LOL at thinking any new North Hills development would be built without a giant parking deck. I appreciate your optimism but we both know it’s wishful thinking!
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John - I agree with you. Pockets of walkability don’t really make a walkable city. Instead they make desirable places that most people drive to. To me that doesn’t make much sense. “Hey, let’s drive over to that walkable place.”
I live 1.7 miles from the proposed Downtown South development. Google says I can bike there in 11 minutes. Sounds reasonable until you see that part of the trip requires riding on S. Saunders near the I-40 interchange. No thanks. Due to the nature of the built environment I’d be compelled to drive there.
Our zoning standards have minimum parking requirements why don’t they also include minimum requirements for cycling and pedestrian connectivity?
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All the more reason all the desirable places need to be linked by public transit.
That is the solution to the way were a developing. This nods of high density connected by transit, with walkablity extending out from those - but only a reasonable distance.
Tough Crowd on here for anything outside of downtown.
- There are a lot of apartments getting built in North Hills.
- There are multiple hotels there.
- Its a on a future high frequency bus route.
- Ridesharing is a thing.
I completely agree about it being an island cut off from pedestrians, but the larger it gets and better possibility for this to change. As one of the least dense (as in bottom 3, Charlotte is #1) major cities in US, Density anywhere in the city should be welcomed. Ideally it would be downtown, yes. But beggars can’t be choosers, and more dense nodes opens up better public transit options. And who knows, maybe in 20 years we will have some sort of semi-continuous stretch of density connecting these newer areas to downtown. Hopefully with a revamped and highly used greenway to compliment it.
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I think you are overestimating the density of the rest of the US. If we define major city by 480k+ people (conveniently done so that Raleigh just barely makes the cut), of 41 cities, there are ~11 that are less dense than Charlotte, and ~15 less dense than Raleigh (including Charlotte). There are plenty that are more dense, but we aren’t the worst by far.
| Rank | City | State | 2019 Population | Density (people/km) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York City | New York | 8,601,186 | 11,056.4 |
| 2 | San Fransisco | California | 897,536 | 7,388.0 |
| 3 | Boston | Massachusetts | 694,784 | 5,549.0 |
| 4 | Miami | Florida | 491,724 | 5,275.7 |
| 5 | Chicago | Illinois | 2,679,044 | 4,549.9 |
| 6 | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 1,576,596 | 4,536.7 |
| 7 | Washington DC | District of Columbia | 713,549 | 4,506.1 |
| 8 | Seattle | Washington | 766,893 | 3,532.0 |
| 9 | Los Angeles | California | 4,057,841 | 3,343.0 |
| 10 | Baltimore | Maryland | 594,450 | 2,835.5 |
| 11 | Milwaukee | Wisconsin | 581,949 | 2,336.4 |
| 12 | San Jose | California | 1,033,519 | 2,248.0 |
| 13 | Sacremento | California | 513,330 | 2,030.0 |
| 14 | Portland | Oregon | 667,589 | 1,931.4 |
| 15 | Las Vegas | Nevada | 664,304 | 1,903.5 |
| 16 | Denver | Colorado | 732,144 | 1,843.9 |
| 17 | Detroit | Michigan | 662,172 | 1,843.1 |
| 18 | Fresno | California | 532,703 | 1,811.1 |
| 19 | San Diego | California | 1,453,775 | 1,728.4 |
| 20 | Columbus | Ohio | 890,228 | 1,572.3 |
| 21 | Dallas | Texas | 1,379,735 | 1,567.0 |
| 22 | Atlanta | Georgia | 501,178 | 1,450.2 |
| 23 | Houston | Texas | 2,359,480 | 1,431.2 |
| 24 | Mesa | Arizona | 503,619 | 1,409.0 |
| 25 | San Antonio | Texas | 1,565,929 | 1,311.6 |
| 26 | Raleigh | North Carolina | 485,679 | 1,292.6 |
| 27 | Phoenix | Arizona | 1,711,356 | 1,276.4 |
| 28 | Austin | Texas | 1,001,104 | 1,204.9 |
| 29 | Albequerque | New Mexico | 564,764 | 1,164.9 |
| 30 | Charlotte | North Carolina | 889,019 | 1,121.1 |
| 31 | El Paso | Texas | 696,610 | 1,045.1 |
| 32 | For Worth | Texas | 913,939 | 1,023.4 |
| 33 | Colorado Springs | Colorado | 493,799 | 978.7 |
| 34 | Indianapolis | Indiana | 863,771 | 922.7 |
| 35 | Louisville | Kentucky | 620,800 | 909.0 |
| 36 | Tucson | Arizona | 537,501 | 875.6 |
| 37 | Memphis | Tennessee | 647,506 | 787.7 |
| 38 | Kansas City | Missouri | 501,094 | 614.4 |
| 39 | Nashville | Tennessee | 679,318 | 551.1 |
| 40 | Jacksonville | Florida | 920,984 | 475.6 |
| 41 | Oklahoma City | Oklahoma | 661,614 | 421.3 |
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Sorry, it must have been the metro area statistic that I remember seeing with Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh at the very bottom. Or maybe I’m completely wrong, because I can no longer find the source. 
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Metro vs city limits would skew things significantly it seems to me. Irregardless, it’d we aren’t dense. I hope everyone saw @Francisco picture in Things from Other Cities, as much as we all love tall buildings, we need a humane scale to really build a livable city with density & thus walkability we all desire. Or at least those of us here, lol.
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Leo, I’m not sure where to put this but this articulates things we kind of just know.
Article about the cost of low density development (essentially)
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Definitely about zoning. Thanks for sharing. We’ve got some Chuck Marohn fans on the site, I’m sure. 
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great article. Thank you for sharing! It would be interesting to put a climate change lens on the author’s argument. It makes sense, intuitively, that reusing a well-built building has a lower carbon footprint than tearing down development and building from scratch. I’m sure it like “depends” property-by-property.
The more I read/listen about diminishing resources, the more it sounds like tearing down virtually anything is a bad idea. Apparently, even sand for concrete has a depletion horizon our current development rates will get to. Sand. Green sites developed in a proper urban manner right off the bat seem to be the only way to lengthen these horizons. I’ve been arguing this approach for historic conservation forever now, but this new angle/concern might actually create the economics to force reuse much more often than we see now.
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Greenfield development in a proper urban model is what’s needed to support rail transit viability.
Problem solved.
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Not sure where to put this video, but this one is as good as any!
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Guess who showed up at tonight’s city council meeting to speak against the replacement process for CACs? Watching live on YouTube tonight.
Apologizing in advance. Who is this?
Former city councilman, Stef Mendell
*councilwoman but blech.