If Charlotte is beholden to any deity, it isn’t to the Christian God you might expect. Rather, the city’s in thrall to the Roman god Janus, the keeper of doorways and thresholds. His two-faced image looks simultaneously in opposite directions, the perfect metaphor for Charlotte’s conflicted vision of itself.
I’ve made this point several times before, that the centrifugal force of the outerbelt spurs development patterns in direct contradiction to the centripetal focus of the future transit lines focusing on downtown. We are literally pulling ourselves in opposite directions. This dilemma was highlighted recently by two sets of figures from the 2000 US Census, one that interprets the data in terms of job growth and location, and another that ranks Charlotte worst in sprawl among 15 major US cities.
In a recent article in USA Today, columnist Ben Brown highlighted the major transformation taking place in American cities, where the largest increases in job and population growth are in the far-flung suburbs, the so-called “exurbs.” Today, on average, one-third of all jobs in America are located more than 10 miles from downtown, and just over one-third of all commutes are from suburb to suburb. Brown quotes conservative commentator David Brooks of the New York Times that these exurbs have “broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now exist in their own world far beyond.”
To many, this may seem like the American Dream in its truest form — individuals claiming their plot of land way out on the suburban frontier supported by the property market that provides more and more prepackaged house lots to meet consumer desires. Democracy and capitalism acting in concert: what could be more beautiful? In Charlotte, the growth around Ballantyne and into Union County bear witness to this phenomenon.
But this trend in Charlotte is put into a whole other context by the second set of figures from the Northwest Environment Watch, a non-profit group based in Seattle. The study ranked 15 cities in several categories, including the amount of rural land converted to suburbs, the growth of low-density neighborhoods, overall density of development, and the proportion of residents living in compact neighborhoods versus low-density sprawling subdivisions.
When compared to cities like Portland, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas, Charlotte out-sprawled all its competitors in every category.
In this context, some argue, what’s the purpose of investing millions of dollars in a light rail line and other transit initiatives that run counter to consumer preferences for suburban life beyond the fringe? There’s no shortage of people lining up to take potshots at this easy target of apparent bureaucratic waste and incompetence.
But all these amateur marksmen, politicians and columnists alike miss the target by a mile. Investment in transit isn’t the boondoggle or “socialist” imposition they mistakenly claim. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s the solution to a problem that most of us don’t yet recognize: we’re building our cities in ways that are unsustainable in the long term, environmentally and economically. Every new “exurb” costs more public dollars to support in services and infrastructure, and the further out we go, the more expensive it gets, the more we drive, the more of our land is used up, and the more polluted our air becomes.
The profitable transformation of farmland to suburb may paint an attractive picture to some, but it’s a mirage, an illusion of substance built upon sand. There’s a steep price to be paid for our current lifestyles by someone, sometime, and these financial and environmental costs will have to be borne by our children and grandchildren.
The same USA Today article that pointed this out quoted me as saying “Things are quite good in the short term. There are new jobs and new roads. There’s no incentive to change whatsoever. Change will only come when things become untenable 10 or so years down the road.”
That’s when transit can save the day, and keep Charlotte competitive in the global economy. We will have a choice of how we live and move around; we will have the chance of freedom from the car and its endless, smog-laden traffic jams. We can drive less and reduce the air pollution that damages our health. Because of the much-criticized planning being done today by CATS in bold defiance of kamikaze real estate trends of mindless suburban expansion, we will have the opportunity in years to come to live in civilized communities modeled on today’s most sought-after Charlotte neighborhoods like Dilworth: walkable, mixed-use and convenient for transit.
In one direction, Janus’ stare looks outwards, across a sprawling future landscape of diminishing returns, environmental degradation and higher taxes. By contrast, his inward gaze illuminates a prospect that can be both prosperous and sustainable. The god’s dominion over endings and beginnings could signal a turnaround for Charlotte, before it’s too late.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2004.
