT pays for some 80 percent of new highway construction while less than half for new transit projects, and getting approval for new transit projects is “brutally different.”