The Naked City Blog

• Brand: Figure out what qualities make UC special.
• Market: Devise a long-term plan to promote that image, getting help from the real estate community.
• Urbanize: Encourage more urban-style development along the future light rail line on North Tryon Street.

This issue came up at Civic By Design on Tuesday, during a talk from AIA’s Phil Kuttner and YMCA’s Jarrett Royster. The AIA has been working for months to come up with some plans for the Central Avenue “international corridor” of ethnic restaurants between Eastway and Eastland Mall. (Note: This is just a recommended way of looking at things, will have no force of law or any city requirements. Though come to think of it, even the city’s own adopted plans have no force of law. But I digress.)

Lots of interest in the room, of course. But Nancy Pierce of Merry Oaks neighborhood (and a gazillion other local activities) mentioned that after East Charlotte folks noticed the severe lack of Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Kinkos and other well-known and useful businesses in their part of town, they asked retailers and were told that the “International Corridor” reputation might be part of the problem keeping those businesses away.

Well, said a few folks on Tuesday, we don’t want those chains anyway. We prefer authentic, locally owned businesses.

Later, Tom Warshauer from the city’s Economic Development department, mused that many people see chains such as Starbucks as validation.

What do you think? Would you rather have Starbucks or something local? Would you want Starbucks if it meant the local folks got squeezed out? Or is the whole neighborhood development evolution a process that residents really don’t have control of anyway? And what, if anything, could a local government do about any of that? (Other than finding a good BBQ joint, of course — see my previous. And if you think Bubba’s is great BBQ you need to get out more. As to Old Hickory House, that’s good barbecue for people who don’t really like N.C.-style barbecue. Mississippi people. Virginia people. Florida people.)

Oh, and please go to CharlotteEast.com and fill out their survey.

Three mostly tongue-in-cheek proposals:

1. During a City Council transportation committee meeting about how many connecting streets that the city has mapped as “proposed” that were never built when subdivisions were developed (answer: because no city ordinances require them to be built) – bicycle advocate Dan Faris leans over and says, “Why can’t the city just buy a bunch of foreclosed houses, move them somewhere else, and put in the connecting streets that should be there?”
Good idea Dan. Though, A) I don’t think the city has a pool of money to do that, and B) I’m not sure some of those starter-home houses are built well enough to survive a move.

2. Lunching on barbecue driven in from Lexington, the editorial board was – again – lamenting the lack of any truly excellent N.C.-style barbecue in Charlotte. (Bill Spoon’s on South Boulevard is the best of the bunch, but it is NOT a large field.) Hmmmm. Why not, someone suggested, get the City Council to go ahead and buy that store building at Parkwood and Pegram – it had just said no, the night before, because it thought the building wasn’t big enough – and offer it at reasonable rent to a willing BBQ-meister, perhaps of the Stamey or Bridges families. It’s win-win: The city gummint gets steady rent, and the fine QC populace finally gets an amenity that’s been sadly lacking for years.

3. The question came up at Civic By Design Tuesday night: why doesn’t East Charlotte have Starbucks or Caribou Coffee or even a Kinkos? Some people think that’s a slight. Others think East Charlotte would be better off without same-old-chain development. What about a locally owned coffee house along Central Avenue’s international restaurant corridor, people said. Hmmmm. Good idea, but there’s a glitch: What kind of coffee? Vietnamese? Colombian? Brazilian? American-style joe? Here’s the idea: A willing local entrepreneur sets up an International Coffee House, serving all kinds. You’d need expert baristas for all genres, though. I don’t trust Americans to make good Latino-style coffee.

Folks in the urban planning and development worlds are cheered that Barack Obama says he’s creating an Office of Urban Policy.

It’s about time some president did this. It makes plenty of sense, and it shouldn’t have taken a Democrat from a big city to have recognized it. The problems and issues exist and the government has to deal with them regardless of who’s in the White House.

And perhaps the incoming North Carolina governor, Bev Perdue, should take the notion and set up something at the state level. North Carolina’s cities share some uniquely urban problems, but few people at state level are focusing on them.

For the White House job, I haven’t heard many names mentioned.

But for Transportation secretary, one name I’ve heard while gossiping with several people is Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Portland, Ore., (at left, and note bicycle lapel pin an early and ardent supporter of Smart Growth. But take that just as gossip. I have no pipeline to the Obama transition office.

Maybe it was in honor of the no-longer-in office Parks Helms, but county commissioners’ chair Jennifer Roberts tossed out an idea Monday night at the swearing-in ceremony. After remarks about the economic challenges facing the county she offered this: Is it time to consider consolidation again?

She meant totally combining Mecklenburg County and City of Charlotte governments. It would save on administrative costs — only one big-ticket manager, for instance — and would certainly make it easier for residents to know whom to call if they have a problem.

It’s an idea that arises once a decade or so and gets shot down after politicians realize there would be fewer elected jobs for them to run for. Helms championed consolidation for years. But it’s too messy: How do you deal with the need for minority representation? How do you deal with Huntersville and Mint Hill and the other smaller towns, for instance? They don’t mind being part of Mecklenburg County and they need representation at the county level. But they don’t need representation on a “Charlotte” board.

We’ll see if Roberts brings it up again. My guess: No.

I was intending to launch a new topic this morning – first of the month and all that – but instead I’m pointing your attention to the comments on the previous posting, about Locust.

It’s a good by-play on the pros and cons of town planning. Bob Remsburg, a former Locust city administrator, has weighed in, as well as former Locust council member Joe Bishop, as well as David Walters – whom the original post quoted. Also, Rick Becker, the mayor of Mineral Springs (in southern Union County) and Rodger Lentz, the planner who helped launch the “town center” in Harrisburg (in Cabarrus County, on the Mecklenburg line). It’s a good summation of how town planning evolves. As Lentz (now planning director for Wilson in Eastern North Carolina and president of the N.C. chapter of the American Planning Association) points out, the original vision can be compromised due to developers’ wishes or beliefs about the marketplace. As Becker points out, towns’ plans rely on utilities and if needed utilities aren’t present even the best plans can languish for years.

And as one of the “anonymi” points out, today’s beliefs about “good” planning might in the end be proven all wrong:

The “awful alternatives” that we see in many places ARE the result of planning. In Charlotte the most obvious and glaring example of that was the utter destruction of close-in residential neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, to be replaced by “planned communities” such as the now-defunct Earle Village. That nonsense was urban planning just as much as the “new urbanism” version. I know some folks are fond of claiming that planning has evolved, but things don’t evolve TOWARD something, and evolution does not presuppose an improvement. It is only a change in response to changing conditions. Since future needs, wants, and tastes can’t possibly be predicted, planning done today can’t possibly accommodate the needs, wants, and tastes of tomorrow. There’s no real reason to believe that a generation from now the planners and “visionaries” who hold sway to day won’t be vilified for what they’ve wrought.

It’s a caution for all who care about planning and city- and town-building: We may think we’re on the side of progress but sometimes it turns out “progress” isn’t.

(And thanks to all of you for reading and taking the time to comment.)

One reason planners need patience is that it takes years for what they do to come to fruition.

The Nov. 16 Citistates Report, in the article “Ring Around Charlotte,” praised the town of Locust in Stanly County for its New Urban-style downtown plan of a few years back.

But Locust was, in fact, years ahead of many towns in the state in adopting a form-based town code. It adopted its town plan and code in 1996-97, under the guidance of David Walters of the UNC Charlotte College of Architecture. I remembered his role and asked him for more details:

I did the Locust town plan and form-based zoning code in 1996-97. The town employed UNCC on a “contract for services” basis to use my skills and time. This small grant, $20,000 if my memory serves, covered my expenses, wages plus expenses for a student assistant. This was the same arrangement by which I did the codes for Davidson (with Tim Keane) and Huntersville (with Ann Hammond), and guided Cornelius towards their new code, all between 1994 and 1996.

More recently we have used a similar formula to produce well-received master plans for Mineral Springs (2005) and Wesley Chapel (2007-08) in Union County, using a graduate class I used to teach.

In Locust, the town debated long and hard about whether to take up the NCDOT’s plan for a bypass that would effectively kill their town by taking all the traffic and commerce away, or accepting that they would lose the mini-downtown to the big highway and then plan for a new town center on some open land.

To their eternal credit, the town’s committee voted to pursue the latter course, so in my plan and code I showed a “city center” area backed with higher density “neighborhood residential.”

It took nearly ten years to come to some fruition, but that’s about the average time for something like that. … The main credit goes to the Locust citizens who had the foresight to plan their town a decade into the future.

Continuing the discussion of sidewalks and walkable streets, in response to my Saturday op-ed column, “Where the sidewalk shouldn’t end,” I received the following e-mail:

Why both sides? A person can only walk on one side at a time. I know some may argue safety from crossing streets, but that is on certain streets that may carry heavy traffic or number of lanes which make streets wider.

City and County standards for designing subdivision streets take some of those issues into account with “block lengths”, widths of streets, and connectivity. I believe that sidewalks on both sides of a typical subdivision street is wasteful and should only be required on busier and wider streets determined by traffic engineers.

Working for a real estate developer I know the costs of sidewalks do get passed along to homebuyers and on a typical 70’ wide lot with a 4’ wide sidewalk, the cost is +/-$850 per lot. As you said in your article “A slab of concrete. Impervious surface.” The impervious surface is also becoming an environmental issue concerning storm water runoff and municipalities looking into “post construction ordinances” which (try) to reduce the amount of impervious areas and treat the rest through a series of water quality ponds and rain gardens which drives the cost of a home way up, and limiting sidewalks to one side of a street can help the impervious area calculations and costs.

Of course, I think that in a city you need sidewalks on both sides, and for many reasons. Here’s one: Today’s quiet residential street in a quiet neighborhood with little traffic may, in 2030, be a high-traffic street. consider Kuykendall Road, or Barclay Downs Drive, or Sharon Road near the Queens/Selwyn intersection. All were, when built, at the edge of the city in quiet suburban areas. Now they’re in-town streets with plenty of cars.