In the wasteland

Driving up WT Harris from the Old Tecki Homestead in East Charlotte always depresses me. While Baltimore has scads of great old buildings just waiting to be revitalized and filled with families and businesses, Charlotte suffers its own success. Still growing strong, the city and its suburbs sprawl across the landscape like a cancer. If all that growth could be concentrated in pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use neighborhoods instead of strip malls, fast food joints and ever-bigger Targets and Wal-Marts, I would be happier to come home.

Of course, any growth at all in East Charlotte would be nice. That part of town is falling apart, and I worry the eventual revitalization will be much more difficult than in urban cities like Baltimore. No matter how run-down the old homes, commercial and industrial buildings in Baltimore were, someone always eventually came along to renovate beacause those buildings and their neighborhoods had character. The vast stretches of Independence Blvd. and Albemarle Rd. have all the charm of ... parking lots. No one is going to look at the now mostly shuttered Coliseum Shopping Center and say, "Gee, I'll bet folks would love to move into some condos there."