The New Year’s begun, but there’s still time to sneak in a few wishes. Some of you might think mine are fantasies, but everything listed below is a reality in some part of America, or somewhere in the western world — just not in Charlotte. Yet.
Wish #1: First, in this election year, I wish for a short and finite election campaign. Only in America are election campaigns several years long, with presidents spending as much time raising money as running the country. In Britain, by comparison, elections last just a few weeks, and much of the process is publicly funded. Over there, spending money to buy politicians isn’t regarded as “freedom of speech,” nor is it legal. That practice was outlawed in 1832.
The political system in Britain differs considerably from its American counterpart, but Brits are by and large satisfied with the way things work. It’s evolved slowly since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, and continued with the first meeting of Parliament in 1295. Citizens of the United Kingdom would be surprised to realize that Britain “isn’t a real democracy,” as one American reporter said with a sneer during President Bush’s visit to England last year. Perhaps the UK doesn’t qualify as a “real” democracy in American terms because over there every vote actually counts.
I’m dreading the excesses of this fall’s presidential election so much that I seriously thought of applying for a sabbatical so my wife and I could go to Europe for several months. There we could live in glorious isolation doing research for our next book. But in the end a sense of duty kept me stateside: there’s so much to do in the Charlotte region if we’re to make progress in planning a better future. So the rest of my wishes are local.
Wish #2: May the federal government come through with the money to complete the South Boulevard light rail line on schedule. Savvy private developers have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in transit-friendly development along the corridor. If ever there was a need for government to partner with the private sector to produce great results for Charlotte, this is it.
Wish #3: May the power be switched on along the light rail line in SouthEnd and Uptown so the trolley can begin its daily service as soon as possible. Many Charlotteans have devoted untold hours of labor and expertise to make this piece of transit history a present reality. Let them be rewarded!
Wish #4: May elected officials honor and enforce the community plans created by the city in conjunction with Charlotte neighborhoods and their citizens. Last year’s fiasco of the threatened asphalt plant in Optimist Park showed just how useless local plans are without city action to change the zoning of land to match the future plans. American planners who partake of exchanges to European countries are amazed at the systems over there where community plans have the force of law, and developers adhere to the visions that communities create for themselves. Imagine that: a planning system that isn’t run by developers for developers.
Wish #5: May the governments of adjoining towns, counties and cities collaborate with each other and forge a coherent regional vision. The current policies of the dozens of municipal governments that comprise the Charlotte region are a ragbag of disparate priorities and ideas, many of them long out of date, like the 1950s-style zoning laws that produce placeless, polluted suburban sprawl. We need to move forward collectively to create urban growth patterns that promote economic development while respecting the natural environment.
Wish #6: Let new uptown projects be enriched by integrating existing buildings into new designs instead of tearing old structures down. The attempts by Johnson and Wales University and their powerful uptown backers to demolish old buildings “in the way” of mediocre new architecture illustrates just how little we understand and care for our heritage.
None of my wishes are likely to be granted anytime soon. The archaic frontier mentality of every man for himself is still alive and well in the midst of our complex, interdependent urban culture. Sometimes it’s hard to remain optimistic about the future of our metropolis; there are deep-seated structural problems of governance and an ingrained political conservatism that prides itself on rejecting progressive ideas.
But no social progress can be made without wishing for things that are currently beyond reach. What is fanciful to one generation is often fact to the next. As Shakespeare so aptly wrote in Henry IV, Part II, “Thy wish was father to that thought.”
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2004.
