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I'm not sure what is so great about having a university in town. Colleges are for the kids. They might have some events every now and then but they just a business like any other business. If they give mesome of their huge profit margin money, maybe I'll care about a university being in town.
I don't even know where to begin with this. First of all, traditional universities are not for-profit institutions. And colleges and universities have benefits that extend faaaaarrrrrr beyond their students. It's pretty unfathomable that you don't know this. It's something so elementary within an advanced society to the point where you can't even pull up a Wikipedia article to explain it.
Charleston is known as a tourist city and gets noticed in travel publications but, these magazines target a small audience, if you use the same logic, Tesla is a widely known car. But, outside of the tourist industry, Charleston is not close to being as widely known as Charlotte or Atlanta. Atlanta goes without saying, it has been a major international metro for a long time. 15 years ago, Charlotte would have struggled for being know much outside of the south, today, it is not close. Through professional sports, the airport, hosting conventions (especially the DNC), the large and rapidly growing business community and other reasons, Charlotte is easily know on a national level, Charleston....not so much.
As for comparing cities, this gets hard. Charleston is a tourist city and caters to that industry. It has a downtown that only gets created after centuries of history. But, it is also a city that once had significant influence in the south and today has been passed by cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, etc....the wealth in the city is now more in museums than what you would see day to day in Charlotte or Atlanta. Downtown Charlotte was created by fortune 500 companies that had an ego when building the towers. 50 or 60 stories in downtown Charlotte is not necessary due to land prices but, the towers do create a nice feel to the city that is not present in Charleston just as the history of Charleston is nowhere to be found in downtown Charlotte. The cities are built differently and comparing them is a little silly.
As for living, there is no question more folks have chosen to live in Charlotte. For whatever reason, there area many, Charlotte attracts 50-60k new residents annually or said another way, about 10% of the Charleston metro moves to Charlotte each year on average. Charlotte has terrific neighborhoods and more importantly, the city has a wider diversity of jobs, especially with Fortune 500 company HQ functions, finance, IT, banking etc.....in short, you can make a much better wage in Charlotte on average than you can in Charleston. As for schools, it depends on where you live in Charlotte, Charleston or any community. There are more schools in Charlotte that I would utilize than there are in Charleston.
Looking into the future, Charlotte has created an infrastructure with the airport, roads and mass transit that should help the city grow well into the future. Charlotte is projected to hit 3.5-4m residents in the metro within the next couple of decades, Charleston won't hit half of that in the next 50 years. Between downtown Charlotte (also home to Johnson & Wales...thanks Charleston), Southend, Elizabeth being connected by the streetcar and the ring neighborhoods of Myers Park, Dilworth and Eastover, the pedestrian aspect of downtown will improve over what it is today (which is not bad) tremendously. The infill projects of buildings in the 5-10 story range are happening all over these areas of town with roughly 4,000-5,000 apartments currently in some form of construction.
Charleston's downtown is unique and won't be duplicated but, comparing it with Charlotte also shows the depth of Charlotte and the rapidly moving urbanization of a mid sized city that has great activity that is rapidly increasing.
I'm not sure what is so great about having a university in town. Colleges are for the kids. They might have some events every now and then but they just a business like any other business. If they give mesome of their huge profit margin money, maybe I'll care about a university being in town.
I've noticed there are a lot of urban planners in this country yet there is a lot of bad urban design. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Uh.......it's not necessarily about excitement/money, it's about having the opportunity to expand your education and for some to remain close to families while going to school. Again, think of the big picture.
Well it's also obvious that you have an immeasurably misconstrued idea of what urban planning is. I will agree with you on one hand, as there have been bad urban planners. This is not so much because of how they planned a lot of times but more about how it seems they had a lack of planning in the process. I'm going to tell you right now. If I told Atlanta in order to be successful they need to impose a ten story height restriction and spread everything out with a maximum density...the ramifications are unthinkable. The entire state of Georgia might as well call itself the Suburban Association of Greater Atlanta (SAGA...I like that...anyway). Government spending would have to go out of the roof on a state level because with their current workers, there's not enough if all of them were pouring asphalt 24/7 to keep up with the amount of road expansion would be required.
In order to understand the complexities of urban design in the regards of roads, you need to understand why congestion exists where it does. For example. The connector thru central Atlanta is as packed as it is because:
1) It is the main throughfare for not one, but two major interstates jumbled into one going thru the center of whats already a busy business district.
2) There are numerous exits that cause merging and the entrance/exit of traffic that further slows down traffic at peak hours.
3) Congestion is greatly increased by the way the interchanges for I-20 and I-75/85 are designed so there is massive amounts of erratic traffic movement causing, again, traffic to slow down.
4) A good amount of this traffic is not local traffic but actually traffic coming from either out of state or from somewhere else in the metro except midtown/downtown.
To cut down on this congestion, my suggestion would be the installation of rail that connects areas further in the suburbs to the locations that people in the suburbs go to at the very least when they're travelling within the perimeter or to another side of the metro. Local traffic is less of a concern on this sort of scale. If you want to stay in your car, fine, but you should not be given an incentive to do so if alternatives are offered to you. I think it'd actually be reasonable to have a distanced based fare collected.
I don't even know where to begin with this. First of all, traditional universities are not for-profit institutions. And colleges and universities have benefits that extend faaaaarrrrrr beyond their students. It's pretty unfathomable that you don't know this. It's something so elementary within an advanced society to the point where you can't even pull up a Wikipedia article to explain it.
Ok, well I don't think most public colleges are non-profits. I think that is private schools. and non-profit is only referring to shareholders, but these colleges are making a profit. Profit is the difference b/t costs and revenue.
If you want to advertise and shill for Big Education, that's cool, but they are corporations in the business of making money like every other business. They like to seem themselves as above that. I would say about 50% of the students who graduate from colleges every year probably don't deserve a higher education degree, so they really kind of just degree factories.
Uh.......it's not necessarily about excitement/money, it's about having the opportunity to expand your education and for some to remain close to families while going to school. Again, think of the big picture.
Well it's also obvious that you have an immeasurably misconstrued idea of what urban planning is. I will agree with you on one hand, as there have been bad urban planners. This is not so much because of how they planned a lot of times but more about how it seems they had a lack of planning in the process. I'm going to tell you right now. If I told Atlanta in order to be successful they need to impose a ten story height restriction and spread everything out with a maximum density...the ramifications are unthinkable. The entire state of Georgia might as well call itself the Suburban Association of Greater Atlanta (SAGA...I like that...anyway). Government spending would have to go out of the roof on a state level because with their current workers, there's not enough if all of them were pouring asphalt 24/7 to keep up with the amount of road expansion would be required.
In order to understand the complexities of urban design in the regards of roads, you need to understand why congestion exists where it does. For example. The connector thru central Atlanta is as packed as it is because:
1) It is the main throughfare for not one, but two major interstates jumbled into one going thru the center of whats already a busy business district.
2) There are numerous exits that cause merging and the entrance/exit of traffic that further slows down traffic at peak hours.
3) Congestion is greatly increased by the way the interchanges for I-20 and I-75/85 are designed so there is massive amounts of erratic traffic movement causing, again, traffic to slow down.
4) A good amount of this traffic is not local traffic but actually traffic coming from either out of state or from somewhere else in the metro except midtown/downtown.
To cut down on this congestion, my suggestion would be the installation of rail that connects areas further in the suburbs to the locations that people in the suburbs go to at the very least when they're travelling within the perimeter or to another side of the metro. Local traffic is less of a concern on this sort of scale. If you want to stay in your car, fine, but you should not be given an incentive to do so if alternatives are offered to you. I think it'd actually be reasonable to have a distanced based fare collected.
Ok man, i will defer to you on this topic, I just don't care about mass transit. I'm cool with it as long as me and other taxpayers don't have to fund it for the few who want it. _
Ok man, i will defer to you on this topic, I just don't care about mass transit. I'm cool with it as long as me and other taxpayers don't have to fund it for the few who want it. _
You do every day and probably don't realize it and you should. If we're all gonna pay for roads, we all should pay for transit because again, not everyone wants or likes driving
You do every day and probably don't realize it and you should. If we're all gonna pay for roads, we all should pay for transit because again, not everyone wants or likes driving
I use roads and everybody uses roads. I think user fees for mass transit should suffice given the demand you claim is out there for it.
Ok, well I don't think most public colleges are non-profits. I think that is private schools. and non-profit is only referring to shareholders, but these colleges are making a profit. Profit is the difference b/t costs and revenue.
With such a simplistic definition, you'd then come to the conclusion that it would be the state making a profit because public colleges are state schools.
I use roads and everybody uses roads. I think user fees for mass transit should suffice given the demand you claim is out there for it.
No not everybody uses roads and transit helps you in ways that you don't think about when you're driving down the road. And user fees would suffice if we did what made sense back when private companies owned them and stop giving subsidies to roads , not over rely on them, and have a general sense of using transit and being more closely connected with our community than some typical strip mall in the burbs .
No not everybody uses roads and transit helps you in ways that you don't think about when you're driving down the road. And user fees would suffice if we did what made sense back when private companies owned them and stop giving subsidies to roads , not over rely on them, and have a general sense of using transit and being more closely connected with our community than some typical strip mall in the burbs .
Ok, well let's have a referendum and see if taxpayers want to pay more for mass transit or not. I won't lose sleep either way but I suspect I am majority opinion on this issue.
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and transit helps you in ways that you don't think about when you're driving down the road. And user fees would suffice if we did what made sense back when private companies owned them and stop giving subsidies to roads , not over rely on them, and have a general sense of using transit and being more closely connected with our community than some typical strip mall in the burbs 
