Three questions Atlanta's 'Snowmageddon' raise for Charlotte

Several of my Facebook friends have posted this article from Politico, which takes a long hard look at the urban planning and development missteps that helped set the stage for the 'Snowmageddon' that hit Atlanta Tuesday. Basically, the writer, a longtime observer of Atlanta's history and development, concludes that the lack of a coherent regional mass transit system and fractured local government have left the Atlanta metro area vulnerable to gridlock in a fast-developing civic emergency. Judging from our story today, our local elected officials deserve a tip of the hat for correctly zigging where the Atlanta officials zagged.

Still, the whole thing left me with a couple of questions about Charlotte's growth and development:

Question No. 1: Will our mass transit and roads system keep up? The Charlotte-Mecklenburg region is growing. We're beginning to build the next leg of the LYNX light rail system. But it's just the beginning of our planned regional mass transit network, and at the moment, there's no money to pay for the rest of the Charlotte Area Transit System's 2030 plan.

Question No. 2: Is our regional cooperation strong enough? The region has a history of counties and cities coming together around broader civic goals like transportation and economic development. But the recent fight over Charlotte-Douglas International Airport exposed some serious cracks in our regional armor. And folks in fast-growing Ballantyne have been making noises for years about pulling out of the city of Charlotte and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Question No. 3: Is the changing nature of how people live, work and play reducing the chances that the next few stages of Charlotte's development will mirror Atlanta's descent toward the dark side of the suburban sprawl equation? I've attended a number of local and regional conferences recently in which major Charlotte developers (most recently SouthPark builder Johnny Harris) have stressed that many in the younger generation of workers/consumers simply aren't as attracted as their parents were to the idea of living in far-flung suburbs. They want to live near the urban core, with walkable neighborhoods, street-level retail and mass transit at the ready. The South End makes the obvious case in point.

Maybe what happened in Atlanta was just the product of bureaucratic bungling, and nothing more. But as Charlotte's population growth propels it inexorably toward the upper ranks of America's cities, these sure seem like questions we should all be asking.