Charlotte, NC: The Global Evolution of a New South City

Centers and Edges: The Confusion of Urban and Suburban Paradigms in Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Development Patterns

David Walters Centers and Edges The Confusion of Urban and Suburban Paradigms in Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Development Patterns he discussions in this chapter focus on two dichotomous types of urbanism within Charlotte, North Carolina, and its hinterland, and on the forces that create these distinct urban environments. These conditions are characterized in Charlotte and several other American cities by: 1) reinvigorated central areas, comprising the downtown core and older, close-in urban neighborhoods , often with revived transit options; and 2) new, fast-growing and farflung suburbs located and laid out in ways that require an automobile for all elements of daily life. These two conditions are especially significant in a fast-growing metropolitan area such as Charlotte, which includes several towns in Mecklenburg County and surrounding counties. The focus on central areas at the same time as expanding the suburban periphery illustrates conflicting ways of building American cities, and as such, creates a potentially debilitating confusion of public policies. The quest for the kind of substantive and sustainable urbanity that can be provided by compact, walkable, mixed-use developments linked by transit (often referred to as “urban villages”) is diametrically opposed to other consumer preferences for low-density living in car-dependent and single-use suburban developments that extend around the perimeter of the city into the wider metro area of surrounding counties. Accordingly, the chapter examines some of the originating concepts behind the urban village typology that fits well with Charlotte’s transit-oriented development vision, and, secondly, puts the city’s continued suburban expansion into a wider perspective of conflicting city policies and political preferences. T Centers and Edges 221 Center versus Edge This chapter was written in a setting typical of the former condition, in a book-lined workspace in a suite of small but well-lit studios shared with the author’s artist wife on the second floor of an old brick building that was once a local grocery store with apartments above. Below the studios at sidewalk level are a picture framing shop and a beauty salon. Next door are digital animation studios and some trendy clothing stores for the fashionable flaneurs who form an increasing presence on the block. Across the street is an artists’ cooperative and a coffee shop heavily patronized by a squadron of kamikaze skateboarders who weave alarmingly between the traffic. On that same side of the street are the offices of Charlotte’s weekly African American newspaper and a funky Tex-Mex restaurant, highly popular with the lunchtime downtown banking crowd. The busy tracks of the city’s first light rail line run fifty yards from the front door of the author’s studio, with the neighborhood station less than one hundred yards away. Beyond the tracks stands a block of residential condominiums and small commercial spaces for architects, financial advisors, interior decorators, and an Italian restaurant, all opposite some older buildings containing a high-style modern furniture store (see figure 40). More apartments have been built and others newly started on the next block, adjacent to the neighborhood fried chicken take-out restaurant (awarded in 2008 the honor of being the best such establishment in the whole nation!). At the south end of the street a cluster of converted textile mills and warehouses are home to a coterie of design firms with new livework units infilling vacant spaces. Here also, new office condominiums have recently been completed and a group of twelve-story residential towers are under construction immediately adjacent to the train tracks. One or two blocks north of the author’s studio are more bars, art galleries , and offices, an alternative music venue, a Greek restaurant, two large apartment complexes, and some cleared sites along the rail line prepared for yet more residential and mixed-use development. A pharmacy, bank, office supply store, and several sandwich shops are also within a five-minute walk. In the seventeen years we’ve rented space in the building, we’ve seen the neighborhood gradually transform from a bleak and dangerous part of town, where we left our studio hurriedly before it got dark, into the “Main Street” of South End, Charlotte’s best-known “urban village” with a diverse and fast-growing population. The most dramatic catalyst for this urban redevelopment has been the 222 walters new light rail line, the first of five proposed transportation corridors radiating from the center city. This transportation initiative followed hard on...