Category: Uncategorized

I’m taking a vacation day today and possibly tomorrow, so no new Naked City news for now. (Try saying that 5 times, fast.)

To the readers asking how to set up an RSS feed: When I use Firefox as a browser there’s an orange box in the window where the URL shows. Click on it and you’re asked how you want the feed to work.

Naked City is listed under the “blogs/columnists” link that shows only if you scroll your cursor over the “Opinion” tab at the top. The blogs/columnists link showing when you open the new home page give you only “News” blogs/columns because the “News” tab automatically opens. For Sports, Editorial Page, Entertainment or other columnists you have to click on the appropriate tab.

Meantime, what’s the reaction to the Observer’s newly designed Web site? It’s now charlotteobserver.com instead of charlotte.com. The charlotte.com URL will keep working for a while but it will disappear at some point, so be sure to fix your bookmarks.

Cheers.

Some folks are aghast that Charlotte Center City Partners President Michael Smith would cast aspersions on the Overstreet Mall system uptown of sidewalks and hidden shops. In an Observer article published Thursday, Smith said the overstreet system “is dilutive to creating a vibrant center city.”

One of those aghast is Bill Little, who owned the BB&T Center — home to many interior retail spaces — until selling to an REIT a couple of years back. He consistently defends it. Here’s a portion of a letter he wrote to the Observer:

“Mr. [Michael] Smith fails to see the big picture. Overstreet Mall is more than a series of pedestrian bridges connecting coffee shops and newsstands. Think of it, rather, as effectively bringing millions of square feet of office space under one roof. I know of no other U.S. city east of the Mississippi where more office space — not to mention hotels, parking, retail, performing arts centers, and residential buildings — can be accessed under cover.”

I’m on Michael Smith’s side. People who say they want more stores downtown aren’t going to get them until at least three things happen.

First, better designed retail space has to be available — the kind where you can walk past the store windows, see inside and go right in. You know, like old storefront buildings (example: inside the Latta Arcade) and like stores in shopping malls. Those mall folks understand window shopping. Architects who design office towers and grudgingly throw in required ground-floor retail space do not.

Second, uptown needs a retail cluster. People like to shop where other shops are. Again, the shopping center developers understand this. Uptown not only doesn’t have this cluster, there’s little hope it will get one. The retail spaces built in recent years (required by the uptown zoning) are too scattered. The older retail spaces that might have served to link them together have almost all been demolished for the new towers. The only solution would be building a sort of outdoor-air shopping mall uptown. That’s expensive.

Finally — you knew I’d get here — Overstreet Mall should transition to business support tenants: Printing companies, shoe repairs, cleaners, etc. I’d say it has to go, but the city in its infinite wisdom granted what amounts to perpetual rights-of-way over the streets. So the tunnels will be with us for years to come.

Why do you think shopping malls locate at interstate interchanges? Traffic. Uptown, the traffic is feet. In Charlotte too many feet are diverted into the overstreet system. Or conversely, too many feet are people on the sidewalks with no clue the overstreet system exists or how to get there. In either case, potential retailers suffer.

Yes, I confess I use the overstreet system when it’s pouring rain or I need to get into one of the buildings. I understand some symphony-goers were shocked and appalled that they were expected to — gasp! — set foot on the sidewalks and walk when the overstreet passage between the Blumenthal and its deck was taken down. But it’s perfectly possible to have an excellent shopping district without those tunnels.

If you want strong retail uptown, not the half-hearted retail we now have, eventually Overstreet will have to change.

Spotted having lunch today at Mimosa: City Council member Anthony Foxx (right), a Democrat, and former City Council member Patrick Mumford (left), a Republican.

Maybe they lunch together often and it’s no big deal. Who knows? But I stopped to greet them and when I asked what they were talking about (hey, I’m a journalist and it’s my job to be nosy) they just smiled and didn’t answer.

The common denominator for Foxx and Mumford — other than their council experience — is that both have been the subject of speculation about mayoral ambitions. Charlotte’s current mayor is running for governor. The next mayoral election isn’t until 2009. If Pat McCrory moves to the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, who succeeds him?

I’m not an expert at this moment in how a mayor gets chosen if one leaves office, but I’m pretty sure that if a Republican leaves, a Republican must be appointed. If recent council history is a guide, council members would rather appoint someone who doesn’t plan to run for the office. That’s how Greg Phipps got appointed to the council in 2005 after Malcolm Graham was elected to the state Senate.

Mumford left the council in 2007, saying he wanted time with his family. Might he be a candidate to be appointed mayor if McCrory wins the governorship?

Foxx, of course, is considered likely to run for mayor regardless of whether is opponent is McCrory, or any other Republican.

Mumford, by the way, had a pizza and Foxx had a bowl of chili. Bon appetit!

Interesting story in today’s newspaper about the city’s semi-annual statistical study of neighborhoods. It’s called the 2008 Neighborhood Quality of Life report. If you want to see the map I think you have to see the on-paper version (at 50 cents still cheaper than a cuppa coffee), as I can’t find an online link. But here’s a link to the report itself. Warning: It’s a slow-loading PDF file. Here’s a link to the page on the City of Charlotte’s Web site about the report.

I haven’t read the report yet — it’s 246 pages — so don’t kick me around for “endorsing” it; I’m simply sharing it for those who might be interested. I hope to find time this week for some reporting, with luck for my Saturday column.

One quick thought: I find its terminology unclear. The report says that in 2006 it changed its classifications from Stable, Threatened, and Fragile (also unclear — which is better, “threatened” or “fragile”?) to Stable, Transitioning, and Challenged. But Transitioning is applied to neighborhoods in “an improving or declining position.” So if the number of “transitioning” neighborhoods has increased, is that good news for the city or bad news? Who can tell? And is this because the city wants only happyface news about its neighborhoods? Or because these kinds of reports are done by geographers and academics, not writers or editors? Who can tell?

Anyway, happy reading. Check back with you later.

Excellent question at the end of the previous comment string, from “Tom” from Nashville.

“Suggestion for your next blog topic: Is it possible to “retrofit” a suburb, particularly the middle-ring suburbs that are struggling, to be more connected and urban? Can a ’60s-style neighborhood be made to behave like a ’30s-style neighborhood?”

You won’t be surprised to hear I have thoughts. But this afternoon I have other tasks. So I’ll toss out the question and let others take it on. Maybe Dan Burden of Walkable Communities Inc., can weigh in, or someone from the Congress for the New Urbanism, or some developer/designer who’s done a retrofit project and can talk about how it went.

See you later.

This may be like throwing gasoline onto a fire, but here goes. Because I’m busy today writing a column for Saturday’s Observer — which I hope you’ll read at www.charlotte.com/opinion — I’ll toss out some red meat to the libertarians and free-marketeers among you. Check this book review from Slate.com about “Gridlock Economy,” by Michael Heller, an academic who studies property theory. The subtitle: “How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.”

Heller argues, says reviewer Tim Wu, that creating too many property rights can actually wreck markets. Wu then critiques both the book and Weller’s thesis, but concludes that even though it has some flaws it’s one of those concepts that helps you see the world in a different way. The idea is that too many property owners means there are too many stakeholders and that can impede the functioning of the marketplace. As Wu puts it, “The basic idea that too many stakeholders can kill a project is well-known to anyone who has ever worked on a committee or spent 15 minutes in Washington, D.C.”

Read before you rant. And please recognize that just because I link to an article I find interesting, it doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with everything in it. It usually means I’m working on my full-time job as an editorial writer and oped columnist and don’t have time for lots of blogging. Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book and until today had never heard of Michael A. Heller.

In the category of things found while looking up other things, here’s an interesting front-page piece in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times, “Americans may be losing faith in free markets.”

The writer, Peter G. Gosselin, quotes several experts, including Kevin Hassett, at the American Enterprise Institute.

William Galston of the Brookings Institution in Washington says, “We’re at a hinge point. The strong presumption in favor of markets, which has dominated public policy since the late 1970s, has been thrown very much into question.”

Even the American Enterprise Institute’s Hassett concurs in the existence of the backlash. “There may be a backlash against markets at the moment,” he says, though he goes on to say he doesn’t see any alternative view of how things should work.

They cite the convergence of issues: a housing meltdown that resulted from an unregulated corner of the mortgage market (high-risk loans), the price of gasoline (generally blamed on the laws of supply and demand and oil market speculation), disappearing U.S. jobs and worries about retirement investing based on the assumption the stock market will always rise.

“We’re [he means Americans] not ready to throw out markets altogether,” says economist Robert E. Litan of the Brookings Institution and the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo., “but we want government to do something about the excess.

(Note: Reworked as of 1:58 p.m. to more clearly reflect Peres’ remarks.)

This has to be a quick post, as I’m buried in other matters today.

I caught up with Mark Peres yesterday. Peres is the founder/editor/publisher of Charlotte Viewpoint, a nonprofit online magazine that aims to offer intellectual discourse about Charlotte, especially center city.

“I’m optimistic about the current pessimism,” Peres said. (Or words to that effect. I wasn’t taking notes.) Um, why? Because, said Peres, maybe the current pessimistic scenarios — including but not limited to Wachovia’s problems, although like most of us he doesn’t wish more harm to befall one of the city’s two Big Banks — might tamp down on speculation and “get us back to more sound management principles.”

Interesting point. But is there really any pessimism around here? Charlotte’s relentless optimism, or some might say boosterism, is as deeply rooted and unquenchable as kudzu.

So feel free to start commenting on optimism/pessimism/boosterism or even kudzu. (I remember reading about one farmer who kept his cattle alive during a horrible drought when he learned they’d eat kudzu.)

Finally, feel free to keep jawing to one another about NoDa, as the comments are fun. But warning: I’m deleting comments that insult others or use words I decide are outside the bounds of polite discourse.

OK, here’s the piece I promised, about lane merging. Note: I don’t do this, because the social opprobrium would be overwhelming.

The situation I’m talking about isn’t merging onto freeways. (On freeways, one should whenever possible change lanes or slow down to allow the merging vehicle onto the highway. ) I’m talking about when there’s an unexpected obstruction in one lane of a multi-lane road or street, such as a stalled car, a moving van or construction.

Just for a minute, think of this situation as a traffic engineer might, viewing the pavement in each lane as “vehicle storage space.” If something up ahead is causing traffic to stop or slow dramatically, why should all the vehicles line up in one lane only? That just backs the tie-up even farther down the street. If both lanes were used, with each vehicle fairly and equitably alternating merging, once the obstruction was reached, it would cut in half the length of the clog on the street.

In reality, though, as so many previous comments have shown, people don’t act the way engineers view the world. We use our driving as a status quest. People want to be the cutters-off, not the cuttee. They think people who try to cut in front are greedy and ill-mannered. Sometimes, especially when the only vehicle zooming to the head of the formerly empty lane is a gas- and space-hogging Hummer, they are probably right.

Second, this is nothing I thought up in Boston. I noticed it some years back here in Charlotte. In Boston, in such a situation what they do is honk their horns. This is both useless and nuts. I mean, do they think the stalled car will, Lazarus-like, revive itself, or the moving van will decide to go away and come back at midnight, if only it hears some beeping horns?

Stay tuned to this space, and tomorrow or the next day I’ll explain why, contrary to what most drivers think, it really isn’t rude when — seeing a merge coming up — you drive all the way to the front of the empty lane instead of hanging in the long, long line in the other lane.

Not that I would do this, mind you. I don’t want to get shot by some road raging nut. I’ll explain more later. Today column-writing for Saturday Viewpoint page comes first. In the meantime, some interesting reading to keep you busy:

The end of suburbia? Joel Kotkin says (in the L.A. Times) “not yet.” Link.

Kotkin’s responding, in part, to an article in the March Atlantic magazine, that created a lot of buzz, from Christopher Leinberger, positing that McMansion suburbs will become the next slums. Link.

Now, here’s a critique of Kotkin’s piece, by Bill Fulton of the California Planning & Development Report. Link.

This month’s Atlantic has an interesting and provocative piece on crime in Memphis, with a mention of Charlotte, pegging the rise in crime in suburban areas to the rise in Section 8 housing vouchers and the demolition of old-line housing projects. Link.

Interesting developments in Sacramento, chronicled by the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ tells how the six-county Sacramento region agreed on a plan for growth — including that some areas simply wouldn’t allow development — and is making it happen. Link.

Here’s Witold Rybczynski on the legacy of Buckminster Fuller. Link.

Also, a piece from former Maryland governor Parris Glendenning saying Americans are tired of feeling like victims. Link.

And finally, here’s something you’re unlikely to see out of Charlotte-Mecklenburg: “The county board of supervisors in Loudoun County, Va., has voted to ban itself from accepting any campaign contributions from developers or builders.” Link.