Transit

When the Democratic National Convention finished its activities in Charlotte, from most reports visitors found Charlotte an exemplary host city. We saw comments such as “retail oriented,” “pedestrian-friendly,” even “lively.” What a difference a couple of decades can make! Recall that in 1994, when Charlotte hosted the NCAA Final Four tournament, Tryon Street was so […]

Have opinions about how development should look along the hoped-for next leg of Charlotte’s light rail line? Thursday is the first of three public workshops scheduled to help planners as they draw up area plans for six* of the 11 station areas. All three meetings will be 6-8 p.m. at Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, 101 […]

How did this happen? How did a Charlotte City Council – with all 11 members willing to vote for a small property tax hike to pay for an ambitious, five-year plan of neighborhood improvements – wind up killing that five-year plan? Plenty of armchair quarterbacking is going on now, divvying blame or credit (depending on […]

Is it prescient and forward-thinking for the city to encourage subsidized housing at rapid transit stations in coming decades? Or would that be the nail in the coffin, killing any near-term chance to halt a pattern of sinking property values near some of those stations, especially in troubled parts of east and northeast Charlotte? Two […]

From Davidson to Harrisburg to Gaston County, public and private officials are working to capture some of a national increase in freight rail traffic. But those efforts have upset some residents. And the possibility of freight NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) might create yet another obstacle for a proposed commuter rail line from uptown […]

There I was, pencil poised over a large drawing of Gastonia. It was 1997 and I was running a public workshop to design a network of greenways and open spaces for residents to enjoy as recreational and natural amenities. Someone in the background was fiddling with a radio. Then, as I remember the moment, the […]

MOORESVILLE – “Revolutionary” is not too strong a word for plans laid out Tuesday to a room full of government officials, consultants and interested laypeople. At a public workshop in Mooresville, some 150 people heard a lengthy and detailed proposal for reviving a planned but still unbuilt commuter rail line to Iredell County. Simply the […]

Amid the pervasive gloom and depression about the future of American cities I was lucky enough to visit recently two very different American places that hold out some hopes for a sustainable future here in the USA. On the face of it, Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and Boston, Mass., could not be more different: one a large […]

A rare joy in Charlotte is being able to live a compact, transit-supported lifestyle, where soul-sapping commuter journeys on interstates or arterial highways can be avoided. My wife, Linda, and I have worked hard to craft such a lifestyle, “aging in place” in Dilworth, where almost everything we need is within a mile of our […]

What should Charlotte look like? When discussing urban design many planners, architects and developers assume that what works in New York, San Francisco and Portland should work here. This assumption ignores the reality that Southerners have a very different perspective on “urbanness” than non-Southerners. No one has asked Charlotteans what they want their city to […]