Blueprints For A Better City 

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* While lending practices of large banks are part of the problem, there is another project uptown where Bank of America gets considerable credit. Through its non-profit community development corporation (CDC), an organization designed to promote affordable development and to meet federal community reinvestment guidelines, Bank of America, or NationsBank as it was called then, partnered with the Charlotte Housing Authority, the Charlotte Uptown Development Corporation (the forerunner of Charlotte Center City Partners) and the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Planning Commission to redevelop First Ward.

Beginning in 1992 with one of the first Hope VI federal project grants awarded by HUD, this group addressed the problem of Earle Village, a decayed and dangerous downtown public housing project. From modest beginnings, this new project, shepherded with special care by Robin Davis and Kathleen Foster from NationsBank CDC and Laura Harmon from the Planning Commission, grew into a major redevelopment plan. The design, prepared by Urban Design Associates (UDA) from Pittsburgh, one of the leading firms in the nation, embraced the whole of First Ward, from Trade and Tryon to the Brookshire Freeway loop.

Within that area, the concept of First Ward Place -- around North Davidson and Seventh Streets -- emerged as a development of mixed income housing, with a strong bias toward affordable, lower-priced accommodation. Public housing units were included in the plan, although it's not possible to distinguish them from other dwellings. This was achieved through careful design by FMK Architects and David Furman, on Phase I (near Seventh Street) and FMK Architects on their own for Phase II, along Ninth Street. These designers interpreted the UDA plan with imagination on a very tight budget.

Existing residents of the Earle Village public housing could elect to be re-housed in First Ward by enrolling in the "Family Self-Sufficiency Program," intended to wean people from dependence on public housing and onto the ladder of home ownership. Opinions differ as to why more residents didn't apply for this program, but one fact is clear. While there are fewer public housing units in place than were contained within the old Earle Village, there are today in First Ward Place more "affordable" dwellings available to lower income families than the total number of units in the demolished public housing project.

The success of this scheme in turning a dangerous part of town into a model redevelopment spurred private investment, aided by over $6 million dollars of city-financed street improvements and the sale of city-owned land. Thus was born the Garden District between Alexander Street and the freeway, a compact neighborhood of condos and townhomes constructed by progressive local developers such as Tuscan Development and Boulevard Centro. The design of the new housing bears the stamp (again) of FMK and David Furman. These two design firms have set an admirable standard for medium-to-high density housing affordable to a wide variety of buyers.

These four projects -- First Ward, Ratcliffe on the Green, Gateway Village and Latta Pavilion -- provide clear examples of how to reconstruct a center city and close-in neighborhoods to provide a diverse range of housing types and attractive urban workplaces. But no attempt at building a sustainable city can ignore the suburbs.

Another type of suburban living

* Suburban development falls into two categories: the redevelopment of existing areas and new, greenfield locations. Existing districts can be improved by promoting new development around transit lines, creating mixed-use urban villages at many of the proposed new train stations. Staffs from the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) and the Planning Commission have prepared textbook urban design guidelines for neighborhoods around the stations. By agreement between CATS and the Public Art Commission, the plans also include enlightened, city-approved funding for public art to enliven station architecture and promote community identity.

But this isn't enough to lure developers away from easy greenfield sites around the outerbelt. The city needs to rezone land along the transit corridors to support these pockets of denser development (Transit-Oriented Developments, or TODs); in some cases the city itself will need to assemble land parcels and roll them over to developers as incentives.

Along the northern route of the proposed commuter rail line to Mooresville and the three north Mecklenburg towns, all four communities (disclosure: with some help from myself) have already created transit-supportive zoning. In several cases I and others (notably The Lawrence Group and Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co. [DPZ]) have created designs for transit-oriented urban villages, and the town of Cornelius has produced large-scale plans (by the firms DPZ, Shook, and Cole Jenest and Stone) for a new town center along the rail line. In addition, Huntersville's design by DPZ for a transit village on the site of the old Anchor Mill will link to the Bowman Development Group's exemplary Vermilion "traditional neighborhood development," designed by Duany and Plater-Zyberk.