Smart Growth Conference

I attended the 10th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference sponsored by the Local Government Commission in Charlotte, North Carolina, from Wednesday through Sunday, Feb. 3-5, 2011. There were about 1,300 attendees from all over the United States, a mix of elected officials, local, state and federal officials, planners, public health professionals, developers and others concerned with healthy and livable communities. Vallejo City Council member Marti Brown attended as well but no other Solano officials or staff. This is too bad because many concurrent sessions were on topics of considerable interest including investment strategies for infrastructure, winning bond elections for transportation (light rail, bicycle routes and "complete streets"), locally grown food, and sea level rise.

The conference is co-sponsored by 170 organizations with wide ranging interests, and the major funder this year was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Environmental Justice. Speakers and presenters included high ranking government officials, including former cabinet secretaries and governors as well as people simply doing great work.

I went on two tours: a bus tour of three communities who collectively adopted form base zoning (similar code adopted for Benicia Downtown Master Plan and Zoning Code - CA Neighborhood). The first stop was the Town of Davidson, located 20 miles north of Charlotte. Davidson is home of Davidson College - an historic small college campus. Davidson is built for pedestrians and bike riders, not for the car. No drive thrus are allowed here. We believe in connectivity and walkable streets.

As we toured the narrow streets, we saw mixed use (both within buildings and neighborhoods). In Davidson, all commercial property must front a public street - the unexpected benefit of this requirement is that the public safety is better and done by the city rather than private security patrols typical of shopping areas with public streets. Below is a grocery store on a public street. When you drive off the interstate into Davidson, you see offices, restaurants and hotels but you also see green space, homes, schools and shops all accessible by pedestrians. Davidson is the 2004 Smart Growth Award winner for Overall Excellence in town planning and design. (Read More...)

Although much of the retail and residential areas in Huntersville are new, the town also has 18 historic sites within a five-mile drive of Beatties Ford Road. Hopewell Presbyterian Church, for instance, dates to the 1740s and features 200 year-old stone walls around its cemetery. The Hugh Torance House and Store, started in the 1770s, is the oldest surviving store in Mecklenburg County. Latta Plantation Nature Preserve is the county's largest green space with hiking trails, a nature center, an equestrian center, boating and fishing on Mountain Island Lake, and a unique raptor center that rehabilitates and releases injured birds of prey.

The town also boasts of world-class retail stores. Birkdale Village on Sam Furr Road includes apartments and offices above boutiques, restaurants and national retailers such as Williams Sonoma, Gap and Ann Taylor Loft. Live bands play on warm-weather weekend evenings, and parents from around the lake bring children to splash and play in the village square fountain. Below is a Banana Republic Store.

Aside from mixed neighborhoods, Huntersville also provides access to Lake Norman. This 32,500-acre human-made lake with 520 miles of shoreline provides scenic vistas, recreation and wildlife. Huntersville is also just 10 minutes from Charlotte and will be served by rail in a few months.

In addition to two tours, I also attended concurrent sessions ranging from regional transportation planning and vehicle mile travel reduction, greenhouse gas reduction, infrastructure investment strategies and community job growth, public health (obesity) with land use planning, walking and "wheeling" planning (found a potential solution for Military West and 1st Street!) and hurricane prone coasts with sea level rise (and you thought California had problems). You can click on Local Government Commission for the pdf files or power points (or even MP3) for these sessions (these are not quite ready but will be posted soon).

The second tour I went on was Sunday morning after days of rain and very cold temperatures. I was worried that I would be warm enough for the bicycle tour, but the sun came out without a cloud in the sky and I was able to peel off one of my four layers as it got warmer.

We started out across from the NASCAR Museum. We rode along several miles of paths along the light rail. Then we rode through the residential areas where traffic speed had been a major problem. 

 The City of Charlotte uses "street diets" and neighborhood round abouts - the car in this picture is navigating one.

The bike lane was picked up again along a completely restored surface creek (it had been straightened and was mostly a "sewer").

While the ride was fun and beautiful, the message was clear that to slow traffic down, many strategies have been used including reducing the car lanes, eliminating dedicated right hand turn lanes (too many bicycle and pedestrian accidents), small landscaped roundabouts with measurable difference in bicycle and pedestrian accidents (not to mention auto accident rates) and what may seem counter intuitive, more cars moving better along routes (less noise, easier ingress and egress and other benefits).

This bicycle ride prepared me for my flight home to our wonderful city. I was happy to be back.