Charlotte has all of the things you’d associate with a big city. Skyscrapers. Pro sports. The arts. A thriving culinary scene. Almost a million people, and lots of traffic, of course. But does Charlotte actually act like a big city? It’s a question longtime resident and journalist Mary Newsom examines in a four-part series published this week in the Charlotte Ledger. She joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry to talk about it for our segment, BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: You start off by saying Charlotte lacks a big-city mindset. What do you mean by that?
Mary Newsom: For years and years, a lot of people here, especially long-timers, didn't want to be a big city. They didn't want to be like Atlanta or, heaven forbid, New York City. There's too many people there, too much traffic. But they didn't really connect that, I think, with the fact that we need to grow. Growth is good for business. We want to have our businesses healthy. But there are also some government rules and structures that for decades created basically suburbia in Charlotte. You couldn’t build in an urban form because ordinances did not allow it. Suburbia is drive everywhere, distances, things are far apart — and that is not the way cities function. Cities function because things are close together.
Terry: Give us a thumbnail of your series. What aspects of the city do you focus on beyond the stuff that you've already mentioned?
Newsom: Well, the first part was about what I just talked about. We wanted to grow. We didn't want to be a big city. I focused in on the lack of a decent train station as one example of that. The second part is about traffic — how we all hate traffic — but there are things that cities do. They don't solve traffic. Nobody solves traffic, but cities have other options that get built. I talk about a lot of them. The third part is about our wacky government setup. Nobody knows who does what. It's very complicated here. The fourth part is about parks. We have a lot of nice big parks. You have to drive to almost all of them. Why is that and can we not improve our park system?
Terry: If you had to pick one obstacle or challenge above all others that is hindering Charlotte’s urban development, what would it be?
Newsom: I would say the very fast growth of the city since about 1950. A huge part of the city was specifically built not to be urban. It was built to be suburban. It's hard to retrofit suburbia.
Terry: You moved to Charlotte in 1978. What’s surprised you the most about how Charlotte has grown since then?
Newsom: I think the extremely fast growth. A lot of people here were taken by surprise. One of the experts I talked to pointed specifically to the interstate banking. The bank formerly known as NCNB basically began interstate banking in about the early 80s by exploiting a loophole in banking laws.
The other part was the unforeseen speed of immigration. Charlotte became a gateway city for immigrants. I don't think those could have been foreseen in the 50s and the 60s.
Terry: And what's least surprised you about the growth?
Newsom: Probably that Charlotte continues to be at its core — it’s like a very big small town. Maybe it's because I've lived here so long, but there's maybe 3 degrees of separation when you meet anyone. I think that's charming about the city, and I'm very glad that doesn't seem to have changed.
Terry: So some people are probably hearing this and thinking, so what? Why does it actually matter if, as you put it, we chase growth but still lack a big-city mindset?
Newsom: One important reason is ecological. Sprawl basically destroys the environment. Another thing that I think is important that a lot of people miss is that big cities have functionality. I was just in New York over the Labor Day weekend. New York functions. It has subways, it's walkable. There are lots of parks, most of them well maintained. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but it functions. It functions in a way that Charlotte traffic does not function.
To make transportation manageable, you've got to do it the way cities do. You've got to have a lot of streets, a lot of options for driving. Yes, you'll still have congestion because nothing's perfect. But local economies are built on connections, built on people being close enough to each other that they get to know each other, start businesses together, they meet on the streets — serendipity. It's hard to have serendipity when everything is very distant.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
