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My Rant about Charlotte


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I don't live in downtown, I live around where these started homes exist in N Meck so I can tell you straight on that it matters to me probally even more than a lot of people that live in this city. Certainly I'm not going to argue the facts of what have happened in the N Meck most notably and some other areas on the outskirts of Meck County, however other large cities as noted above are also victims of having suburban qualities just like Charlotte where development would be considered crap from an urban viewpoint. Again I'm not going to even argue the development standards in general Charlotte, I was just talking specifically about our urban center...
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Seems like this discussion pops up every few months.

Firstly, and I don't know how many times I've said this, but why do some people seem to think that every single structure Uptown needs to generate pedestrian activity 24/7?

Secondly, I think it's clear that the arena is generating development within its vicinity, which is causing that area to see more activity on a more consistent basis. Compare that with any type of development BOA Stadium might have generated within its first few years.

I really think we tend to lack perspective here. Understand, Charlotte is still a relative newcomer to the "big cities club" and has suffered what several Sunbelt cities that came of age in the era of sprawl have suffered. Hell, residents of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, etc.--cities much larger and more developed than Charlotte--have the very same discussions about their cities. It simply isn't fair to compare Charlotte to DC, San Francisco, Chicago, or any European city in that regard. In my view, Charlotte's progress is glaringly obvious.

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I think it is very fair to make these comparisons. There has been literally billions of dollars spent in this city over the last 5 years in new development yet most of it is very bad. There is no reason that it has to be this way but unfortunately it is.
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Everyone is simply not enamored by the style of the development so far. The projects I am more interested in such as mixed use proposals that supposedly will include streetlevel retail....Brooklyn Village, Brevard St stroll district etc etc.. seem to be the most distant and complicated. Consequently, it gets annoying that projects such as Epicentre that has some good qualities but really is a self contained mall...and similar projects zoom along while integrated streetside proposals move glacially if not at all.

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^To be fair, the Brevard St. corridor initiative was announced rather recently. Not too sure about Brooklyn Village, but I think that's the case there as well.

Let's not forget about Gateway Village and what it has done for the west end of Uptown.

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It seems to me that the only fair comparison is apples-apples. Charlotte can certainly learn from a European city, but it can never emulate one. I am more interested in its progress relative to other cities of its size and general orientation -- cities like Nashville, Norfolk, Austin, Indianapolis and Jacksonville. When you take historic development patterns into account (compensating for Charlotte's late arrival on the scene and lack of capital/university town status), growth in and around the city compares pretty favorably to its peers.

The biggest setback for Charlotte is that it has simply never been positioned to be a big city until very recently. It doesn't have the infrastructure or cultural fabric that one would expect in an older city its size, and it doesn't have the benefit of major public institutions to anchor its growth. All things considered, for it to be anything other than a total mess is pretty impressive.

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Hm, apparently this topic's activity started again after my last post.

I know I can sound harsh when I talk about Charlotte, but I've kinda felt in love with that "very far away city" when I was a kid, and if one day I can afford a condo somewhere I would like it to be in Charlotte if I'm still interested in that city (but I don't such a thing will happen in my entire life, but I can still dream a little bit! :lol: ).

I didn't want to sound like I wanted downtown Charlotte to be like a European downtown: there is no way that could happen, Europe and the US are clearly different places. I've never been to Chicago, but for example downtown San Francisco's has way more retail and activity than most cities in France: only the important cities can compete with it! So I also won't compare Charlotte's downtown to San Francisco's one, and less by knowing the difference on inhabitants between those cities.

And of course, there are dead zones in any places: my hometown's downtown has entire blocks of dead zones, and only a couple of streets in the heart of downtown has retail and activity. It's clearly not like in Spain were you have retail and activity almost all over the place.

I found downtown Charlotte depressing now. Which means it may change within 5, probably 10 years. Charlotte may be in the good way, that's the feeling I have. When I came ten years ago I was simply drooling looking at the skyscrapers, in that time I wasn't interested in city-life. But when I think about it, Charlotte has gone a long way since back then.

So if future developments are not missed, Charlotte could almost look like my home city's downtown.

I think it's clear that the arena is generating development within its vicinity, which is causing that area to see more activity on a more consistent basis. Compare that with any type of development BOA Stadium might have generated within its first few years
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It seems to me that the only fair comparison is apples-apples. Charlotte can certainly learn from a European city, but it can never emulate one. I am more interested in its progress relative to other cities of its size and general orientation -- cities like Nashville, Norfolk, Austin, Indianapolis and Jacksonville. When you take historic development patterns into account (compensating for Charlotte's late arrival on the scene and lack of capital/university town status), growth in and around the city compares pretty favorably to its peers.

The biggest setback for Charlotte is that it has simply never been positioned to be a big city until very recently. It doesn't have the infrastructure or cultural fabric that one would expect in an older city its size, and it doesn't have the benefit of major public institutions to anchor its growth. All things considered, for it to be anything other than a total mess is pretty impressive.

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^^^

Monsoon, I am really sorry. I did not say this in a sarcastic way at all. I added the last part of that post beacuse I wa thinking that maybe I was "out of my league" with the more experienced, knowleagable posters on here. No insult intended at all. :)

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^You're doing fine, buddy. Just keep posting.

I think that everyone here wants to see great things for this city, and sometimes it seems like others are working against it (be it intentional or not). Outside of uptown and the 1st ring suburbs, you don't have much in the way of real urban development. You have some half-assed attempts (Ayrsley) and some good efforts (Birkdale, Baxter), but none of these really live up to what we think of as good urban places. IMO the people who post here simply have a very high standard that we want to see our city reach. We all see what other, larger cities are doing right, and we see the opposite happening here, and its sort of a "what the hell" kind of moment when you see it happening.

On a slightly separate issue: IMO the reason that pedestrian activity is so important is because in an urban place, pedestrians are the most important type of traveler. Unfortunately they are also the most fickle, and the hardest to please. If all buildings do not include a good pedestrian element (including sidewalks and general design), then it is not urban, and will never function as such. This element is particularly important in urbanizing neighborhoods.

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Earlier you said it wasn't fair to compare Charlotte to other cities that have better development. Now you are saying it is fair to compare Charlotte to these places to justify bad development. It would seem to me that you can't have it both ways.
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Charlotte is one of the oldest cities in the nation having been incorporated in the late 1700s. It had a thriving "urban core" for centuries that included a rather extensive trolley network. So I don't understand your statement about pre-WWII vs post-WWII "urban cores". Charlotte was here long before WWII.

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Charlotte is one of the oldest cities in the nation having been incorporated in the late 1700s. It had a thriving "urban core" for centuries that included a rather extensive trolley network. So I don't understand your statement about pre-WWII vs post-WWII "urban cores". Charlotte was here long before WWII.
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I don't think it's as simple as taking snapshots of pre- and post-WWII Charlotte and asking why they don't look the same. For one thing, WWII wasn't a clear starting-point for the population boom -- the real gains took place later, from the late '50s to present. Also, if we are going to make apples-apples comparisons, nearly every "peer" city of Charlotte's was exponentially bigger up until fairly recently (Austin being the notable exception). For example, Indianapolis has been roughly 10 times larger than Charlotte for most of the past 150 years -- that makes an enormous difference in the built environment, especially in areas of high density where the infrastructure and building stock are constantly being replaced and (ideally) upgraded.

Then there is, as always, the simple fact that Charlotte was not home to a port, state capital, major university, major corporation, or much of anything else besides a railroad junction until the 1960s. We have to be careful not to romanticize the quality and signficance of downtown prior to that period. Even though it was clearly more vibrant than today in terms of gross street-level activity, the "historic" downtown area wasn't notable for much of anything and certainly didn't compare to downtown Nashville or Indianapolis. As recently as the early '60s Second Ward was a slum with lean-to houses and dirt roads -- hard to imagine what would be there now if it had been preserved. Most of 3rd Ward and much of 4th Ward was single-story warehouse buildings which, while aesthetically more interesting than parking lots, would have been little more than free housing for vagrants for 20-30 years. Even now, in a forum very friendly to preservation interests, we are debating whether the Polk Building was really significant enough to be worth saving, or if its value is merely sentimental on account of the fact that it hasn't disintegrated of its own accord. Imagine Polk-like building lining Tryon St. rather than major corporate HQs -- would any of us have turned back BoA in order to preserve a two-story general store on the Square?

I guess my point is that Charlotte's growth, for better or worse, reflects the changing priorities of each generation. The urban renewal of the '60s was intended to address severe flaws in the layout of the center city -- poor street and sidewalk infrastructure, poverty-level conditions through much of downtown, an industrial district that was rapidly emptying out and becoming a public hazard, and the transition to a white-collar economy. While the results of development from that period forward haven't always been ideal to urbanists like ourselves, they are logical in the context of 20th-century American growth patterns and Charlotte's specific circumstances.

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Monsoon, those photos only prove that Charlotte had historic buildings. We all know that. I'm talking about the extensiveness of the built environment and historic stock for Charlotte vs. the cities I cited as examples. I find it hard to believe that someone would make the argument that the built environment of Charlotte's core in the early 1900's was just as extensive and developed as the cores of cities like Kansas City and Cincinnati.

Historic panorama of Charlotte, 1918:

charlotte.jpg

Historic panorama of Kansas City, 1907:

692006business_section_1907.jpg

Historic panorama of Cincinnati, 1908:

5262006business_district_c1908.jpg

Historic panorama of Louisville, ca. 1910:

Pan_view_louisville_ky.jpg

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My memories of Charlotte date back nearly 50 years and I cannot think of anything that was demolished that I miss. I agree that historic texture and context is best and important to sustain a city's identity. It's just that there wasn't much here that really added identity. The few things that did-the 1920s-era city hall and county courthouse, the Johnston Building, First Presbyterian, St.Peter's Episcopal and St Peter's RC, the reconstituted First Baptist, First Methodist and 4th Ward, that's about it. I don't miss the old Belk store (which was actually Efird's and Belk fused together) nor the old Woolworth's, nor the old Kresge (it ALWAYS had a bad smell inside.)

Second Ward was a thriving community but much of it was slums-real, ramshackle, lack-of-plumbing -and -roofing slums. I don't know that the wholesale razing of it was the best answer but leaving it as it was would have been disastrous.

Not everything that was built is good, but it definitely beats what previously existed. I'll take the Pelli building, the Hearst Tower and the Blumenthal Center anyday over the Belk and Woolworth stores.

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