With all the tensions and traumas in the world at large, some days it’s hard to focus on Charlotte. When other cities in the world are being ripped apart by bombs and their streets littered with the body parts of the dead and dying, our squabbles seem so petty. We’re lucky to live in a city that’s out of the firing line, at least for now.
By contrast, Londoners interviewed before and during President Bush’s recent visit to England fully expect their city to be a terrorist target. It’s just a question of when. There’s no doubt that the world is a far more dangerous place since the US and Britain invaded Iraq, and it’s instructive to listen to some of the reasons the British protesters despise the American president.
Iraq is a major factor in their ire, but alongside this and other bloody conflicts stands Bush’s dismissal of the Kyoto treaty on global warming and his cavalier attitude about the planet’s environment. There is simply no doubt about global warming: Planet Earth’s climate is changing rapidly with dramatic implications for the human species. And which country is doing the most harm? The US. Which country refuses even to acknowledge the problem, let alone do a single thing to clean up its mess? Yep, right again. The US.
The wasteful, resource-guzzling lifestyle that so often characterizes this nation in the eyes of the rest of the world brought my attention back to Charlotte, to Myers Park in particular, and specifically to one house — the 17,000-square-foot gargantuan edifice on Queens Road West.
The size of a small hotel or office building, this pseudo-domestic structure dominates the streetscape, annoying the neighbors and becoming Charlotte’s poster child for conspicuous consumption. The owners tore down two existing homes to create a site big enough for their new abode. However, what disturbs me most about this structure is not its appearance but the fact that the building consumes far more than its fair share of resources that are needed for a comfortable life.
This is important because buildings, in their construction, maintenance and operation, create about 40 percent of dangerous emissions into our atmosphere (the other two main culprits being vehicles and power plants). However, architects in America (with some honorable exceptions) have shown little interest in reversing or even moderating this dangerous trend. Most architects don’t care because their developer clients aren’t interested. Developers are notorious for their short-term attitude — get in and out quickly and pocket the cash — and the long-term degradation of our environment isn’t something many of them think about.
But it’s not all the fault of folks in the construction industry. We, the public, are partly to blame. We don’t care enough about our city, our environment, our planet. We don’t demand better, more energy-efficient buildings from developers and their designers, and apart from some diehard environmental activists, our concern about the environment usually begins and ends with ourselves. We’re interested in stopping development that affects us, but we seldom communicate a broader vision for the shape of our collective city. We rarely discuss our responsibilities to each other; we prefer to pontificate about the rights we claim as our own.
If this house was constructed anywhere other than Myers Park, I’d be even more upset. But part of me relishes the fact that homeowners in that beautiful suburb have been hoist with their own petard. When some insightful residents tried three years ago to protect the area’s heritage by designating it a historic district, virulent opposition from people who hated the thought of community standards being applied to their bastions of wealth and privilege persuaded City Council to throw out the proposal. Now these same people want city government to save them from the aberrant taste of people who wish to broadcast their great wealth to all and sundry.
The ugliness of some newer homes shoehorned into our streetcar suburbs is masked by the magnificent rows of willow oaks, planted aplenty on public and private land during the early years of last century. The trees, not the buildings, define our public space. But each week I see one of these great, green pillars dismembered by the woodsman’s saw. Slowly but surely these elderly arbors are dying. This city’s greatest streets and avenues were planted almost exclusively with this single species during Charlotte’s first great period of suburban growth, 80 to 100 years ago, and soon these trees will come to the end of their natural lives. Their generous shade and air-cleansing qualities will be lost for several generations.
When stripped of trees, Charlotte’s older, expensive neighborhoods will be naked. Even with comprehensive tree planting programs the buildings will stand, uncamouflaged, for decades. Without the atmospheric cleansing power of greenery, our potentially deadly air pollution will continue to get worse. We pray to be spared the bloody tragedy of other cities, but terrorists’ bombs and rockets are not the only things that threaten our future.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2003.
