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Nan Bauroth, a former community columnist for the Observer, e-mails to suggest I read “Sprawl: A Compact History,” [by Robert Bruegmann] recently reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “This proves that far from unenlightened, sprawl has been with us since time immemorial for good reason,” she says. “Interested in your take!”
My reply:
I’ve seen the reviews, haven’t had a chance to read it, though it sounds interesting. Here’s my take, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book: The process of people moving out from cities is age old, due to the inevitable crowding, noise, and – in many cities until modern sewer systems – disease-ridden filth. People who could afford it built villas, country houses, etc., and kept a place in town. People who couldn’t afford it didn’t. I think that’s a natural economic process that really can’t be stopped.
But in the 20th century, the form that natural process took changed dramatically, as governments, influenced by planners and would-be social reformers as well as automakers, began mandating vast territories of nothing but single-family-home dwellings on mandated large lots, and other vast territories of nothing but stores, and yet more vast territories of office-only buildings (a.k.a. office parks). That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices. Plus, governments began catering to, and subsidizing, automobile travel in unprecedented ways. Traffic engineers came up with the theory that dead-end streets feeding onto large thoroughfares would make traffic move smoothly. They were right – up to a point. When there’s too much traffic, those thoroughfares get horribly clogged.
So while the process of suburbanization is natural, the form it began taking in the 20th century was decidedly unnatural, as well as more costly to governments (all those streets, longer sewer lines, more police cars covering more miles, ditto school buses, etc.)
In addition, in previous centuries, those suburban villages could easily be absorbed into the city as it grew out to meet them. Examples: Montmartre, Greenwich Village, etc. The zoning-law/traffic-engineer-designed suburbs of the 20th century aren’t so easily absorbed, with their highway-like thoroughfares and cul-de-sacs that distort traffic dispersal, their lack of pedestrian amenities, and legally enforced, unnaturally low densities.
I think suburbs in general are a natural phenomenon. What isn’t natural is the style in which Americans have been building them for the last 60 or so years. There’s also a lot of research pointing to some very harmful rules on the part of banks/insurance companies/mortgage firms, etc., that prevented city property owners (or anyone owning property anywhere near black people) from getting loans. The federal government, to its shame, supported and enforced that discrimination during the first half of the 20th century. The removal of official and unofficial red-lining is one reason, in my unresearched opinion, that city living has seen a renewal recently.

Nan Bauroth, a former community columnist for the Observer, e-mails to suggest I read “Sprawl: A Compact History,” [by Robert Bruegmann] recently reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “This proves that far from unenlightened, sprawl has been with us since time immemorial for good reason,” she says. “Interested in your take!”
My reply:
I’ve seen the reviews, haven’t had a chance to read it, though it sounds interesting. Here’s my take, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book: The process of people moving out from cities is age old, due to the inevitable crowding, noise, and – in many cities until modern sewer systems – disease-ridden filth. People who could afford it built villas, country houses, etc., and kept a place in town. People who couldn’t afford it didn’t. I think that’s a natural economic process that really can’t be stopped.
But in the 20th century, the form that natural process took changed dramatically, as governments, influenced by planners and would-be social reformers as well as automakers, began mandating vast territories of nothing but single-family-home dwellings on mandated large lots, and other vast territories of nothing but stores, and yet more vast territories of office-only buildings (a.k.a. office parks). That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices. Plus, governments began catering to, and subsidizing, automobile travel in unprecedented ways. Traffic engineers came up with the theory that dead-end streets feeding onto large thoroughfares would make traffic move smoothly. They were right – up to a point. When there’s too much traffic, those thoroughfares get horribly clogged.
So while the process of suburbanization is natural, the form it began taking in the 20th century was decidedly unnatural, as well as more costly to governments (all those streets, longer sewer lines, more police cars covering more miles, ditto school buses, etc.)
In addition, in previous centuries, those suburban villages could easily be absorbed into the city as it grew out to meet them. Examples: Montmartre, Greenwich Village, etc. The zoning-law/traffic-engineer-designed suburbs of the 20th century aren’t so easily absorbed, with their highway-like thoroughfares and cul-de-sacs that distort traffic dispersal, their lack of pedestrian amenities, and legally enforced, unnaturally low densities.
I think suburbs in general are a natural phenomenon. What isn’t natural is the style in which Americans have been building them for the last 60 or so years. There’s also a lot of research pointing to some very harmful rules on the part of banks/insurance companies/mortgage firms, etc., that prevented city property owners (or anyone owning property anywhere near black people) from getting loans. The federal government, to its shame, supported and enforced that discrimination during the first half of the 20th century. The removal of official and unofficial red-lining is one reason, in my unresearched opinion, that city living has seen a renewal recently.

No one called Kaye McGarry “sweetheart.”
But testy tempers over school bonds, growth, and – never spoken but usually present – racial tension erupted this morning (Friday, Dec. 16) at a usually staid intergovernmental committee called the Planning Liaison Committee.
This wasn’t posturing for the press. Local TV cameras don’t cover this process stuff. It was an audience on only four: two folks from REBIC (Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition), a guy who I think was a developer, and me.
I’ll spare you most of the play-by-play. It involves nonsexy things like cost-containment and the difference between general obligation bonds and Certificates of Participation.
But county commissioner Dumont Clarke looked like he was channeling Law and Order’s Jack McCoy, or maybe a Rottweiler. Commissioner Norman Mitchell, usually congenial, got steamed, at one point telling fellow commissioner Dan Bishop, “Your point of view is not correct.”
“Welcome to a school board meeting,” school board member Kit Cramer quipped at one point, trying to defuse the tension.
Kaye McGarry – the at-large school board member who wants extra security because George Dunlap yelled at her last spring and called her “Sweetheart” last month – must have gotten under Clarke’s skin. It’s easy to see why.
Her continual refrain – that all of CMS’s crowding problems could be solved if only they’d build schools more cheaply and efficiently, i.e., they’re wasting money left and right – typically lacks specifics. Thank goodness today she didn’t go on and on about all the “bells and whistles” they’re building into today’s schools. (Bells? Whistles? Teachers reading this who see bells and whistles, please let me know.)
Today she parroted something she’d heard somewhere, that COPs require schools to be built for less money. That was patently inaccurate, because they’re just another way to borrow money. Clarke kept interrupting her, saying “That’s not right.”
Later, Clarke demanded specifics – what percentage of the school building plans could or should be eliminated through cost-containment? “I plead, I beg you, to get away from these generalities – ‘We can do this cheaper.’ “
McGarry would only say, “We can do better.” Clarke burrowed in: “You didn’t answer my question.” Eventually, Bishop said: “I didn’t know it was an inquisition.”
There was more – too much more. And it was not at all collegial. Example from Clarke: “People who say you’re overspending are not in touch with reality. They have another agenda.”
What to make of it all? Here’s my take:
Other elected officials don’t hesitate to publicly criticize school board decisions, although they’re far more courteous with other elected bodies’ occasionally knuckle-headed decisions. “We’re the weak man down, and everyone’s taking a turn kicking,” is how school board member Kit Cramer put it after Friday’s meeting.
The school board has four members (McGarry, Dunlap, Larry Gauvreau and Vilma Leake) who can’t play well with others. They are crusading, not governing.
Their spats – especially the ones with an under-the-surface racial tinge – are making their political allies mad, too. The nastiness is spreading to other elected bodies, if Friday’s Planning Liaison Committee meeting was any indicator.
That’s not a cheerful thought.

No one called Kaye McGarry “sweetheart.”
But testy tempers over school bonds, growth, and – never spoken but usually present – racial tension erupted this morning (Friday, Dec. 16) at a usually staid intergovernmental committee called the Planning Liaison Committee.
This wasn’t posturing for the press. Local TV cameras don’t cover this process stuff. It was an audience on only four: two folks from REBIC (Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition), a guy who I think was a developer, and me.
I’ll spare you most of the play-by-play. It involves nonsexy things like cost-containment and the difference between general obligation bonds and Certificates of Participation.
But county commissioner Dumont Clarke looked like he was channeling Law and Order’s Jack McCoy, or maybe a Rottweiler. Commissioner Norman Mitchell, usually congenial, got steamed, at one point telling fellow commissioner Dan Bishop, “Your point of view is not correct.”
“Welcome to a school board meeting,” school board member Kit Cramer quipped at one point, trying to defuse the tension.
Kaye McGarry – the at-large school board member who wants extra security because George Dunlap yelled at her last spring and called her “Sweetheart” last month – must have gotten under Clarke’s skin. It’s easy to see why.
Her continual refrain – that all of CMS’s crowding problems could be solved if only they’d build schools more cheaply and efficiently, i.e., they’re wasting money left and right – typically lacks specifics. Thank goodness today she didn’t go on and on about all the “bells and whistles” they’re building into today’s schools. (Bells? Whistles? Teachers reading this who see bells and whistles, please let me know.)
Today she parroted something she’d heard somewhere, that COPs require schools to be built for less money. That was patently inaccurate, because they’re just another way to borrow money. Clarke kept interrupting her, saying “That’s not right.”
Later, Clarke demanded specifics – what percentage of the school building plans could or should be eliminated through cost-containment? “I plead, I beg you, to get away from these generalities – ‘We can do this cheaper.’ “
McGarry would only say, “We can do better.” Clarke burrowed in: “You didn’t answer my question.” Eventually, Bishop said: “I didn’t know it was an inquisition.”
There was more – too much more. And it was not at all collegial. Example from Clarke: “People who say you’re overspending are not in touch with reality. They have another agenda.”
What to make of it all? Here’s my take:
Other elected officials don’t hesitate to publicly criticize school board decisions, although they’re far more courteous with other elected bodies’ occasionally knuckle-headed decisions. “We’re the weak man down, and everyone’s taking a turn kicking,” is how school board member Kit Cramer put it after Friday’s meeting.
The school board has four members (McGarry, Dunlap, Larry Gauvreau and Vilma Leake) who can’t play well with others. They are crusading, not governing.
Their spats – especially the ones with an under-the-surface racial tinge – are making their political allies mad, too. The nastiness is spreading to other elected bodies, if Friday’s Planning Liaison Committee meeting was any indicator.
That’s not a cheerful thought.

If you’ve checked the comments on my Dec. 9 post “The Hottest Story Going,” you’ll see a lot of pro-con about impact fees. Jonathan Marshall, commerce director for Cabarrus County, shares this:
“Statements like this one from your blog – ‘Usually, though not always, the cost of the fee is included in the price of the house you buy or apartment you rent’ – are too often made without challenge. There is considerable research on the subject and it is not that simple. Ironically, one of the best summaries of that research is a document prepared for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission in 1990 by Duncan & Associates. … The section that addresses it most directly is Chapter VI.”
What the report says is that researchers differ on whether impact fees and impact taxes end up being passed on to homebuyers or passed backward to whoever sells land to the developer, and that other factors come into play, too, such as whether neighboring jurisdictions have impact fees, and whether the market is booming or sluggish. In other words, financing is complex.
That 15-year-old report, “Infrastructure Financing Techniques” is one I wrote about a year ago: “A 14-year-late debate,” Oct. 2, 2004.”
I described how it was quietly decided by someone in city government in 1990 to instruct the consultants, Duncan & Associates, not to actually make any recommendations about how to finance infrastructure.
I guess city staff types (or politicians?) were worried they’d recommend impact fees or land transfer taxes, both of which the local developers’ lobby treat with the affection they’d show Karl Marx. (Publicly. Privately it’s not hard to find developers who think impact fees might be better than the current unpredictable system of what they dub “extractions.”)
Impact fees obviously wouldn’t be a silver bullet to kill all growth and funding problems. After all, Wake County has them and they’re still looking at some painfully expensive school-building needs. But notice: Impact fees don’t seem to have slowed Wake County development, or Chatham County’s either, the way developers here – and their politician mouthpieces
– would have you believe.

There I was in Seaside, Fla., cradle of New Urbanism, mothership of a major architectural movement, a place that gets as much ink in architecture circles as Madonna gets in the real world.
Since Seaside got famous in the 1980s (it broke ground in 1981), critics have said it’s Disney-esque, unreal, nostalgic, elitist – a haunt for Stepford Spouses.
So, what was it really like? (Add your two cents’ worth, below.) Until I went there for several days last week, I reserved judgment. You can’t really assess places until you see them. I’m a fan of New Urbanism, or at least of what New Urbanism really is, as opposed to what some critics or cheesy developers say it is.
What’s New Urbanism? An architectural movement to revive the ways neighborhoods, towns and cities developed for centuries. But in the 20th century those patterns were scrapped by, among others, Modernist architects, grandiose urban planners, single-use zoning laws and traffic engineers. A New Urbanist neighborhood has narrower streets, pedestrian comforts (Seaside doesn’t really have many sidewalks, though it’s easy to walk through), connected streets, a blend of dwellings (houses, apartments, townhouses, etc.) and uses (residences, stores, workplaces). Houses sit close to each other and the street, to encourage neighborliness. Densities are higher than typical suburbia.
Seaside, designed by the Miami firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk, was the first place to get famous for honing those principles, although other architects and planners were also espousing them. Developer Robert Davis made a ton of money, and the place is hugely popular.
My verdict? Seaside is charming, especially if you like picket fences and Southern-style homes with big porches. (Most academic types and architecture writers don’t.)
Is Seaside real? Of course not. Yellow card! Is Wild Dunes real? Kiawah? Figure Eight Island? It’s a beach development.
Is it only for rich people? Again, yellow card! It’s a beach development. As designed, Seaside had more affordable places than most beach resorts. But it was wildly successful, so prices zoomed. The last undeveloped beach lot – 50 feet wide – just sold for $4 million.
Is it elitist? I see why the place sets some people’s teeth on edge. The marketing prose is excruciatingly high-concept – e.g. short gushing essays about how special it is that Southerners give names to their beach houses – with the faintest aroma of self-congratulation. It offers wine festivals, chamber music on the lawn, high-end decor shops and an artist-in-residence program. It did give me the urge to prop a rusty Corvair up on cinderblocks and serve Cheerwine and Slim Jims at my next soiree.
Conclusion: Seaside is lovely (the Ruskin Place courtyard/park is particularly beautiful) , but no longer unique – which is why it’s so significant. It proved customers crave places built to look less like Levitttown and more like Chapel Hill or Charleston. It was a demonstration project.
And it launched a huge movement in planning and architecture. Without Seaside, there’d probably be no Baxter in Fort Mill, no Afton Village in Concord, no First Ward Place housing project in Charlotte, no Southern Village in Chapel Hill. That’s its major significance. Whether it’s “real” or “elitist” is, in the end, flatly irrelevant.

It’s the biggest story in Charlotte – and Union, Cabarrus, Iredell counties and most other places around here. Bigger than the Bobcats. Bigger than their new arena. Even bigger than Ric Flair’s divorce. (Disagree? See below.)
It’s growth. Development. It’s what people in the old days used to call “progress.” That sounds so quaint now, like calling a sofa a davenport, or a fridge the icebox.
And most everyone has an opinion about it, from “It’s my property, don’t tell me what I can do,” to “Stop the developers!” to “No more density!” to “No more sprawl!” – two opinions widely shared yet mutally exclusive. And that’s not even getting into the whol Wal-Mart melee: Agent of Satan or WWJ(W)Wal-Mart’s Where Jesus (Would) Shop.
That’s why I launched this blog. I’ve got a gazillion opinions, and judging from the e-mails and letters I see, you do, too. I write a regular column for the Charlotte Observer but there’s more to discuss than there is newsprint available to hold the discussion. So …..
Let’s get a discussion going. How’s this for starters: Impact fees?
Those are per-unit or per-lot fees that developers pay to local governments to help pay for schools, or streets, or parks, etc. (Two important things to remember: Usually, though not always, the cost of the fee is included in the price of the house you buy or apartment you rent. And the income they bring in isn’t enough to fully pay for the schools, or the roads or other government services the residents of the new development require. I.e. they don’t replace property taxes.)
Do we need them in Charlotte, or in the places nearby? If so, what should they help pay for?
You can post your opinions below, or respond to others’ opinions.