Planned communities and reality
If you haven’t seen it, there’s a very interesting slide-show essay on Slate.com about walkable, transit-oriented development. You can get to the essay here. I’ve read several articles about this kind of development. And there are plenty of good websites that you can explore if you’re so inclined. I’d start here at NewUrbanism.org. The site isn’t much to look at but it at least gives you the horse’s mouth introduction to walkable, transit-oriented development. But I also like Inhabitat.com which is a much more interesting website and expands its reach into sustainability, eco-friendly design, and the like.
The hardest part of this whole process is pinning down what is really meant by walkable and transit-oriented. On one hand for example, Marc and Jamie’s community, only an hour (give or take) from Manhattan, could be considered a new urbanist community since they can walk to the train and can leave their car at home for as long as they like. But the neighborhood certainly isn’t new nor is it known for its “planned” eco-friendly design (then again, maybe everyone who lives there has low-flow toilets and nothing but CFL lightbulbs throughout the house. Who knows.) But there is open community space (an important component of New Urbanism) and the community has access to safe, reliable public transit and there are plenty of shops and other services that are within walking distance of much of the population. But was it planned that way or did it just grow up that way? 100 years ago (Metuchen is supposedly much older than this. I’m just using 100 years as an example because the time frame fits) NYC was growing and towns like Metuchen represented an opportunity to demonstrate that you were well enough off that you could own a home in a quiet, leafy retreat away from the dirt and noise of the city. But as far as I can tell, nobody really “planned” for it to be that way. There was probably no committee or company that sat down and mapped out the perfect new urbanist town like we see happening today. Today, new urbanism is hip and lucrative. The little towns that grow up around it are windfalls for the home builders, the real-estate companies and the countless boroughs and municipalities where these artificial communities are built, bringing millions in new tax revenue. But are the people who buy into the concept actually reaping any of the rewards of the promise? Wouldn’t it just make more sense for those people to resist the temptation of brand new construction and buy a home in one of the thousands of existing older communities that have developed, over decades, into the exact kind of community that fulfills the promise of the “idea” of New Urbanism? And what could be more environmentally friendly than buying an existing home instead of wasting the materials on a new one? And am I assigning too much idealism to the homebuyers themselves?
I’m getting away from the initial reason for the post. And I really hate it when I start to act a like a nay-sayer. I think the proponents of walkable and transit-oriented development have the right idea. And, as a bleeding heart liberal, I stand by all things eco-friendly and socially responsible. So let me get back to the point I wanted to make.
About 9 years ago or so, we went looking for a new house and stumbled on Vermillion in Huntersville. Vermillion was Mecklenburg County’s first big foray into new urbanist development. It was getting press and it’s developer was grand-standing over walkable, transit-oriented development. There were going to be townhomes in the neighborhood center that have store-fronts on the 1st level and the living quarters above. There were green spaces that were going to be scattered around. Everyone picked up their mail at the centrally located post boxes. And the homes were built close together with alleys in the back for garage access. You were going to be able to walk to dinner, walk to the dry-cleaner, walk to get your mail, etc. But here’s where it got frustrating and the reality didn’t match the promise. The developer’s whims were to build the townhomes first, sink money into bringing whatever small businesses he could, start building in a new, disconnected section of the neighborhood and lobby the town to bring light-rail up the I-77 corridor. The light-rail was the lynch pin in his entire plan. At least as far as we could tell. But the town blocked him. And the light-rail was a billion dollar project that one man didn’t really have a whole lot of say in. Over time, the list of unfinished projects started growing. We bought an affordable home in the area that was disconnected from the rest of the community meaning we couldn’t take advantage of the central tenet of new urbanism: walkability. We were told to wait for about a year and the connection would be built. That year-long wait became another year and another year while the developer fought with whoever he thought was holding him back, which eventually turned out to be just about everyone in his opinion. If it wasn’t the county dragging its feet over public transit, it was the local government. If it wasn’t the local government, it was the residents of the community constantly nagging him over when, just as a teeny tiny example, we’d ever be able to FREAKIN’ WALK TO ANYTHING IN OUR WALKABLE COMMUNITY!
To be completely fair, the residents were a big part of the problem. And I’m not talking about those of us who were still enthusiastic about the vision of a new urban oasis. Things got so bad at the HOA meetings that at one point, and I am not making this up, someone actually complained about having to walk to get their mail. Indeed, we have met the enemy and they are us.
The real enemies of new urbanism and smart growth are the developers, builders and residents who are far more concerned with the bottom line, whether its the value of their home or what its going to cost to build that connector road. Meanwhile, urban towns like Metuchen have sort of naturally developed into, if not the ideal of, at least a relatively close approximation to, new urbanism. Maybe development dollars would be better spent in reinvigorating neighborhoods like these. Of course, we’ve got other problems right now. Not the least of which is an economy that’s down the crapper. Much as I’d jump at a chance to live in a community like Metuchen; without a job, there isn’t much at all I can do. And I certainly can’t sell a house in this economy.
Eventually, we found a better deal elsewhere and left that community long before a road was ever built and just before the original developer sold what remained of the land to other new home builders who demanded larger lots and larger homes, bastardizing (in my humble opinion) the original concept. And things haven’t much changed in Mecklenburg county or the communities that surround it. In fact, the upcoming mayoral election might just hinge on the fact that the county commission just recently voted for a 4.5 million dollar study for a streetcar line in Charlotte which would be an important component in the overall light rail plan. Current mayor Pat McCrory vetoed the spending plan, by the way. Veto notwithstanding, the vote itself has some conservatives in Charlotte hopping mad. Of course, any kind of spending on community projects makes the conservatives angry but the issue here is a little deeper than that. We had quite a public fight over the initial light rail line. And the scars from that battle are still fresh even though the result was a light rail line that regularly sees double its originally projected number of riders and has been successful beyond anyone’s expectation. This streetcar extension and the new north-bound line would cost somewhere north of a billion dollars to complete, assuming its approved and the funding is there. But the initial phase would probably take light rail only half-way to Huntersville. The long-ago dream of a transit oriented community at Vermillion isn’t likely to come to fruition until well after 2015 or later. And in the meanwhile, whatever empty space is left around the I-77 corridor and the new I-485 corridor will probably be snapped up by developers who will build several dozen strip malls and countless new home communities that connect to nothing, go nowhere, and are filled with expensive (and in this economy, probably empty) homes.
I’m not saying I’m bitter. Just frustrated. Most of what I’m talking about doesn’t really apply to me anyway. To take advantage of whatever public transportation there is in Charlotte, we’d have to drive to get there. And for us, public transportation actually means the bus, not the light rail. The light rail is too far away for it to be of any use to us. Besides, I don’t have a job. So where the hell am I planning to go anyway?
