Walkscore.com, a cool site I plugged a year ago, looked at 2,508 neighborhoods in 40 cities. Charlotte didn’t do too well. That’s a euphemism. Charlotte was in the basement: No. 38 out of 40. (Cherry, Fourth Ward and Downtown Charlotte were rated our most walkable neighborhoods.)
The site measures walkability with a walkability checklist which assesses stuff such as whether a neighborhood has a discernible center, mixed-use development, sidewalks, traffic that doesn’t go too fast, narrow streets (calmer traffic), parks and public spaces, etc. The software used for measuring is based on Google maps, U.S. Census data, Zillow neighborhood boundaries and Yellow Page information, and it assigns values to locations such as schools, workplaces, supermarkets, parks and public spaces based on how near they are to an address. (Based on some comments I saw elsewhere, the software has some glitches.)
USA Today had a piece on the list, noting the bottom three: Charlotte, Nashville and Jacksonville, and the Huffington Post had a short blurb on the Bottom 10 as well.
Why is Charlotte so un-walkable? It’s hard to find just one villain; there are several. The part of the city built before World War II (as in Cherry, Fourth Ward, and downtown) is much more pedestrian-friendly. After WWII, traffic engineers and planners embraced some theories, based on the ideals of Modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, that have proven to be ill-suited for urban life. The federal government was in thrall to the automakers and began subsidizing auto travel with vast new highways while shrinking subsidies and passing laws that hurt rail transportation.
Single-use zoning was considered modern and progressive — yet another reason not to let yourself be blinded by an idea just because it’s labeled “progressive.” The traffic engineering profession promoted neighborhood layouts that didn’t have connecting streets.
In addition, elected leaders in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County rarely did anything that developers didn’t like, such as require sidewalks to be built or require subdivisions with lots of connecting streets, or require subdivisions to connect to the subdivision next door. Neighborhood activists fought street connections — witness the silly closure of East Kingston in Dilworth. After all, if you live on a street that doesn’t connect you understandably prefer the lack of traffic to what you’d have with through streets. Private comfort for a few trumped street networks that would have benefited the greater community.
The city’s transportation department in recent years has pushed admirably for more pedestrian amenities, and it’s making progress, although the rate is slow. Retrofitting the mistakes of 50 years will take money and time — lots of it.