Category: David Walters

Charlotte to hold 2 ‘Jane Jacobs Walks’ May 4

If you know who Jane Jacobs was and understand the role her work has played in revolutionizing thinking about cities and planning since the 1960s, you’ll understand why her birthday is a time to encourage city-dwellers to get to know their own places a little better.

For the second year in a row, PlanCharlotte.org – the online publication I run for the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute – is sponsoring a Jane Jacobs Walks in Charlotte. For more information, visit JaneJacobsWalk.org.

New for this year: We’re sponsoring two walks, in two different parts of the city. The walks are part of a movement around the globe to celebrate on the weekend of Jacobs’ birth. 

1. Like last year’s Jane Jacobs Walk (read about it here, and here), one will be a munching tour of East Charlotte, led by historian Tom Hanchett of Levine Museum of the New South.
 
2. The new, additional Jane Jacobs Walk will focus on South End – its history, redevelopment and urban design successes and challenges. That one will be led by UNC Charlotte architect and urban design Professor David Walters. 

Details on Walk No. 1: Saturday May 4, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Hanchett, on his “Munching Tour,” will encourage participants to look at the immigrant-run restaurants and stores in East Charlotte as embodying some of the elemental principles of Jane Jacobs’ writing about cities – how they absorb newcomers and allow for entrepreneurial businesses, even if the setting is not necessarily affluent or glossy.

We’ll sample foods at several restaurants as we walk.

RSVP: Email mnewsom@uncc.edu. The maximum number of participants for Hanchett’s walk is 18. Bring cash for purchasing food samples, and wear comfortable shoes. We’ll let you know beforehand where the exact gathering spot will be.

Details on Walk No. 2: Saturday May 4, 3:30 p.m.-5 p.m.

On the South End tour, Walters will discuss Jane Jacobs’ principles for lively city neighborhoods, and point to ways South End exemplifies them in some cases and lacks them in other cases. Walters directs the Master’s in Urban Design program at the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture.

We’ll look at developments along and near the Lynx Blue Line. The walk will end at a neighborhood pub, Big Ben, at Atherton Mill along the Lynx tracks.

RSVP: Email mnewsom@uncc.edu. There is no maximum number of participants but please register so we’ll have an idea of how many people to expect and to let you know beforehand where to gather.  Wear comfortable shoes.

In case of rain, we’ll still be walking. Bring umbrellas.

Cities and freeways: Carmageddon or Carmaheaven?

I’ve been blogless too long. (Didja miss me?) First up on my list of readable stories to share: The Carmageddon miracle.

Carmageddon was the feared massive traffic tie-up expected in Southern California when the 405 Freeway had to close down for the July 16-17 weekend. Guess what? No traffic problems. People stayed home. (Experts who have studied the phenomenon of induced traffic were probably not surprised.) The Los Angeles Times has a wrap-up here: “ ‘Carmageddon’s’ good karma.” (Link thanks to Planetizen.com). And Planetizen’s own Tim Halbur weighed in, noting that the whole episode illustrated the folly of depending too much on one transportation mode alone – automobiles.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, credited with coining the term “Carmageddon,” dubbed what happened “Carmaheaven.” The New York Times’ Timothy Egan called the whole weekend an “urban epiphany.”  His description: “No, the big lessons of Carmageddon are not about transportation. They are about something else, something less easily quantified. They are about the small salves in life that make a day easier, or even memorable. When millions of Angelenos decided to hold a block party, or go to the park, or ride a bike, or play soccer, or spend half a day at the farmers market, or take advantage of free admission at some museums, they found a city far removed from that awful commuter stress index.”

And along those lines, this article, “Livable cities don’t have freeways,” refers to a Brown University study that found a city’s population can decrease 18 percent because of the building of a major highway. (See this interview with Brown’s Nathaniel Baum-Snow.) That’s one of the ways, notes conservative economist Edward Glaeser, that the government has disproportionately subsidized suburban sprawl.

Back to the Future?  UNC Charlotte urban design Professor David Walters has a piece on the website of the UNCC Urban Institute (disclosure: that’s my new employer) looking at how, despite admirable progress in many ways, many of the development problems facing the Charlotte region in the 1990s are still with us. Maybe, Walters suggests, he’ll start kicking up a fuss again and bring on more of that 1990s’-style hate mail.