ATl people how do you really feel about Charlotte?? (Atlanta: sales, theater)
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I stand corrected here, but I went to Charlotte to get some photos, and I could not find so much in the way of "old". I'm not trying to knock it, but 99% of the country does not think of Charlotte as "old" because it's not.
Charlotte itself is actually a pretty old city--older than Atlanta--but we don't have an old-school urban fabric. I know what you mean, but I also think the distinction is pretty important.
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As I have said a million times, at least we had a ton of history to begin with and we did not raze it all, like Charlotte has.
We did not raze all of our history. Yes, we razed too much and I'll be among the first to say so. But as I said before, we didn't have nearly as much as Atlanta to begin with. Atlanta easily razed more historic buildings than Charlotte, but like I said, Atlanta had more to begin with. What historically propelled Charlotte's economy forward was textiles, and we still have a decent amount of that historic legacy left in the form of several mills around town.
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Originally Posted by qc dreamin
The situation is that Charlotte is way ahead of the rest of its peers that are supposedly in its tier that you almost have to place Charlotte(maybe Austin) into a tier by itself. A step up above the clevelands, nashvilles, but not yet up there with the top ten(yes Atlanta is on that list).
You are overstating the case for Charlotte. We are definitely in the same tier as most of those cities that were mentioned. We're above Jacksonville and Raleigh, but are more neck and neck with the other cities jsimms3 mentioned.
Charlotte itself is actually a pretty old city--older than Atlanta--but we don't have an old-school urban fabric. I know what you mean, but I also think the distinction is pretty important.
Indeed. This distinction comes up for example in comparisons between Atlanta and Los Angeles, two cities that are similar in age but with very different feels. LA surprisingly feels a lot older, and that's bec it came of age a good half century or more before Atlanta. So the true age of a city has much less to do with its actual founding date and more to do with when it reached a certain size and status vis-a-vis other cities.
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Originally Posted by Poseidon704
You are overstating the case for Charlotte. We are definitely in the same tier as most of those cities that were mentioned. We're above Jacksonville and Raleigh, but are more neck and neck with the other cities jsimms3 mentioned.
I actually went to Charlotte yesterday, had the day off from work on Mondays, and I am impressed with their downtown, my only complaint is that there are still too many places that close too darn early! I wanted to check out Discovery Place and when I was about to purchase a ticket, the lady @ the counter advised me they were closing @ 4pm, b/c it was like their offseason b/c the kids were back in school, that's why they close so early (it was 3:30 when I got there)! So I decided to walk over to the Gantt Museum of African American History, and when I got there, I found out they closed on Mondays, so after all of that, I settled on the Bechtler Musem, and it is a very nice place! Afterwards, I had dinner @ Hooters, the wait staff was friendly, the girl that waited on me was really friendly, she told me that she had just moved to Charlotte from Ohio 2 weeks ago and that she likes Charlotte, anyways, after I left Hooters, I took in a movie @ the EpiCentre, and after the movie, I walked around Uptown for a while, and there was still a lot of people out and about around 9:00 and 10:00 on a Monday night, it did die down a bit after 11:00, but the bars were still packed with people though, it was mainly the bars that were open, the nightclubs don't usually open until midweek! Took the light-rail train back to my car, so I drove around Charlotte a little bit! I can tell you this, Uptown is pretty active, but the rest of Charlotte, no so much! I can see where a lot of people say that it's kinda dead! I would like to see the inner-city areas like Plaza-Midwood, Dilworth, NoDa, and that area around CPCC someday be very active areas for nightlife during the week, along with Uptown, but I'm pretty sure that will happen in time! Overall, Charlotte is a wonderful place, but it's still not up to par with Atlanta yet! I believe in 20 years, it will be a lot different! Also, the surrounding areas, where it is a bit "hickish" right now, will eventually be more developed and resemble more of a metropolitan area in time as well!
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
Agreed that we are making some serious progress, but Atlanta is more than "has a bunch of suburbs." Atlanta is very suburban. Please see my post on the "City that's built up near Roswell" thread where I have posted aerials of the area, including ITP areas. Atlanta, for a metro its size sprawls to high heaven more than just about any other metro.
Ok, you seem to be missing my point.
How North Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett or any other place outside the city of Atlanta is an entirely different discussion. The city itself does not, nor could have, any input into how those areas were built. This is not unique to the Atlanta area. Again, just look at the suburban areas of any major city and you will same the same thing.
Secondly, I did see your post, but the area you showed ITP (NW Atlanta) looks that way for a reason. It was incorporated into a city at a time when that type of development was popular. There's no getting by that. That is, however, hardly representative of the entire city nor does it even have that large a chunk of the city's population (maybe 50,000 or so).
The majority of the City of Atlanta is not built that way and if you are familiar with the city you should know that. And it isn't something that is a recent development either. Places like...
West End:
Virginia Highland:
Hell, the whole inner 40 square miles of the pre-Buckhead/Far westside annexation is built very well:
...have been around for decades.
To say that the city is "mostly suburban" is not true by any measure.
To be fair, there is some disconnectedness between districts and this more of a result of the highways than of the layout of the streets. The Beltline project should solve a lot of that however.
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
Los Angeles LA is actually very walkable
Houston Working in their favor as we speak, in Loop Houston is great!
Dallas
Phoenix making it easier for infill and their new light rail system, very low density, though
Orlando major stretch
Oklahoma City will make it easy for OK City in the future should it undergo massive growth
1. Los Angeles does get way less credit than it should when it comes to it's urban environment.
2. Houston also gets a lot of flack they shouldn't for their intown development.
3. Phoenix is trying, but they truly did build a "suburban" style city. It's going to take a lot more than adding light rail to overcome their problems though.
4. OKC is on the tipping point. They could very easily go down the path of becoming more Phoenix like, or they can take a more neighborhood focused approach. It'll be interesting to see where they take it.
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
Boston As much of a grid as Dallas mentioned above. Back Bay = grid, Roxbury = grid
Boston has as much as a grid as Dallas? Are you sure about that?
Dallas's street grid is huge. Two neighborhoods in Boston in no way compare to the grid in Dallas...especially since those grids are only useful for those neighborhoods.
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
I think you are missing my point. The 3 "non-grid" cities you provided were built up to basically max density before the car was even a thought. In the age of the automobile, as you point out below, a grid makes traffic and driving much easier.
This is basically what I am disagreeing with. Street grids by their very nature do no make traffic any better, nor is traversing a city not on a grid by car inherently worse.
A good example of this is New York City, in particular Manhattan. Manhattan does probably the best job in the country of utilizing it's urban form for a mixed use lifestyle. They set the standard for how city grids would come to be used and they have a massively used public transportation. Even with all of that, they're traffic is beyond horrendous and way worse than anything we have to deal with in Atlanta. Just try driving during a rush hour in NYC (or anytime during the day) and you will most likely go mad after a week. Now most of these problems are due to just the sheer size of the amount of people on the streets, but grids do have their breaking point.
On the other hand, in the city of Atlanta traffic is hardly ever bad. The only places traffic is bad is on the highways and at major intersections in the highway. Unless there is construction or an accident, I have no trouble getting from neighborhood to neighborhood by car. The big difference is that you have to know your way around. I mean I've heard some crazy stories before of people taking 30 minutes to get from Midtown to Buford Highway or 30 minutes to get from Emory to Buckhead. If you have no idea how the streets are laid out then it will take you that long, if you do both could take you 10 minutes max.
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
Response to above 2 paragraphs: I urge you to look at zoning for Atlanta and land use. We'll never be able to get a grid. I have actually said that on this forum a few times. I have pointed out that we should look to NoVA and Montgomery County, MD on how to plan for concentrated growth and transportation oriented developments. If Atlanta did not have a grid and planned for higher density development in the first place, then we could be compared to Pittsburgh, European cities, etc. Atlanta ditched the grid and allowed for over development of subdivisions, gated housing neighborhoods, and low density garden style apartments. Each of these have land separating them from the next development. The current layout allows for very few areas to become walkable like neighborhoods in the other cities that you mentioned simply because of land use and dendritic street patterns consuming 90+% of the metro.
It was not "Atlanta zoning laws" that caused places like Gwinnett or North Fulton (outside the historic areas) to develop into subdivision lala land. Those were state/county level laws that Atlanta the city had nothing do with. In fact, it has been perfectly clear that the suburban counties of Atlanta have zero interest in any input the city might give in such discussions. It's an entire separate topic.
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Originally Posted by jsimms3
The bottom line is that you are all up in arms over me declaring Atlanta's planning and street pattern to be non-conducive to mixed use and mixed income, but I mentioned the same for Charlotte and even relegated less of their city able to be developed in such a fashion. I have pointed out my pros and cons of each and questioned why Charlotte (and Dallas) posters continue to start threads here in the Atl forum, and yet all of a sudden Atl posters are up in arms over harmless me. Ok. For the record, I doubt Catherine Ross is and I know Ellen Dunham Jones is not proud of Atlanta's planning, though I know both love the city overall. That's how I am. Get used to it and get over it. As I have said a million times, at least we had a ton of history to begin with and we did not raze it all, like Charlotte has.
Oh lord, no one is up in arms.
Basically, all Im saying is that there should be an honest discussion about the city of Atlanta when talking about "Atlanta"....instead of just focusing on the suburban madness OTP.
You are still mixing two separate discussions. This is why I keep bringing up the point that you must step back and look at the whole picture. You can not level the same arguments against suburban Atlanta and the City of Atlanta as they were built in completely different ways in completely different eras. It's even more frustating when you seem to understand that talking about development in NoVa is different from talking about development in the District of Columbia.
Secondly, it ignores the fact that the entire city of Atlanta (except for Collier Hills and NW Atlanta) was built as Transit oriented development. The same type of the development that the people you name dropped call for. Atlanta grew and added neighborhoods one at a time as developers built neighborhoods connected by streetcar to Downtown. At the same time they built neighborhood level retail. Because of that prior development, the city of Atlanta was able to absorb 120,000 new people over 10 years without any loss of quality of life. Hardly any new neighborhoods were created and those that were (AS and Glenwood Park) only saw less than 10% of that growth.
Now, I'm not making Atlanta out to be some sort of urban paradise but, again, it is far from the "suburban style" city that many people claim. While you may be talking about the metro as a whole, almost all urban development is done in side the central city limits and the focus in this regard for both Atlanta and Charlotte have been in their respective city limits. I can not imagine why you would think talking about how North Fulton looks should be relevant to that particular discussion.
First and foremost Charlottes city limits are not as extreme as some posters are making it out to be:
Jacksonville: 800 sq miles
Nashville: 400 sqmiles Charlotte; 242 sqmiles(land)
Oklahoma City 400 sq miles
etc....
Secondly, Thank you for clearing up the fact that Charlotte and Raleigh are not even close to being in the same tier. Just because they have similar metro populations does not mean the actual cities themselves are on the same level. trust me, they are not even close. Charlotte is in the situation where its actual city limits are very progressive(not neccesarily urban), citi-esque, modern,etc... but its suburbs are definitely "country." The situation is that Charlotte is way ahead of the rest of its peers that are supposedly in its tier that you almost have to place Charlotte(maybe Austin) into a tier by itself. A step up above the clevelands, nashvilles, but not yet up there with the top ten(yes Atlanta is on that list). You have to remember that 65% of Charlottes metro population resides in the county(520sqmiles). A natural comparison is to "look-up" to the cities that are ahead of you when you are no longer in the same playing field as the other cities that are supposed to be inthe same tier.
FYI, I have much respect and love for Nashville, Jacksonvile,Louisville,Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Raleigh, Cincinnatti, Orlando, Providence and Tampa,
You do realize that there is another tier that Charlotte has to reach before it reaches Atlanta's tier. One minute it seems like your talking like Charlotte is not that far off from Atlanta, but then turn around and act like it's light years ahead of cities within it's tier.
I actually went to Charlotte yesterday, had the day off from work on Mondays, and I am impressed with their downtown, my only complaint is that there are still too many places that close too darn early! I wanted to check out Discovery Place and when I was about to purchase a ticket, the lady @ the counter advised me they were closing @ 4pm, b/c it was like their offseason b/c the kids were back in school, that's why they close so early (it was 3:30 when I got there)! So I decided to walk over to the Gantt Museum of African American History, and when I got there, I found out they closed on Mondays, so after all of that, I settled on the Bechtler Musem, and it is a very nice place! Afterwards, I had dinner @ Hooters, the wait staff was friendly, the girl that waited on me was really friendly, she told me that she had just moved to Charlotte from Ohio 2 weeks ago and that she likes Charlotte, anyways, after I left Hooters, I took in a movie @ the EpiCentre, and after the movie, I walked around Uptown for a while, and there was still a lot of people out and about around 9:00 and 10:00 on a Monday night, it did die down a bit after 11:00, but the bars were still packed with people though, it was mainly the bars that were open, the nightclubs don't usually open until midweek! Took the light-rail train back to my car, so I drove around Charlotte a little bit! I can tell you this, Uptown is pretty active, but the rest of Charlotte, no so much! I can see where a lot of people say that it's kinda dead! I would like to see the inner-city areas like Plaza-Midwood, Dilworth, NoDa, and that area around CPCC someday be very active areas for nightlife during the week, along with Uptown, but I'm pretty sure that will happen in time! Overall, Charlotte is a wonderful place, but it's still not up to par with Atlanta yet! I believe in 20 years, it will be a lot different! Also, the surrounding areas, where it is a bit "hickish" right now, will eventually be more developed and resemble more of a metropolitan area in time as well!
I am glad that you actually took the time out to ignore your preconceived notions about the city and went and explored it yourself. i am glad you had a good time. I honeslty agree with you Plaza-Midwwod,etc..... it could be more active on a nightly basis. They are really busy Wednesday through Sunday. Next time Check out University City, there are tons of clubs and bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues(especially around the lake).
Both cities have excellent skyscraper architecture! Atlanta has very many iconic buildings: 191, Suntrust, BofA, 1180, Atlantic Center, Sovereign, Mansion (designed by my favorite architect), Riverwood, and the list goes on.
Charlotte does VERY well for being a much smaller city: BofA, Wachovia, Hearst, Duke Energy, IJL, the new Westin, and the new BofA/Ritz Carlton (also LEED Gold).
On average, I would say new (post 1985) skyscrapers in both cities EASILY compete with new buildings going up in New York and Chicago, and exceed by a long shot the average new building going up in Miami, Seattle, and Houston.
As an architect, I feel that Atlanta's skyline is gorgeous as a whole, however individually very few can be considered iconic. Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel, 1180 Peachtree, IBM Tower, One Promenade, Terminus, and yes, Peachtree Center. Oh and that classical downtown tower capped with the two boobs.
The vast majority are overstylized with meaningless motifs because developers mistakenly think all customers want a signature building. Collectively, Atlanta appears like some sort of architectural testing ground, devoid of any common relationship and missing "urban fabric". It's still fabulous, and will only get better with time, so no angry replies please.
Altanta's BofA tower, designed by acclaimed architect Kevin Roche, is the tallest building in the Southeast, but iconic, it is not, unless you like it's resemblance to a rocket sitting on its launchpad, or by night known as "the burning cigarette".
Charlotte BofA tower, while dismissed as "wedding cake architecture", is exquisite in every way and will stand the test of time. Cesar Pelli's buildings around the world have aged very gracefully, and are still pleasing due to his use of the Golden Section Proportion.
Charlotte new Duke Energy building, designed by tvsa here in Atlanta, is freakin' hot, and also stands on it own.
As an architect, I feel that Atlanta's skyline is gorgeous as a whole, however individually very few can be considered iconic. Westin Peachtree Plaza hotel, 1180 Peachtree, IBM Tower, One Promenade, Terminus, and yes, Peachtree Center. Oh and that classical downtown tower capped with the two boobs.
The vast majority are overstylized with meaningless motifs because developers mistakenly think all customers want a signature building. Collectively, Atlanta appears like some sort of architectural testing ground, devoid of any common relationship and missing "urban fabric". It's still fabulous, and will only get better with time, so no angry replies please.
Altanta's BofA tower, designed by acclaimed architect Kevin Roche, is the tallest building in the Southeast, but iconic, it is not, unless you like it's resemblance to a rocket sitting on its launchpad, or by night known as "the burning cigarette".
Charlotte BofA tower, while dismissed as "wedding cake architecture", is exquisite in every way and will stand the test of time. Cesar Pelli's buildings around the world have aged very gracefully, and are still pleasing due to his use of the Golden Section Proportion.
Charlotte new Duke Energy building, designed by tvsa here in Atlanta, is freakin' hot, and also stands on it own.
I am glad that you actually took the time out to ignore your preconceived notions about the city and went and explored it yourself. i am glad you had a good time. I honeslty agree with you Plaza-Midwwod,etc..... it could be more active on a nightly basis. They are really busy Wednesday through Sunday. Next time Check out University City, there are tons of clubs and bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues(especially around the lake).
University City - tons of bars. I am here right now. It's actaully pretty boring. WT Harris has the Bikinni Bar ( some type of hooters wanna be). Most of the places to are downton/uptown and the action/excitement can be inconsistent. To say University City, has tons of clubs and bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues is a joke. BTW - The House of Blues is never open during the work - week, Mon-Fri. It opens like once a month during the work-week (or maybe twice a month on a Tues from 7 to 9 - WTF)
I here some mentions of Atlanta razing its old buildings. Oddly enough, Atlanta(and basically for this aspect) reminds me of Bucharest,Romania(one of Atlanta's sister cities). Bucharest had alot of old buildings and then alot of them were razed. Atlanta was burned during the Civil War. Bucharest was bombed during WWII. Alot of Atlanta's old architecture was razed after the 1960's, right around the time Ceausescu was razing parts of Bucharest. In most ways, Atlanta and Bucharest have little in common, but in the aspect I just mentioned, I see a parallel between the two.
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