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People interested in the future of Charlotte - whether it be one neighborhood's hairy intersection or the entire city's mission - might want to take part in a pair of public forums this week.
The first, on Tuesday, will be a brainstorming session on the intersection of Queens and Providence roads in Myers Park. It's a strange one, with an off-kilter design and a variety of uses surrounding it: a church, a library, a supermarket, a shopping center. The main question the forum will pose: How might city leaders and neighborhood residents shape the area to make it more inviting and sustainable?
The second gathering, on Thursday, will be far broader in scope. It will concern itself with nothing less than the whole future of the Charlotte. Recent studies have ranked the city high in available brainpower, but far lower in its use of brainpower to create a sustainable community positioned for success in the 21st century.
If that sounds nebulous, that's part of the point.
"The whole idea is to do something that's a little difficult to explain, and the fact that we're doing something difficult to explain automatically means we're doing something different," said Mark Peres, the president and founder of Charlotte ViewPoint, the nonprofit organization co-hosting the event. "It's going to be dynamic and different, and Charlotte needs a little different."
Charlotte ViewPoint, a community-based organization that champions metropolitan ideas and art, is working with Civic-By-Design Forum, a nonprofit group that aims to get people thinking and acting on ways to create a better community through design. Civic-By-Design is hosting the Tuesday event.
The Thursday forum is open to anyone willing to pay the $20 entrance fee. Peres said he wants as diverse a turnout as possible. It'll ask some basic questions:
•Are we at risk of rapidly losing our quality of life because we are not creative enough?
•What can we do to infuse Charlotte with the intelligence needed for resilience and positive change?
•How can Charlotte enhance and effectively draw upon its intelligence to thrive?
"If we get good people in the room and have a thoughtful process, to some degree we don't know what's going to happen," said Peres, an assistant professor of leadership and ethics at Johnson & Wales University.
"What we really want is for ideas to come up that are well thought through, that come from different perspectives in the room ... and then once we document them, do a little bit of research, then probably sometime in the spring share them with the leadership in Charlotte - the mayor's office, (Charlotte) Center City Partners, The Foundation for the Carolinas."
The Tuesday Civic-By-Design event will be the latest in a monthly series for forums the organization hosts at the Levine Museum of the New South. Organization Chairman Tom Low, a Charlotte architect, said he got the idea from a recent news story that designated Queens and Providence as the worst intersection in the city.
This was not news to Low, whose office is a half-block away. "I've tried to just cross the street to return a library book," he said, "and I just got so anxious and frustrated that I went back to the office, got my car and drove over."
It seems to him that it doesn't need to be this way. The original, nearly century-old neighborhood plan envisioned Queens and Providence as the Trade and Tryon of Myers Park, a neighborhood center where commerce, culture and green space met. But it's gotten out of hand, he said.
The forum's participants will toss around a series of options including retail, mixed-use, green space and cultural outlets.
"We'd like to challenge people to think about how design can affect place-making," Low said.
"We hope we can at least start a conversation about, 'If we were really going to do this, what would need to be done?' Maybe a catalyst-type discussion, get some energy going."
