Category: UNC Charlotte

Visions of the City

If you’ve an interest in city-building and city design, mark these lectures on your calendar.
UNC Charlotte’s School of Architecture’s spring lecture series is “Visions of the City.” It’s part of the inaugural year of UNCC’s new Master’s degree in Urban Design housed at the School of Architecture.

The first is in uptown. The rest are at the School of Architecture on the UNCC campus, Storrs Hall 110.

Jan. 20, 6-7:30 p.m. – “Design After the Age of Oil” – Gary Hack, Knight Theater, co-sponsored with Charlotte Center City Partners.

Hack is professor of urban design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is former chair of Philadelphia City Planning Commission and has prepared plans for more than 30 cities in the United States and abroad, and was the lead urban designer in the team of Daniel Libeskind’s winning design for redeveloping the World Trade Center site in New York. Free, but you must rsvp to: rsvp@charlottecentercity.org

Feb. 3 “Cities After the End of Cities” – Robert Fishman – 5-6:30 p.m., UNCC Storrs Hall.

Fishman is professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan and a nationally recognized expert in urban history, policy and planning and, more recently, “ex-urbs.” Among his books are “Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (1987),” and “Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (1977).” His most recent work is on “ex-urbs.”

Feb. 17 – “Planning, Ecology and Emergence of Landscape” – Charles Waldheim – 5-6:30 p.m., Storrs Hall, UNCC

Waldheim is professor and department chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. He coined the term “landscape urbanism.” Professor Waldheim’s lecture will provide a historical survey of the role of landscape architecture in the formation of cities and regions, and examine several recent projects in North America that propose landscape and ecology as creative drivers of urban design. Such propositions will suggest potential models for planning, informed by contemporary understandings of landscape and ecology as new media of urban design.

Feb. 24 “Recent Work” – Yung Ho Chang. 5-6:30 p.m., UNCC Storrs Hall.
Yung Ho Chang is a professor and heads the Department of Architecture at MIT. He taught in the U.S. for 15 years before returning to Beijing to establish one of the first independent practices in China, Atelier FCJZ.

Charlotte architect one of ‘Greatest Urban Thinkers’

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can vote for up to 15. Have at it.
One last note: If you’re interested in reading about how Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses fought one another in New York over a series of urban redevelopment projects (Jacobs won the battles) look for “Wrestling With Moses,” by Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. I’ve read it; it’s well-researched, well-written and quite entertaining.

Blue Line or Green Line?

Should the existing Blue Line be renamed the Green Line, to please UNCC? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Transit Commission takes up the discussion at its 5:30 p.m. meeting. Here’s a link to the meeting agenda.

At first, it sounds like an easy and simple decision: The transit line that’s planned to run from uptown to UNC Charlotte should be the Green Line, to reflect the 49ers school colors.

But with transit – and transportation in general – things are rarely as simple as you’d think. Here’s the biggest sticking point: The new line will be a continuation of the existing Blue Line. That is, you could hop on at I-485 outside Pineville and ride all the way to beyond UNCC.

There’s already been significant investment in “Blue.” Even the train cars are blue, not to mention the signs, etc.

As CATS officials note, they couldn’t find any other transit system that “changed colors midstream” (hmmm, interesting turn of phrase). It might well confuse riders. I mean, we’re not talking a lot of riders here with New York-caliber subway expertise (where one line simultaneously might have two numbers or letters or colors, and you have to notice whether you’re hopping on a local or an express route, for instance). Starting on the blue line and ending on the green line might be as confusing as starting out on Woodlawn and, without turning, finding yourself on Runnymede and then Sharon Road then Wendover, and then Eastway. Or maybe Tyvola to Fairview to Sardis to Rama. Or … well, I could go on but I won’t.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, a Blue-to-Green Line transit corridor fits right in. How very Charlotte.

Do ‘uptown leaders’ still rule the roost?

Vacation over. No more outerbelt opinions — at least for a while. Onward to other things.

Is the Saturday Observer so slightly read that a huge package on the future of Charlotte — one suggesting that the city’s “business leaders” weren’t the leaders anymore — got only two comments? Maybe everyone was busy dying Easter eggs or playing in the sunshine. Even a column from UNC Charlotte’s Jeff Michael attracted little reader attention online. He writes that based on planning textbook factors, Charlotte shouldn’t have been an urban success at all.

So take a look. Do you agree that the local oligarchy of business leaders is gone? If so, who should take their place, and how should that process happen?

I wrote, “I keep hearing people asking who Charlotte’s next leaders will be – as though some king-maker somewhere gets out the royal staff and taps a few CEOs, who become The New Leaders. I think Charlotte is too big and too diverse for that old pattern of oligarchy to work, even if we wanted it to.”

Put your comments here, or on the article, if you care to comment. Reactions (those that are civil and have some thought informing them) will help shape comments at a series of forums around the region next week, with 2008 Citistates Report writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson and local elected officials, business leaders, environmentalists and others.

The forums are free and open to all. To Register: www.ui.uncc.edu.
They’ll be:
Tuesday, April 21, Gaston County: 2-4:30 p.m. at Gaston Citizen’s Resource Center, U.S. 321 North, Dallas.
Wednesday, April 22, York County: 1-3:30 p.m. at Rock Hill City Hall, 155 Johnston St., Rock Hill.
Thursday, April 23, Cabarrus County: 1-3:30 p.m., Cabarrus Arena and Events Center, 4751 N.C. 49 North, Concord.

I’m moderating the panels on Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope I’ll see some of you there.

Save 8th Street uptown

Yes, I’m a dweeb. I’m sitting here watching the City Council meeting on TV. Just watched Mayor Pat McCrory veto a proposal for the city to buy a small convenience store in the Belmont neighborhood.

Lotta council discussion, and much of it reasonably intelligent, even when the members disagreed with each other. McCrory’s veto was the right thing to do. I wrote a column on this issue last year. I can’t link to it tonight, but will try to add a link tomorrow. Headline: The Belmont neighborhood — thanks to strategic city investments and other good efforts — is on the upswing. The private marketplace is slowly regenerating it, and those old retail buildings will help add character and a home for small business entrepreneurs. If there’s a crime problem (and with some of the old stores, there is) the solution is policing, not the buildings. The city’s money is needed in other, more desperate neighborhoods.

But here’s what inspired me to crank out this posting. They’re talking about a plan for the First Ward section of uptown, and for a park. It’s a complicated land-swap deal, and will involve a park, underground parking, a UNC Charlotte building and other good things.

BUT, and it’s a big but, council member Nancy Carter is spot on with her resistance to the proposal to close Eighth Street for the park. Uptown’s traffic can be so congested that the last thing it needs is to close off even more of its grid. And as its development continues it is going to get even more congested. The city can’t keep chipping away at connectivity uptown. Plenty of excellent parks have a small-scale street running through them, and this one could be one of them.