About four different readers pointed me to this intriguing blog posting at the New York Times by Allison Arieff, “What Will Save the Suburbs?”
I hope all our city council members, city staff, county commissioners, planning commissioners take time to read it. Arieff points out that unlike the development of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the postwar suburbia is going to be difficult to re-purpose (ugh, horrible word). Yet in Charlotte, you can still build a three-houses-per-acre single-family subdivision without any City Council rezoning needed — auto-pilot growth .
Empty big-box stores are just one of the problems. (I wonder if the book she cites, Julia Christensen’s “Big Box Reuse” mentions that one old K mart in Charlotte was reused as a charter school.)
The difficulty of re-purposing development that was badly designed to start with is one major hurdle for attracting any serious uptown retail: There simply aren’t enough good sidewalk-front spaces clumped together to attract enough stores. After all, retail loves to be near other retail. (See “shopping centers.”) If you don’t understand what I mean about good sidewalk-front spaces, take a field trip to downtown Asheville.
Maybe this development downturn will inspire the city of Charlotte to finally look with purpose at the kind of by-right development (meaning no rezoning needed) it’s allowing.