Going back to when the city passed liquor-by-the-drink in 1978, Charlotte has sped away from the communities that surround it. In 2016, though, the great urban rural divide dominated the national conversation. Charlotte lost business, control of its destiny, and a sense of self, in part because of how quickly and thoroughly it had gone forward. Can—and should—it go back?
The scene would have gladdened the heart of any modern-day urban planner, or anyone who champions cities as the vanguard of 21st-century American life. It was a cool autumn morning in uptown’s First Ward Park, opened less than a year earlier thanks to a mix of public and private land and money. The people gathered were shepherding parks like this and other projects to create the model of a growing, vibrant, modern city: Anthony Foxx, a black man, a former mayor, and current U.S. Secretary of Transportation; Jennifer Roberts, a white woman, Charlotte’s third female mayor; Vi Lyles, a black woman, the highest-ranking City Council member.
The occasion on this October morning was a news conference to accompany Foxx’s tour of Charlotte’s transportation system “to highlight the economic progress that Charlotte and the nation have made, and the economic challenges that remain,” a Transportation Department release read. Shaun Donovan, the Obama Administration’s budget director, joined them. The Bank of America and Hearst towers soared behind them into a clear sky. The scene belied the reality that 2016 had been one of the most trying years in Charlotte’s history, with House Bill 2 costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 1,000 jobs, and violent protests in uptown over the Keith Scott shooting a little more than a month before.
But Foxx, named to Obama’s cabinet in spring 2013, told the small group of assembled reporters how good it was to be home, and how proud he was to have played a role in the city’s two light rail lines: the north south Blue Line—an extension set to open this year runs, appropriately, next to the park—and the first of three legs of the Gold Line streetcar traversing part of uptown four blocks away.
This story is from the January 2017 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
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This story is from the January 2017 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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