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I’ve always thought the people who say there’s nothing to do in Charlotte aren’t looking very hard. We have art museums, history museums, frescos all over uptown, gallery crawls, all kinds of live performances, lectures and seminars, great restaurants and a ga-zillion bars. There’s enough stuff to do that if I found $10 million in untraceable drug money and could quit my job I could easily fill my time as a gadabout.

Then our family hosted a 13-year-old French kid for two weeks. She was part of a student exchange program at our daughter’s school, a public magnet school called Smith Language Academy. Our kids had visited Limoges (one of Charlotte’s Sister Cities) two weeks last fall. This month, the French kids came here. Now I understand the tourism problem.

When our kids were in France, they visited Versailles and the Eiffel Tower, several medieval villages, and the famous cave paintings of Lascaux, as well as the medieval center of Limoges. Turns out there are Roman ruins below the school the kids attended there, and they went down to see them one day.

The day after NASCAR awarded its Hall of Fame to Charlotte, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jeff Schultz wrote: “The NASCAR hall of fame instantly becomes Charlotte’s top tourist attraction. The elevator in the Wachovia building drops into second.”

I’m not a huge NASCAR fan, but I think we’d have taken those French kids to the Hall of Fame in a nanosecond. And the whitewater center, if it had been open.

You know, 13-year-olds are not, as a group, your best art museum aficionados. Carowinds isn’t open yet. The whitewater center isn’t built yet. Because the crowd of 19 had only six boys, the Charlotte parents who were organizing their activities opted against Lowe’s Motor Speedway as an attraction.

So what did they like? The girl who stayed with us liked shopping malls. All the kids seemed to enjoy a Bobcats game. I’m pretty sure the group did ride an elevator in a tall building uptown, but it wasn’t their No. 2 activity. It was more like No. 6.

I still think there’s a lot to do in Charlotte, but it does help to like birds of prey (they visited the raptor center), Charlotte history (not a topic taught extensively in Limoges) and art museums. So from now on, when those tourism experts tout Concord Mills and Carowinds as tourist attractions, I no longer will sniff at the concept.

Tourism wasn’t really the point of the exchange, of course. The French kids learned a lot about Americans and American family life. Everything here is so big, they said. Americans eat more than they do, I was told. The huge trucks on the streets and roads interested the French kids.

And one day we were in a huge hurry, and we bought Wendy’s hamburgers and ate them while driving on the interstate. This, I thought, is the total American family experience!

Overall, the kids seemed to treat the trip as a grand adventure and to have a great time, regardless of tourist attractions.

But as tourists, what did they like best? I’m pretty sure it was the overnight trip to Charleston.

About that NASCAR Hall of Fame: You may be cheering. Or maybe you doubt it will bring in either the people or the money projected and think the city made a stupid deal.

Forget that for the moment. I’m more worried about the building itself. If you care about uptown design, you should be, too. Feel free to add your comments below.

What I see in the renderings released so far make it look like a flying saucer hunkered in a parking lot. (I’ll try to add a link, below).

Yeah, yeah, it has a fancy architect – Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. That’s Pei as in I.M. Pei, ultra-famous architect who designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

But if you’re going to build in this city – in any city – you need to understand urban fabric. It’s what makes cities and city streets and sidewalks interesting places. Paris has it, and, I assume, Cleveland. In those places, you need a break here and there from the urban fabric. Charlotte has precious little of it. New projects should help create it, not obliterate any opportunity.

Urban fabric means a lot of very small threads, woven close together. Like any ecosystem, a city needs tiny organisms: coffee shops, apartment buildings, stores, doctor’s offices, rowhouses, Chinese take-out places, pizza delivery joints, bars, cleaners, day-care centers, condos, French bistros and Italian trattorias, banks, insurance offices, antique furniture restoration shops, boutiques, art galleries – all in close proximity. Huge, single-use buildings in huge-single use blocks pretty much obliterate any hope of urban fabric. That’s why you don’t want them clustered together.

Second Ward, where the hall is planned, is a veritable monument to Bad City Planning Circa 1960. It is scarred by too many leviathan-sized projects that destroyed the old street grid: the government center, the Convention Center and its hotel and the Education Center-Marshall Park-First Baptist megablock, among others. Big blocks make boring neighborhoods and worsen traffic congestion.

The city’s planners know this. That’s why, in the Metro School rebuilding, South Davidson Street is being extended to Stonewall Streets.

The area around the Hall of Fame is dead, dead and more dead. Dead as in butt-end of the convention center loading docks. The last thing it needs is another gigantic-footprint building. The city – which will pay to build the building – should demand better.Interestingly, the city uses your tax money and mine to pay the salaries of a staff of urban designers in its planning department. They haven’t been consulted about the NASCAR hall design.

The city engineering department has taken the lead so far. Now, I value engineers. Without them bridges would collapse and skyscrapers tumble. But most engineers don’t know diddly about urban design. Maybe that’s why the city has eagerly planned yet another overstreet sidewalk, to connect the Convention Center to the Hall of Fame-new Convention Center ballroom complex. This despite haranguing for decades from planners that overstreet passages are fatal to a lively street scene.

So, let’s see. If a developer wants to build one, the city nixes it unless it’s B of A or Wachovia in which case the city curls into the fetal position. But when the city wants to build one, it’s OK?

Stay tuned. Whatcha bet the city will want to exempt itself from its own sign ordinance, too?

To see the rendering: http://www.belongshere.com/halloffame.html

Sometimes I think I’ve plopped into an alternate universe. Can it be the Charlotte Department of Transportation giving PowerPoint presentations on the importance of making city streets welcoming to pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as cars?

Ten years ago, if I’d heard that it would have meant I’d fallen, cracked my head on a rock and was hallucinating. Back then CDOT acted as if “transportation” meant only “motor vehicles.” Sidewalks, if built at all – and they weren’t required on many subdivision streets – were a stingy 4 feet wide and hugged the curb, right next to 50 mph traffic. Bicycle lanes? Why bother? Nobody rides bicycles in Charlotte! To “improve” transportation efficiency you just made all intersections wider and – if possible – added lanes wherever you could afford to (which, thankfully, was too expensive to do everywhere).

In a few spots, like where rich and/or politically influential people lived, the city proved it was “neighborhood friendly” by forbidding turns onto those sacred streets or even flat-out closing off streets. (Example: East Kingston at Euclid in Dilworth.)

So Tuesday night, at the “Sweet Streets” presentation – part of an ongoing monthly lecture/program series called Civic by Design at the Levine Museum of the New South – it was almost other-worldly to hear CDOT planner Tracy Newsome and her boss, Norm Steinman, CDOT’s planning and design manager, list changes they’re proposing to the city’s street-design standards. No, this isn’t asphalt quality or storm drain engineering. It’s about how wide or narrow streets need to be, how wide and how far from the street sidewalks should be and the importance of short block lengths and having plenty of street connections. Would you believe me if I said I think Jane Jacobs would approve?

What Newsome (no, we’re not related) and Steinman and their boss, CDOT Deputy Director Danny Pleasant are pushing is pretty much the whole philosophical approach that I and plenty of other people in town have wanted the city to adopt for years. The project’s bureaucratic name is the Urban Street Design Guidelines. They’ve been in the works at least four years – my first notes on the subject say April 2002. One early draft came out in 2003. The city’s Web site has the current draft.

Why haven’t they been adopted yet? One possibility: There’s been plenty of pushback from developers, who don’t like it whenever city rules get tighter and who specifically have complained about shorter block lengths (i.e., more pavement required, and in some cases developers may not be able to get as many lots onto a subdivision site) and about wider, 8-foot planting strips – which Newsome and Steinman say are needed if you want street trees to survive and grow. In response, CDOT has already loosened the proposed block-length requirement.

Another possibility: The city manager’s staff – as always – frets that developers will whine, City Council members will listen to the developers and the staff will acquire even more scar tissue. Well, it has been known to happen.

The CDOT folks Tuesday night said the proposals aren’t being offered for adoption yet, in order to go through yet another mind-numbingly bureaucratic review process (my words, not theirs). I figure that will take months.

That’s stupid. Adopt the street design guidelines. Now. They’re good, they’re badly needed, and they will make our city better.

If you want to pushing this much-needed improvement onto City Council’s agenda, let your council members know. Tell them you support the Urban Street Design Guidelines and want them adopted now. And if you’d like to be notified of the monthly Civic By Design forums, please notify Tom Hanchett at the Levine Museum of the New South.

I figure any column that brings similar responses from avant garde-ista Little Shiva AND civic stalwart Frank Bragg must have hit a nerve. (Feel free to add your own responses, below.)

Last Saturday’s Urban Outlook column was about learning to love Charlotte after living here 28 years. (Ouch, typing that “28” still hurts.) Compared with places like Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, Asheville, or even Fayetteville, Charlotte’s personality is, well, elusive.

Years ago, I was at a job-recruiting fair trying to meet promising young journalists who might want to work for The Charlotte Observer. One photographer stopped by the booth, and we chatted. She asked, “Does Charlotte have a soul?”

Long pause. Remember, I was being paid to make people think they’d want to work here. Finally, I came up with a convoluted response that I hope didn’t sound too desperate. It went something like this: “Charlotte’s soul is subtle. You have to live there a while before you can figure out what it is. It’s hidden, sort of … ” The photographer never, to my knowledge, applied for a job here.

I wrote, years ago, that Charlotte may have no “soul,” per se – although some people pointed out to me that the city probably does have a soul, just not one I approve of. Whatever.

Anyway, several people I’ve talked to about my Saturday column – one has lived here 30 years – have confessed to ongoing ambivalence about Charlotte, but that they’re starting to suspect that they, too, may be feeling more affection for the place.

Little Shiva, if you haven’t run into her, is a graphic designer and artist who publishes an underground magazine called QZ and who generally makes Charlotte a more interesting place to live in. She wrote:

“Just wanted to tell you that I like your Charlotte Valentine in today’s paper. I’m not quite ready to say the same for myself, but I feel like I might be someday. I’m not as far along as you, having just gotten here in late 1999. I’m still not in love with this place. … In spite of my family roots here and in spite of the fact that I’ve been fairly well accepted, I’m still dreaming of Mr. Right (referring to some dream city).

“But I have to look at how far I’ve come since 1999, all the commitments I’ve made towards Charlotte, personally as well as creatively, and I have to realize that this dopey town has somehow become a part of me. Whether or not I ever leave, or just keep this as home base and travel a whole lot more, Charlotte will be a begrudgingly fond chapter in my life story.”

Frank Bragg, by contrast, is a successful financial adviser and a well-known philanthropist and civic activist – very “establishment,” if you will, and a decidedly different style than Little Shiva. It was Frank and Kathy Bragg, for instance, who recently donated $100,000 to start an endowment fund for the Chamber Music at St. Peter’s concert series.

“Loved your article about your gradual coming to love Charlotte. I feel the same way. Kathy grew up here and we have lived here 43 years … except we have always lived outside the city. First south, at Elm Lane and Providence Road West on a small farm (now totally developed …) and then on Lake Norman for the last 16 years. … But now we live in Fourth Ward in a condo. We bought it in 1999 and lived here only part-time until last August when we sold our lake house. We love the city. It is exciting, stimulating, and beautiful.”

Planners are always coming up with Utopian ideas. Then those ideas get heaved against the plaster walls of the real world and shatter like porcelain teacups. (Feel free to share your war stories on that front, below.)

“Live-work units” – they’re all the rage among planners, and some developers, all over the country, especially (but not exclusively) in New Urbanist-styled neighborhoods. They’re buildings with retail or business space on the first floor and homes on upper floors.

It’s easy to see why they’d be popular: They’re an unfilled niche in the development market, aimed at people who own small businesses and don’t want to have to pay to rent/own both a home and a business site, or who don’t want to have to commute. Planners like them because they’re “mixed use” and, among other praiseworthy attributes, cut down on how many auto trips people have to make.

Plus, they can increase a city’s stock of affordable housing if you figure that not having to shell out for a separate space for your business gives you more money for your home.

Here’s the wall that they hit: Building codes don’t recognize them. If you’re a developer trying to build live-work, you’ll probably have to build the whole building under the commercial building code, even residential floors. That pushes your building costs so high that – guess what! – it isn’t affordable any more, and the units may not be able to compete with other residential development on the market.

I wrote a column in the Observer a few weeks ago about the difficulty developers have when applying the state’s building codes to mixed-used buildings. It spurred a call from Jim Bartl, Mecklenburg County’s director of code enforcement. He knows all about the live-work problem. “We’re getting pummeled by it all across the country,” he said.

Bartl, an architect, is one of North Carolina’s unsung heroes for his successful push to revise North Carolina’s state building code to make renovating older buildings dramatically easier. (That change, first enacted as a pilot project, was made permanent last year. Builders, planners, historic preservationists and downtown revitalizers all over the state should applaud Bartl and state Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, among others.)

Turns out Bartl is working with a national committee to change the International Residential Code and the International Commercial Code – the documents that underpin North Carolina’s state building code – so they recognize live-work units and make it easier to build them without compromising safety and fire standards. The committee will submit its proposal to the International Code Council in March. It could be adopted by spring 2007, and North Carolina’s building code would likely adopt the changes after that.

It wouldn’t get us anywhere near Utopia, of course, but it should make mixed-use and New Urbanist development a bit easier in the state of North Carolina.

Planners are always coming up with Utopian ideas. Then those ideas get heaved against the plaster walls of the real world and shatter like porcelain teacups. (Feel free to share your war stories on that front, below.)

“Live-work units” – they’re all the rage among planners, and some developers, all over the country, especially (but not exclusively) in New Urbanist-styled neighborhoods. They’re buildings with retail or business space on the first floor and homes on upper floors.

It’s easy to see why they’d be popular: They’re an unfilled niche in the development market, aimed at people who own small businesses and don’t want to have to pay to rent/own both a home and a business site, or who don’t want to have to commute. Planners like them because they’re “mixed use” and, among other praiseworthy attributes, cut down on how many auto trips people have to make.

Plus, they can increase a city’s stock of affordable housing if you figure that not having to shell out for a separate space for your business gives you more money for your home.

Here’s the wall that they hit: Building codes don’t recognize them. If you’re a developer trying to build live-work, you’ll probably have to build the whole building under the commercial building code, even residential floors. That pushes your building costs so high that – guess what! – it isn’t affordable any more, and the units may not be able to compete with other residential development on the market.

I wrote a column in the Observer a few weeks ago about the difficulty developers have when applying the state’s building codes to mixed-used buildings. It spurred a call from Jim Bartl, Mecklenburg County’s director of code enforcement. He knows all about the live-work problem. “We’re getting pummeled by it all across the country,” he said.

Bartl, an architect, is one of North Carolina’s unsung heroes for his successful push to revise North Carolina’s state building code to make renovating older buildings dramatically easier. (That change, first enacted as a pilot project, was made permanent last year. Builders, planners, historic preservationists and downtown revitalizers all over the state should applaud Bartl and state Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, among others.)

Turns out Bartl is working with a national committee to change the International Residential Code and the International Commercial Code – the documents that underpin North Carolina’s state building code – so they recognize live-work units and make it easier to build them without compromising safety and fire standards. The committee will submit its proposal to the International Code Council in March. It could be adopted by spring 2007, and North Carolina’s building code would likely adopt the changes after that.

It wouldn’t get us anywhere near Utopia, of course, but it should make mixed-use and New Urbanist development a bit easier in the state of North Carolina.

Big news – and good news – out Central Avenue.

The developers who wanted to build an Aldi grocery store at a key intersection – Briar Creek Road – are withdrawing their request for rezoning.

Chris Ogunrinde of Neighboring Concepts, one of the developers, told me Friday they decided to cancel the plans for the Aldi after a meeting with neighbors Jan. 26. “We had a lot of resistance from the residents,” he said. “I told Grey (Poole, the other developer) we should just fold and come back again.”

The property is owned by longtime East Charlotte resident and activist Nancy Plummer, whose husband, Ray, died last year. It’s 4.5 acres, zoned for 22-units-per-acre multifamily.

It was an unfortunate proposal for a key site, just beyond the funkily reviving Plaza-Central business district. The neighborhoods nearby, Merry Oaks, Briar Creek/Woodland, and the fringes of Plaza-Midwood, have in the past 10 years attracted a lot of younger, “creative class”-type residents.

But Aldi is a low-cost chain store that caters to, well, people looking for low-cost groceries. In and of itself, that’s fine. But one way retailers keep costs low is to build fast, cheap, unattractive stores. That’s why they’re called “big boxes.” Look at Costco. Look at Wal-Mart, and Target. Aldi is no exception. Unlike Harris Teeter and the locally owned Reid’s – which built stores uptown in mixed-use buildings – Aldi has no “urban” prototypes, at least, none in Charlotte.

So that key spot was going to get a one-story, suburban-style store catering to low-income customers. And what it needs is a well-designed, urban-style project with mixed-use buildings, good sidewalks and one-of-a-kind shops.

Ogunrinde says he was upset that some of the opposition focused on Aldi’s perceived clientele. That’s a fair point. City planners, as well, aren’t supposed to take such things into account in assessing whether to recommend for or against rezonings. And Aldi customers come from all income groups, surely.

But come on. In the real world developers set “price points” for their developments, and retailers do, too. That’s why Nordstrom didn’t plop itself down next to Target on South Boulevard. An Aldi would signal to every potential Central Avenue retailer and home-buyer, “downscale neighborhood here.”

Given that Aldi would build only a one-story building and needed a big parking lot, from what I saw of the site plan even a good urban designer like Ogunrinde couldn’t do much with the site.

The city plan for the area calls for something different – “neighborhood-oriented businesses” along that stretch of Central. It specifically recommends a coordinated development of the Plummer property and the property across Central, owned by the Renfrow family. It envisions two- or three-story buildings, with retail below and office or residential above.

That’s one reason a lot of neighbors felt betrayed by the development proposal. You can feel the heat, just reading the transcript of the Jan. 26 meeting.

The good news: Ogunrinde said he and Poole plan to simply buy the property outright from Plummer, and come back with a different proposal. There’s a lot happening in the area, and property values are rising. The proposed Morningside development, less than a mile away, is expected to set a much higher standard for design. I suspect Poole and Ogunrinde can sit on the property for a year or two and still make a pretty penny.

One other thing: At one point in the neighborhood meeting, Poole referred to the proposed development as “New Urbanism.”

It wasn’t. Not close. I hope people who heard him know the difference.

Want to know who’s trying to get the corner lot rezoned to build a Wal-Mart SuperCenter?

Want to know which City Council members voted for a stronger tree ordinance? Want to know who donated money to candidates in last fall’s City Council election? (Answer: Probably developers.)

Want to know how much the top staff in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ superintendent’s office are being paid?

You can find out all those things and plenty of other stuff, because government records in North Carolina are open to the public. They have to give you the information, even if they don’t approve of how you might use it.

Government meetings are open, too. They have to let you in, unless the meeting’s about a few very carefully defined topics, such as hiring/firing, or legal advice.

That’s why the Observer’s reporters have been able to write about the lengthy list of violations found over the years at Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where resident Mary Cole went missing for four days, and died shortly after she was found in a storage closet. (Today’s coverage )

That’s why Observer reporters could find out that the Synthron Inc. chemical plant in Morganton – which exploded Tuesday – had been assessed $87,600 in state fines in the past five years for serious hazardous waste violations.

That’s why an Eastover couple fighting a developer’s plans to build houses in the floodplain could inspect every floodplain development permit issued in the county.

In other words, if you care to learn what your elected officials and governments are doing with your tax dollars, open records and open meetings laws ensure that you can.

Of course, governments now and again try to get around the law, because sometimes they don’t want people to know what they are up to, either because they’re up to no good, or – as is more often the case – they suspec what they’re doing could get them in political hot water. Most reporters have war stories about county boards holding illegally closed meetings, or bureaucrats who refuse to give you public records.

That’s why neighborhood activists should think strongly of joining the other folks who’ll be among the crowd – historians, librarians, lawyers, elected officials, etc. – at a March 13 conference in Raleigh, “Are We Safer In The Dark?”

Sessions include forums with top lawyers who deal with open government issues, as well as the broadcast of a panel discussion from Washington, D.C., of experts from around the country discussing government secrecy and other open government issues.

The March 13 conference is sponsored by the N.C. Open Government Coalition, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to ensuring and enhancing the public’s access to government activity, records and meetings.

The conference is at Exploris, 201 E. Hargett St., in Raleigh. Cost is $30, including lunch. A registration form is on the coalition’s web site.

Did you hear that Atlanta has halted the teardown-McMansion syndrome that’s overtaking its popular intown neighborhoods?

As an Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jan. 20 article reports, it’s a temporary moratorium that stops construction permits in five intown neighborhoods: north Buckhead, Virginia-Highland, Morningside-Lenox Park, Ansley Park-Sherwood Forest and Lake Claire. On Feb. 6 the Atlanta City Council will decide whether to extend the moratorium 120 days and study proposed regulations on height, how close to the street houses can be built, and how much a lot can be raised by adding dirt, among other things.

Dang right it’s controversial. One person’s so-called right to do whatever he or she wants with his or her property (to wit: building a 7,000-square-foot home to tower over the neighboring ranch houses, thus reducing them to the visual status of doghouses) collides with the so-called right not to have one’s historic neighborhood devastated by bloated, out-of-character houses. But is that really a right? (I’m pretty sure it isn’t, though it may well be an admirable and useful goal in some cases.)

What’s in Atlanta’s best interest, long-term? And should Charlotte consider anything similar?

To answer the second question first, yes – but qualified. Some of Charlotte’s most valuable, historic neighborhoods – Myers Park, Eastover and, to a lesser extent Dilworth – are being ravaged by teardowns. Parts of Dilworth are in a historic district. That can delay a teardown and requires new construction to try to fit in.

But old Myers Park is being dismantled, house by house. I wrote two years ago about the David Ovens home (yes, the auditorium is named for him) on Ardsley being demolished. The out-of-proportion 17,000-square-foot house on Queens Road West at Princeton has damaged that street’s once harmonious proportions and has become the butt of numerous jokes. Those are just two examples among many.

Even more insidious if not as well-publicized is that smaller, older houses are often the targets. I know Myers Park is more expensive than a lot of neighborhoods, but it’s losing any vestiges of economic diversity, as the small and older houses are bulldozed. And the inflated property values are pushing taxes beyond the reach of people on fixed incomes. Wiser heads should step in, before one of Charlotte’s few nationally known neighborhoods is obliterated.

I don’t know if the answer is a historic district, as in Dilworth, or design review before construction (akin to what Atlanta seems to be proposing), or a neighborhood conservation district. I do know one of the city’s treasured neighborhoods is at risk.

But overall, are teardown McMansions a bad thing? A good thing? Inevitable?

It’s good for a city when lots of people want to live close in. It’s good for the taxpayers that the property values are being inflated – that may help make up for all those high-foreclosure neighborhoods where values are sinking. Better for us in Charlotte if those big, expensive houses are paying taxes here, not out in Weddington.

However it’s not good when neighborhoods lose economic diversity – which seems to be happening.

And it’s not good – it is, in fact, appalling – that perfectly good, solidly built houses are just being thrown away. I’ve been watching a two-story brick home on Wendover Road – the kind of house that when I was a kid, we used to daydream about living in – being knocked down and its remains carted away, presumably to the landfill. It’s a waste of natural resources that verges on criminal. This is a city with painful housing needs – hard-working people can’t find decent places to live that they can afford. But we’re simply throwing away houses – and all the wood, bricks and metal that were grown, dug up and mined to build them – at a time when houses are badly needed. Something’s bad wrong.

Should the whole process be stopped? Probably not, unless, as I said above, it’s destroying a historic neighborhood. However, the city should ease up on its single-family-only zoning requirements, so some of those $750,000 lots can be filled with duplexes or quadraplexes, instead of $2 million houses on steroids. That might keep a few somewhat-more-affordable places in those areas. And the city should require builders of teardown McMansions to build sidewalks if they’re being built on streets that lack them, such as in Foxcroft and Cotwold. Obviously the extra few thousand for the sidewalks won’t matter to the buyers.

Personally, I think those huge houses are just kind of weird. I mean, who in their right mind wants to look after 7,000 square feet of floors, furniture, trinkets and window treatments? (And what little kids really like to sleep so remotely from siblings and parents? Kids like togetherness.) Life’s got too many fun things to do. Why shackle yourself to the upkeep of a monster house?

I keep hoping people will miraculously come to their senses. Maybe soaring heating, electrical and lawn-watering bills will get their attention. But then again, if $3-a-gallon gas hasn’t made folks rethink those idiotic and unsafe SUVs, I shouldn’t hold out hope. (Note: Nothing I’ve said about big houses applies to the occasional family with six or seven kids, who really needs all that space.)

Some great comments on the Middle Class Squeeze (see below).
First, kudos to “chilton” for coining a great term: “Pulturbia: cheap, on-slab housing with faux ‘community.’ ”
An anonymous commenter tossed out a challenge:
Mary, pick a side of the fence, please. When talking about the problem of sprawl, you note, “That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices.” Then you criticize “arriviste mansions,” which, of course, are the result of intown neighborhoods evolving naturally when left to their own devices.So, which is it? Should we let market forces prevail, or should we have the government tell us what to do? And if the latter, just curious: are you prepared to put historic preservation status on your own intown home, which would prevent a McMansion but severely limit your resale value?
And then “chef” commented:
I’m not sure what you’re asking for. Do you want mandated housing – force people to live certain places so they are integrated? Do you want to force developers to build $800k subdivisions next to $150k subdivisions? It seems like you want to force some sort of “solution” but fall short of saying what it is. If people can afford $800k houses, why not let them build and live where they want?
A few comments: This is a topic that could justify a research-paper length discourse, but I’m trying to keep the blog entries shorter, so I apologize for giving short shrift to some complicated situations. And bear in mind there are no easy solutions, because whatever you do, some negative consequence will emerge. Cities are complex organisms.
But it’s a misconception to think those “arriviste mansions” are a pure result of natural economic evolution. They’re not. They depend on government regulation, specifically on zoning laws that keep development at lower intensities. Without single-family-only zoning, some of those mansions would be apartment or condo buildings. Or stores, offices, or factories. Without that government meddling (a.k.a. zoning), when we’re forced to vacate our intown home in 15 years because we’ve retired and our tiny journalist pensions won’t cover the property taxes, we’d sell out to a high-rise condo developer for a lot more than even Simonini and brethren would pay us. (I’m pretty sure our humble ranch isn’t eligible for historic landmark status, especially since we replaced some of the drafty-but-vintage 1950 metal casement windows in front. We’re less authentic, but warmer.)
In a city evolving “naturally,” that is, without the government constraints of zoning, etc. etc., we’d see much more intense development in the desirable areas. That condo project at Carmel and Colony that the Giverny neighbors fought so intensely would be dwarfed by the nearby high-rises and office towers.
All that said, I don’t think we’re going to have that mythical-but-pure, dog-eat-dog free marketplace, where you can build anything anywhere and I can put a Starbucks in my front yard next to your McMansion. We don’t have it now. And on balance that’s a good thing. A totally free market would pollute the water and air and we’d all pay a lot more for street paving, among other things.
So I have to opt for a government regulatory system, but with different regulations, in some instances, from what we have now. Not more regulations, necessarily, just different ones. For example, current regulations require certain lot sizes and setbacks and limit the placement of your carport and won’t let your aunt bake pies to sell at the farmer’s market if she lives in a neighborhood zoned for residential only. I’d ease up on the single-family-only rules (and let people bake those pies!). BUT I’d force developments to have a small percentage of housing affordable by people who aren’t rich. Every development, even ones with $800,000 houses, would have to comply. You’d be free to buy an $800K house and move in. But on the corner might be a duplex where your widowed grandmother might live, or your niece who’s a kindergarten teacher.
That’s because it’s in the larger community’s best interest to have housing for people who aren’t rich, and it’s been proved over and over that a small percentage of less-affluent families don’t hurt property values, when they’re dispersed through higher income neighborhoods. But large collections of very poor families clustered in one neighborhood do hurt property values there. So it’s in the larger community’s best interest to encourage economic integration in ways that don’t negatively affect other areas.
Several Virginia and Maryland counties have adopted those “inclusionary zoning” ordinances, as has Davidson, and they seem to be working fine.
Interestingly, Myers Park – designed 100 years ago before Charlotte zoning laws – had deed restrictions that dictated that on certain streets the houses couldn’t be too expensive. John Nolen, who planned the neighborhood, thought it was important to mix housing sizes and prices. So Myers Park (and to a lesser extent Eastover) has huge houses, smaller houses and even garage apartments (a form of “affordable housing” that’s been all but lost due to overly restrictive zoning rules).
What about all those starter home neighborhoods? That’s trickier. I’m not sure what the best solution would be, even though I worry that they’ll be our slums of 2036.
Allowing more affordable housing in higher-income areas would ease some of the market pressure for starter homes, but probably not enough. Stronger design rules – like the ones Cabarrus County recently instituted – would be appropriate. And if the high-interest-rate mortgage business were forced to clean up its act, I bet a notable percentage of the starter home market would evaporate.