It's been my privilege to play this role in Charlotte's evolution. A lot has changed since the early 1990s when I started writing for the newspaper. Many of my ideas about urban design and planning that were ridiculed back then are now conventional wisdom. Light rail is on the way, and denser mixed-use development in walkable neighborhoods has captured a significant sector of the market, providing a much-needed alternative to unsustainable suburbia. Charlotte is building the infrastructure that will provide its citizens with alternative patterns of living, an insurance policy against the suburban meltdown that will surely come in the next two or three decades.
As we know from experience, our pattern of ever-expanding, spread-out suburbs only works when each household possesses several cars. All this driving increases pollution, damages our health, and gouges our wallets. Gas can only get more expensive and taxes can only go up to pay for growth.
Charlotte can't solve these problems alone. There has to be regional cooperation in matters of taxation, transportation and land use planning to overcome crucial problems of pollution, financial inequity, social injustice, and to transform the pockets of soul-sapping ugliness that characterize much of suburban America.
Regional collaboration is the only way forward, but the "me-first" ideology of many Americans makes any such solution highly unlikely. Collaborative regional planning is naively, and wrongly, equated with socialism, leaving cities like Charlotte with inadequate mechanisms that can't cope with growth. Individually, we understand some of the problems we face, but collectively we're politically incapable of accepting the solutions.
I wish I could say that the more sophisticated planning and environmental policies that are common in my English homeland were the product of enlightened forethought, but they're not. They're the reaction to crisis and disaster — namely the Second World War that devastated cities across the country. During the 1930s, British cities sprawled across farmland in ugly swathes, and private development ran roughshod over communities and the environment. But the 1940s brought aerial bombardments and firestorms far greater than 9/11 on British cities whose centers were blasted from the face of the earth.
The massive task of rebuilding spawned a mood of collaborative enterprise, and nurtured Britain's progressive planning policies that have endured for six decades. They provide a framework that gives my country a fighting chance of meeting this century's huge environmental challenges. These are advantages, born from national disaster, which America, and Charlotte specifically, don't possess.
Just like its British forebears, Charlotte will have to face some serious hardships before it embraces the social changes necessary to survive as a city of consequence in the global economy. Assuming we can avoid a terrorist-inspired disaster, our fraught future is likely to result from our own excesses. Poorly planned development will reach such proportions that our antiquated tax structure won't be able to support the region's growth. Property taxes will rise to unaffordable levels, not just in Charlotte, but in surrounding counties, too. The system will break down before we fix it.
Sadly, I think people's health will suffer severely from airborne pollutants and obesity-related illnesses. Abstract public health statistics will become real tragedies to an increasing number of families. Only then will we start taking our future seriously.
In the fabled Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the dolphins, having found the human race entertaining but ultimately doomed, depart for another galaxy, leaving only the cryptic message "So long, and thanks for all the fish." I feel a bit like a dolphin; when things get really bad here I can depart for my home in England, leaving behind my Creative Loafing columns.
But until then, I say a sincere "thank-you" to all Charlotteans who have supported and encouraged me over the years. Together we have achieved much, but there's a great deal more to do — and it's going to be very hard.