Charlotte history, hiding behind a wall

Can you find the Jane Wilkes statue behind the brick wall along Morehead Street? (See below) Photo: Mary Newsom

One of the best statues I’ve ever seen sits atop Rome’s Gianicolo Hill. A series of Busts of Important Men lines an avenue, and there is the obligatory statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian hero of the Italian unification movement in the 19^th century.

But a short walk away is another statue. It’s Anita Garibaldi. She is sidesaddle, atop a rearing horse, holding a small child in her left arm, close to her breast. With her right, she aims a pistol at the sky. What a woman!

Anita Garibaldi. Photo: "Blackcat" via Widkimedia Commons

Charlotte, in some ways being even more traditional than Rome, does not memorialize its women with statues. Heck, it barely memorialized anyone with statues – at least, not until the Trail of History project came along, since representational statuary today is about as fashionable among artists as bustles, spats and top hats. 

That’s a group of local donors and history buffs who are working to erect a series of statues of historic personages along the Little Sugar Creek Greenway. Their first was a monument to Capt. James Jack, who rode from Charlotte to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 carrying (according to local legend) a copy of the May 20, 1775, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Meck Dec skeptics say he only carried the Mecklenburg Resolves, adopted May 31, 1775. Whatever.  There’s a guy on a charging horse, in a pool of water across Kings Drive from Central Piedmont Community College.

Now Trail of History monument No. 2 is up, and by golly, it’s a woman: Jane

Watch Charlotte grow ... foot and bicycle traffic

Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park is one of Chicago's treasured public spaces. Photo: Mary Newsom

CHICAGO – Can Charlotte ever become an authentically walkable and bikable city?

I’ve just spent three days at a conference encouraging cities to overcome obstacles that keep them from achieving that goal.

The conference was sponsored by a group called 8-80 Cities. The idea behind that name is that cities should be designed for kids of 8 as well as adults of 80. The first group can’t drive and must walk or bicycle; the 80-year-olds may have already lost or be about to lose the ability to drive from hearing, vision, mental acuity or other age-related factors.

As 8-80 Cities executive director Gil Penalosa put it, “We have to stop building cities as if everyone is 30 years old and athletic.”

The 8-80 Cities Forum conference was named “The doable city” to encourage participants to consider the art of the possible in their cities. Co-sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, most participants were from some of the 26 cities where Knight has a special relationship, among them Charlotte; Akron, Ohio; Detroit; Macon, Ga. ; Miami; Philadelphia; Saint Paul, Minn.; and San Jose, Calif. (Disclosure: The Knight Foundation paid my travel expenses.)

Millennium Park's "Cloud Gate" offers dry space during a rain.

We were shown numerous examples of efforts in cities from as far away as Melbourne, Australia, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Bogota, Colombia, to as close as Raleigh – events and campaigns and years-long projects to bring more public spaces (read parks and greenways) to cities and to find ways to encourage residents to view their city streets as public spaces, too – which of course they are.

Here’s an apt metaphor: impatiens or orchids? The idea was to encourage activists and public officials at the conference not to try to cultivate orchids, exotic, beautiful and needing expert

Charlotte's lost old buildings may be costlier than we thought

Where a historic-district house once stood, in Dilworth

It's sadly coincidental that this week, I went out to snap a photo of the lot where a vintage 1920s house in Dilworth has been demolished, just a few days after I read this article in the New York Times. The Times piece, "Urban Renewal, No Bulldozer: San Francisco repurposes old for the future," describes how it's San Francisco's older buildings downtown that are luring the tech firms that so many cities – including Charlotte – hope to attract.

Charlotte's Dilworth neighborhood is a turn-of-the-last-century streetcar suburb built a mile from the city's uptown in an era when that was the edge of town. The section where the house was demolished is a local historic district. (This PlanCharlotte article describes growing discontent among some Dilworthians with the way that district has been managed over the past decade.)

In North Carolina, buildings in local historic districts can be demolished, as can local historic landmarks. The law says that if a city or county has a local historic district or landmarks ordinance, an appointed commission can delay

What's been keeping me busy? Trash

Plastic debris fouls a bridge over the Catawba River. Photo: Nancy Pierce

What's been keeping me from blogging regularly these days? Trash.

To be more specific, I've become involved in a three-year project, through the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture, to highlight environmental issues in and around Charlotte. We call it KEEPING WATCH.

Year One, which we are in the middle of, is KEEPING WATCH on PLASTICS and focuses on plastics and recycling. We're working with a whole flock of community partners -- you can read the long and growing list at keepingwatch.org.

If you missed it Sunday, here's a lengthy article in The Charlotte Observer that goes into much detail. "Debris to beauty: Keeping WATCH exhibitions reveal the beauty in discarded plastics" describes many of the arts-related events taking place this spring. Disclosure: The "Aurora Robson: Stayin Alive" exhibit at McColl Center for Visual Art was planned separately but the concept dovetails well with the overall theme. Robson's work will be on display through July 26.

We'll host a "Clean Martini night" June 13 at UNC Charlotte Center City, 6-9 p.m., with locally sourced drinks sponsored by Slow Food Charlotte, locally sourced nibbles, and a screening of the film "Growing Cities." It's free and open to the public.

Other pieces of the project have included articles at PlanCharlotte.org from local writer Mae Israel:

• "The story behind your recycling bin,"
• Why you can't toss these in your recycling bin
• Lacking incentives, some Mecklenburg businesses lag in recycling
• In CMS, recycling's possible but not always practical

Finally, the Sustain Me Baby exhibit at the UNC Charlotte Center City gallery highlights recyclable plastics and the problem of plastics in the oceans. And Is This Yours takes art out of the gallery, with totems made of bales of recycled plastic, by Kurt Warnke, displayed in uptown Charlotte as well as placing recyclable vinyl stickers with photos by Nancy Pierce. all over town. 

Next year's KEEPING WATCH will be bigger and better. We'll focus on Charlotte's creeks, those maligned and mistreated urban streams that are finally being taken seriously as amenities. Well, some of them are... 

Can traffic deaths go the way of smallpox?

In the United States we have become desensitized to traffic deaths. That doesn't mean we don't mourn, of course, but it means we seem to have accepted them as just a normal part of living - much the way people used to accept death from smallpox or cholera. I've never understood why the continual stream of students killed driving to and from school is not cause for the sort of national campaigns that attended, for instance, the now-debunked idea that inoculations cause autism.

Isn't there a different way to view traffic safety? There is. A New York Times article this week described how Sweden is pushing to reduce the country's traffic deaths to as close to zero as they can get.

In "De Blasio Looks Toward Sweden for Road Safety," reporter Matt Flegenheimer describes how the Swedish Parliament adopted Vision Zero in 1997 as the national foundation for all its road safety operations. Since then the number of traffic fatalities in Sweden has been cut in half. The fatality rate in Stockholm, 1.1 deaths per 100,000, is less than one-third of New York City’s rate. The national rate in Sweden, 2.7 deaths per 100,000, is the world's lowest.

The article notes that in American states with Vision Zero policies, including Minnesota and Utah, fatality rates fell more than 25 percent more quickly than the national rate.

And, it says, Swedish authorities weren't keen on the value of education or enforcement on pedestrian safety. (In 2012, after two men were hit in two days at Stonewall and College streets in uptown Charlotte, and one died, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police began a brief campaign of ticketing jaywalkers, although the two men who were hit were crossing the street in crosswalks.)

Tree ordinance proposal raises alarms around N.C.

Photo: Nancy Pierce

Charlotte likes to boast of its tree canopy, so a proposal at the state level to gut N.C. cities' tree ordinances has gotten Charlotte City Council's attention. At the council' Environment Committee meeting on Wednesday, after a briefing about the measure, the committee referred the issue to another committee to devise a lobbying strategy with N.C. legislators. Here's the PlanCharlotte.org article I wrote yesterday after the meeting.

But if you'd like to burrow a bit deeper into the issue, here are links to news coverage from around the state:

• N.C. legislators may consider limiting cities' ability to save trees _ Greensboro News & Record
• State could ban city and county tree laws - Durham Herald Sun 
• Bill could take away Wilmington's authority over trees - Wilmington Star-News

 It's not entirely clear how the proposal emerged late in April from a state study panel, the Agriculture and Forestry Services Study Commission, its members appointed by the legislature and the governor.

But at one March meeting, the commission heard from an Iredell County nurseryman upset over municipal regulations in some cities over who pays for trees that get planted and aren't acceptable to local government officials. And some state legislators, as well as developer lobbying groups, have said for years that some cities over-reach in their ordinances affecting private property.

Here's a link to the agenda materials for the study commission's March 28 meeting, with a copy of a

What does Anthony Foxx have to say about transportation funding?

Former Charlotte Mayor and current Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx gave an interview to Yonah Freemark of the website The Transport Politic. As Freemark points out, despite Foxx saying things many transportation and transit fans agree with, the secretary didn't make any commitments to changing the way U.S. transportation is funded. As Freemark says: "At the heart of the problem, as we all know, is that the transportatoin user fee model (premised on fuel tax revenues) has collapsed and no one is willing to do much of anything about it."

Read the interview here:
"An interview with Secretary Foxx"