Category Archives: North Carolina

Alexandria, Cities, DC, Durham, Essay, malls, mental health, North Carolina, Politics of Place, Retail, suburbs, Things At a Place, transit, urbanism, Weekly Newsletter, Winston-Salem

Community Care at the Mall?

I know they are sites of capitalism, but when I go to the mall, I’m there to find things I need to make my own tools of system dismantlement and comforts through the storm. As we re-examine many of these spaces, they will thrive only if we see them as extensions of our community care, not a money scheme.

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email. This week I wanted to check in with one of my first sites of considering urbanism, which seems to get popular around this time of year — the mall. Also, we have a special message from the University of California at San Diego. Learn more about how you can advertise in this newsletter. Prices start at just $75 a week with a four-week commitment.  You can also become a Patreon as an individual and support this work for as little as $5 a month.

I had other plans to end my year of this newsletter, but right after I pulled my wishes together for this year, I realized I had a couple more things to say that were very relevant to this time of year. Hence why this week’s newsletter is in your inboxes and online today and on Monday, I’ll be revisiting and updating my post on Kwanzaa from a Black queer feminist urbanist perspective, but this week, I wanted to take us back to the mall.

This past Saturday, I snapped the photo that leads this post, showing the far northwest corner of Tyson’s Corner Center at full parking capacity. I was in the middle of one of my many social distancing parking lot picnics with Les, my partner, at the Silver Diner across the street. This diner bills itself as part of the mall, but is really only connected by a pedestrian signal and a sidewalk that still has you battling six lanes of traffic, plus one of the mall access roads that can still be treacherous to cross as a pedestrian to one of the many side doors the of the mall.

I digress, but do I really?

Those of you who have been reading my work for the past decade and some change know that I’ve struggled, as many in the journalism community have, with writing accurately about the built environment. I’ve had a particular struggle in writing about an environment that, confirming my suspicions, doesn’t want to support me at my income level and sometimes my skin tone and whom I choose to love, and how I choose to adorn myself.

Yet, despite evidence to the contrary, Cinnabon, Jamba Juice, Barnes and Noble (B&N), Kohls, Sephora, Target, and Michaels seem to be happy to have me, especially on bad days, when the mall is empty enough to social distance and I can take that bun and juice back to the car and grieve over deceased relatives and new health challenges.

I get back home and I curl up into my new sweatsuits that fit my new size with my shiny new crochet hook set and experiment with making machine-washable sweaters. I do so while listening to podcasts or audiobooks I saw the covers of at B&N. Sometimes I color, because lo and behold, not only does B&N have craft magazines, they still have adult coloring books and pencils. Sometimes I just polish off stacks of memoirs. Sometimes Les and I grab a cheesecake or two, like the Golden Girls, to polish off when we get home.

Ok, that is a digression, but right now, just trying to stay alive in a pandemic while having side illnesses and creating our own self-care network that goes beyond the limitations of the built environment on our bodies, has been vital.

And yes, one of those sites of self and community care for us is the enclosed shopping mall and its power center cousins.

Plus, we live in the DC region and several of our shopping malls and plazas are a half-mile or less from the Metro. Others have bus routes. One is the original central business district, which also has transit access, right next to its local yarn store. One is a power center, but by next May, it will have a Metro stop, after years of plans. I dream of the day when its enormous parking lot stops being an asphalt heat island, but a covered lot like The District Wharf with lots of fun restaurants and shops up top.  

In addition, some of the best formal architectural and planning work on how to make these shopping districts better has come from feminine-presenting people, which in general the mall loves the most or thinks is more likely to part with their money. I first found the work of architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson on retrofitting suburbia and I was thrilled to do a special chat with them in March of 2021 they released their newest set of Retrofitting Suburbia case studies. Another collective of planners writing online, managed by Nancy Thompson, AICP, has written this article for people who need steps to turn their back mall into something productive.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that so many of these shopping centers are failing because they see themselves as just shopping centers at best and tax shelters at worst. So many suburbs built and “abandoned” have become sites of opportunity for folks like me who are lower income, small business owners, LGBTQIA+,  immigrants and their descendants, and/or descendants of the Black/African enslaved, and who use mobility devices and other disabilities to make a life for ourselves. Many malls and shopping plazas servicing us are reviving, just in a different way. Meanwhile, other places that were built as money schemes are unfortunately failing, especially if they aren’t properly connecting with the communities that use them.

Because of these kinds of closures and disinvestments,  it might be too late for several malls in Les’s home region of Hampton Roads/Tidewater, Virginia. The area is a cluster of small cities with large land areas, divided up by a substantial waterfront, harbor, and naval operations. Some malls are becoming town centers, including one that she and I both visited a lot in our younger years, and went to in August of 2021 before more of it closed down. Others are just doing their best to share holiday cheer before they go away.

However, the malls and town centers I spent my formative years in Northwest and Southwest Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham, and just outside the beltline and midtown Raleigh are not all dead but have had a lot of demographic and physical shifts. I spoke in this presentation in January of 2021 about the death and “re-birth” of two (I set this to start at the part where I start talking about this, then I move on from that around the 38-minute mark). I wrote a slightly humorous holiday tale about a few in 2015. If anything, my hometown malls are showing resilience, in the face of so many of the corporate and manufacturing facets of the goods that fill them moving away over two decades ago.

Finally, you might not have thought much about these shopping centers and you may see them with disdain. Hopefully, it’s not because you find yourself lesser than for admitting you shop at these stores. Instead, I hope you consider standing with all the retail workers who make far too little making and serving the items we adore so much, with a glimmer of hope that they can get a store discount, much less a living wage. I hope you also think about how and where we choose to trade and barter goods and services we make with joy and in right-relationship with the environment, much like I did in my 2020 Sierra Magazine piece. 

And I hope whichever holidays you choose to observe this year, you do so with joy. Since it took me a minute to get you this week’s newsletter, I’ll be right back in your inbox on Monday, with a revisit of my 2012 post on Kwanzaa as a community holiday, on its first day this year, and how it can become more queer and feminist along with being Black and urbanist.

By the Way

If you’re new here, I write out my grand thesis of the week above, then I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.

Nearly an hour after posting this tweet last week about suburbs of survival, I finished editing this piece for GGWash of fellow urbanist writer Addison Del Mastro, on the wild and winding history of this Pizza Hut in what we consider the central part of  Prince Georges County, MD. I was also captivated by his article on the suburbs as we know them being a “first draft”. I’ll be revisiting these ideas in the new year, of changing definitions and feelings of “suburbia”.

Meanwhile, I received other confirmation/affirmation in my Black queer feminist journey from this examination of the late Black feminist Toni Cade Bambara’s 1970s questioning of the gender roles placed upon us as Black folks and  Black construction company executive Deryl McKissack’s article from 2021 on her perspective on defining yourself for yourself. I plan on taking lots of time over this week to not be on social and finding inspiration from within myself and non-digital or digitized written sources. 

And I considered holding this link until next week, but I know many of you are either going to be a Black Santa or you’re looking for one and I really loved how my friend and brilliant Baltimore-based essayist Alanna Nicole Davis described how Baltimore’s holiday celebrations can still be discriminatory and segregated through the hook of a Black Santa everywhere, but Hampden, which is internationally known for its neighborhood Christmas celebrations. (This may be paywalled for you).

Before You Go

The folks at the University of California, San Diego would love for you to know about not just one, but two tenue-track jobs they have available next year. Plus, some housekeeping about our little space. First the two jobs.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego invites

applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor working in the area of urban studies and

planning to begin July 1, 2023.

This is a position for a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and

Planning at UC San Diego, a rapidly-growing department with strategic emphases on social and spatial justice; climate justice; and multinational planning.

The department is interested in candidates who have demonstrated commitment to excellence by strong engagement in teaching, research, and service toward building an equitable and diverse scholarly environment. The successful candidate will be an excellent scholar with an active research program in one or more of the following areas: transportation planning; climate change mitigation and adaptation; environment and land use planning; health and wellness, and/or spatial analytics.

The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

Department: https://usp.ucsd.edu

Apply link: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03452

Open date: November 21, 2022

Next review date: Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Friday, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

***

And…

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING WITH A

FOCUS ON DESIGNING JUST FUTURES

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning seeks faculty candidates at the level of Assistant Professor whose research, teaching, and service will advance scholarship and institutional solutions for designing more just and equitable systems and structures.

This faculty member will advance UC San Diego’s commitment to the inclusion of Indigenous, Black, and migrant communities, anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, and social justice. We especially welcome candidates whose professional experience, community engagement, and personal background have facilitated their understanding of and ability to better serve students from Indigenous and other underrepresented populations.

Faculty hired under this Initiative will join the UC San Diego campus, the UC San Diego Design Lab (https://designlab.ucsd.edu/), and the Indigenous Futures Institute (https://ifi.ucsd.edu/) to forge a new paradigm of engagement and collaboration that draws on the geographic, academic, institutional, and cultural strengths of our tri-national region across Southern California, Baja California, and the Kumeyaay region.

This search is part of a UC San Diego-wide cluster hire on Designing Just Futures (https://www.design-just-futures.ucsd.edu/) that aims to recruit scholars who can contribute to the advancement of design, social justice, and Indigenous, Black, and migrant futures and seeks engagement with scholars across disciplines to address issues of territory, access, and equity, and social and political debates pertinent to Indigenous, Black, border, and migrant communities, while also working within their home departments and professional communities.

Department: https://usp.ucsd.edu

Apply link: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03484

Next review date: Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Friday, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

***

I know I’ve been promising that I’ll be live on LinkedIn and YouTube and Instagram and I haven’t forgotten! I’ll be doing my wishes video live on Wednesday, December 28 and a video about these two holiday-themed newsletters Thursday, December 29. Both of these will go live around the noon hour Eastern.

***

I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, which I just chatted with my editor with this week,  but I have embedded my Bookshop.org booklists here as well since we were having so many issues with the link. Go here for all things books I’ve read and my book when it comes out!

***

As of today, I am on holiday break from any client projects. I’ll be releasing my Kwanzaa email, making those videos, and doing some 2023 strategic planning and newsletter writing. I’ll release my 2023 Capabilities Deck in the first weeks of January along with a video to pair to explain what my calendar will look like in 2023 and how you can plug into it this year. 

***

Thank you for supporting last year’s capital campaign. Thanks to you, this year, I was able to cover my web hosting, enhance this newsletter, and position myself to take on some other client projects. However,  if you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me. I will also be introducing a paid tier for Substack and Medium users to also function like a tip jar.

***

Happy holidays and talk soon,

Kristen

Career and Business Notes, Heart, Kansas City, Kristen's Mind, Kristen's Thoughts on Urbanism, Moving and Migration, North Carolina, placemaking, Weekly Newsletter

I am queer.

Many of you have noticed changes in my Twitter and Instagram bio, that I’ve been “interested” in more queer events on Facebook, and others have had the pleasure to meet Les, my partner, in person or you’ve known her from her own work in faith-based LGBTQ and transportation advocacy (and you should get to know her videos and life coaching and endometriosis advocacy and our merch line we colaborated on together!). She’s been with me on all my speaking visits over the past two years and we’ve both been helping each other with our various business and community ventures.

Plus, two years ago today, on National Coming Out Day 2018, after a wonderful date night at Midlands after years of knowing each other casually, we decided to start a life journey together, as lovers and friends.

However, in the past and directly, I’ve been hesitant to talk about this part of my life and it has affected how I do this work and how much I pride myself on being transparent. Yet, I believe that this is the time to address this. I wrote a draft of this about 18 months ago, but I believe today is the day to bring this draft into the light.

For My Family and A Note on My Theology

Before I get started, a warning to both family who are reading this and finding out for the first time and family who may have spoken to my mom or who are concerned about my mom.

First of all, I still love you all and if that love doesn’t extend back to me, I understand. Secondly , I told mom privately when I was last home in Greensboro in the spring of 2019 and I ask that you allow her the space to process this and that you refrain from asking her any questions or making judgements on her and how she’s raised me and treated me over the years.

If you are tempted to make these and other similar judgements, please remember that this is not about you. This is not an attack on my mom (or on you, mom), our family, our reputation and as church people. This is not an attack on my family raising me in the best way they knew how. This is not me wasting my beauty or my brain or giving up.

I identify as a pansexual polyamorous non-binary femme (pronouns she/her/they), who is willing and able and has fallen into a committed, loving, monogamous relationship no matter who or how that person presents/is. This also does not mean I’m turning into a male person or will start presenting more masculine as a rule. I still like all the same things I like. I’m happy with my body and how it’s proportioned. Also, I support all other sexual and gender expressions that are loving and consensual.

I know this is an agree-to-disagree notion some of you. I believe we were born holy, are always holy, but sometimes fall astray and need reminders from God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and folks sanctioned under their power to share this truth. I also know everything under the banner of gender and sexual uniqueness is under the purview of the perfect creation of God. The verses that explciitly condem same-sex or gender-noncomformity I believe have a context for which they were written, that doesn’t necessarily affect our situations. I also believe that we can support civil rights for everyone, without necessarily understanding each individual. We were not all created queer and not every queer expression, just like not every hetero expression of love is holy. But some of us were created queer, our queerness is holy and we need to acknowledge this in our faith communities.

One way I illustrate this is that many of us, especially in the black church, have no issue with allowing women to participate in the full body of worship, namely being or speaking in the pulpit. Yet, the Apostle Paul found that to be a distraction in one of the churches he was writing to and he told those specific women to not speak. However, women spoke and were active in church work in other places, plus, there were lots of women doing work for Jesus and all through the Old Testament. I believe that the scripture we have was God’s word for those specific people and much like God spoke directly to them, they (and yes they, I’ll save that for another post), still speak to us and work with us with the situations they gave us to live out.

And yes, I made a choice, but it’s only a choice to no longer live a lie.

Why Am I Talking About this Now

I’m suffering through purple rage and I need to let it go to keep my business and creativity alive.

I built this site nearly a decade ago (and my work on blogs over the last 15 years) to be real, raw and honest about what we can do for the community. Over these years, I’ve been exposed to so much outside of my childhood bubble and I’ve grown so much. Yet, not addressing this directly and firmly has been eating away at me and making me publicly rageful, jealous and resentful. If you’ve been at a happy hour (or even on a few Zoom calls) with me recently, you’ve witnessed some of this. I apologize for anyone I hurt with this behavior, but know I’ve been trying to sort through things a lot of us do as teenagers. Writing this post is helping me heal and start the process of healing relationships–both with people as well as with my work and visibility. I also forgive you, but understand if you can’t forgive me.

We need to stop being prejudiced, racist, and genderphobic in our own community of queer people and in how we apply our urbanism.

I’m sick of the white gay men purporting to speak for (or in some cases use their power to tear down) neighborhoods and spaces that have rich culture and life without them getting into the mix and meddling with what makes those communities special or even better, using their priviledge as white bodies to help us be heard or raise money. This is the root of a lot of the protesting around prides over the last few years, that in their corporatization, they’ve started to mirror non-queer society in how they margialize non-cis, non-white bodies. I’ve felt compelled to always live in cities and move to larger ones, because I’m committed to building community in the black queer community. Because of what I shared above, we struggle a little more at times. Love is defintely love, but it’s really sweet when I can wake up next to my black lesbian partner and have her understand what we need and the struggles. I also hope that as more folks feel comfort in being out and proud, that we get more diversity in expressions and more people feel comfortable dating each other. However, we do not need to favor whiteness or cisness or even wealth. We all have worth and value.

The Death of a Inspiration

The person that helped me to start unpack my harmful theology, not just around queerness, but around patriarchy and white supremacy in our churches and our faith, Rachel Held Evans, died on Saturday May 4, 2019 from complications of the flu, a UTI and an antibiotic she took to heal those other two. She was only 37 (just four years older than me!) and left behind a husband, a three-year-old and a barely one-year old. She was white, grew up in the Evangelical bubble (church, college and also early writings on faith and action), straight and cis and she had her own blind spots around race and even with our affirmation as queer. But she got up daily for over a decade and through her blog and books confronted the notion that only straight cis white men get messages from God that hold weight and authority. Her breakdown of Proverbs 31, her attempt to follow all the rules in the Bible for women, her making peace with needing a different worship experience and now, all the people across the Christian world who have something positive to say about how she challenged them, and challenged them in the way those of us who are current or past evangelicals know and appreciate, with lots of well-stated scripture and a heart for love. She truly had a prophetic voice and it’s this voice that continues to inspire me to speak truth to power, over myself and over our communities.

Final Thoughts

I’m in love and she’s my best friend and she makes me a better urbanist, a better Christian and a better citizen, friend, daughter, etc. Our urbanism needs to make room for queerness that isn’t just white and cis male. Our faith communities really need to examine how we look at the words that God has given us and the internal words that the Spirit speaks to us. Also, for those of you who don’t practice or hold different beliefs outside of the Christian fold, know that I love and respect you too and just like I’m Black, I’m also queer and Christian and that’s the spirit of where this comes from.

Finally, this is something I’ve known about myself since puberty and something that I take one day at a time. However, I do believe it is time for me to speak about this so that I can know where I stand with everyone in my life and so we can continue the greater work of restoration in our communities.

Baltimore, humor, Kansas City, North Carolina

Baltimore is Every City I’ve Ever Lived, Combined in Weird and Wondrous Ways

So here we are, the first true Baltimore-centric post. It took me two months because as I said in my 2017 birthday post, I was scared. This is a city where people get hurt and get hurt often. Especially by people who claim they want to do the right thing. The last thing I needed was for my post to come along and stir up another hornet’s nest. I’m trying as much as possible to fly under the radar.

However, I do have thoughts and thus far, I can say the city’s giving me exactly what I need. Plus, it truly feels like every city that I’ve lived in decided to put all their DNA in a test tube and let it gestate. The irony in this is that Baltimore was born before all the other cities I’ve lived in. However, I can see where it stagnated and where it’s got room to be reborn.  So let’s talk about these common things.

Harris Teeter=Every City I Lived in In North Carolina

And it’s legit. There is a whole row of House-Autry flour mixes. House-Autry flour mixes are one of the nine pillars of modern North Carolina cuisine and it’s awesome that this most obscure of the nine is right here where I can get my hands on it in a short drive to the grocery store. Oh and there’s not just one, but two Harris Teeters. However, like Harris Teeter pretty much everywhere these days, the demographics of the neighborhoods around them tend to be the whitest and the wealthiest of town. Still, I got a car, I got money, I got a belly. Y’all gon see me! And help me make myself at home. (For those of you curious to what the nine pillars of modern North Carolina cuisine are, I got you in a future post).

Power Plant Live!= Power and Light in Kansas City

I’ve been told it’s by the same developer and it shows. Bars that attract the average citizen. Average meaning more likely to be obnoxious by the end of the night. They do have some good concerts there though, I hated missing St. Paul and the Broken Bones and people rave about when Tech 9ine does a hometown show at Power and Light. Also, one of the best parties I attended in Kansas City, was the streetcar progressive party which ended at one of the event spaces in Power and Light. There’s a nice co-working space at Power Plant Live!, as well as a newish Mediterranean/Middle Eastern spot that’s great for folks who when they aren’t consuming the cuisine of their home state, are trying to avoid over-proccessed foods.

The MTA Metro Subway=The WMATA Metrorail Blue Line

I say the Blue Line and the part of the line from Capitol South to Largo Town Center because it does cover similar demographic areas. Also, while the MTA Metro Subway is rumored to go nowhere, it does go to a few places, if you just happen to need to go to Hopkins Hospital, the Maryland State Office Buildings, the Upton Market, the replacement shopping thing at Owings Mills and the two other shopping malls that sit off from it. Oh or the homes, the dense row homes, that happen to sit back off the parking lots. Similar things are happening on the WMATA Metrorail Blue Line. Government buildings. A hospital (or a major medical office). A new shopping center that has some issues, along with a nearby public educational institution. Public food markets. A sports stadium, although arguably one has more activity around it than the other. And yes, I’m including racial dynamics in this as well. Who lives around these stations as the stations move from downtown to the suburbs also mirror each other. (Spoiler, they get blacker as you go out, although Baltimore City’s population is still predominately black, so that skews things a bit too).

The Light Rail= The D.C. and the K.C. Streetcars

The Light Rail works when it works. That’s why it gets to be lumped in with Kansas City’s system, that’s continuing to meet and exceed expectations. When it doesn’t work, it reminds me of D.C.’s poor little H Street line. It’s like the Little Engine That Could. It thinks it can and it does, but it has a lot of work to do to get there. Baltimore’s light rail will take you to the airport, the convention center, Orioles Park at Camden Yards, M&T Stadium, the Symphony Hall,  and a some lovely bars, public markets, food halls and neighborhoods on a north/south axis that’s perpendicular to my current neighborhood. However, I can’t trust when it comes, because the systems on there are in need of renewing. I hear they are tied up in red tape. That’s unfortunate. Yes, if you haven’t heard, I’ve added a car back to my urban travel mix.

The Rowhouse Blocks and the Turrets=D.C.

I mentioned in a prior newsletter that the house where the Underwoods on House of Cards live/lived (mild spoiler there), is actually a house in Baltimore passing for D.C. Much like the rib place he always goes too and a number of other exterior and some interior shots. If all you know of Baltimore on TV is The Wire, then you’re missing out. One day, we might get a show up here that actually shows all the parts of the city, for better or worse. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to actually being able to afford a turret one day.

The Sprawl=Kansas City

You don’t have a bisecting state line, but you do see the results of building out road corridors and parkways in the years prior to World War II. You see the homes start to get newer and newer, in addition to areas of empty lots and some urban renewal that breaks the patterns, along with the newer downtown towers and the convention center. I think that my time in D.C. drove it home that I’m just going to have to adjust to at least a 15 minute drive to a Target. Well, at least Amazon delivers door-to-door here.

The Love of a Singular Food Object So Much it Defines Your City=Kansas City

Sweet Barbecue & Burnt Ends> Crabs. Crab cakes however are in contention. I’m allergic to crabs alone so I’m a little bit biased. Again, and I attribute this to knowing one cuisine solely for 28 years, North Carolina is so much more than one thing. Again, I will be discussing this claim in a future post.

The Hospitality= North Carolina

Maryland is a southern state. And the friends and colleagues I have here do mimic the ones I have back at home. Plus, I’m here thanks to their hospitality and their nudging. And I do feel ties to being at home. I will say though that there were a handful of folks in Kansas City that did their part. Plus, I’m in less need of a safety net these days, but I have it. So there goes. Argue among yourselves as who’s the nicest.

30% of the License Plates=North Carolina

I asked someone how this could be. Then I was told that a lot of Baltimore undergraduate (and graduate!) students come from North Carolina. I have yet to meet an adult friend who also grew up in North Carolina and is just here, but I have met a few of the former. It’s nice to be able to drive around, squinch your vision and think you’re back in either Charlotte (because stadiums and light rail) or Raleigh (skyline and colleges). We do not have the row house situation in North Carolina, clearly I gave that to D.C. above, but we do have a lot of vehicles that seem to belong to maybe parents that live in North Carolina.

And so that’s it. I’ve got more serious thoughts on Baltimore coming over the next few months, but for now, these are my initial, fun, observations of the city I’m making home for now. Oh and Royal Farms chicken is great, it’s just not equal to Bojangles in the same way and therefore, doesn’t warrant it’s own section of this post.

Listen to the audio version of this post:

https://soundcloud.com/kristen-jeffers/baltimore-is-every-city-ive-ever-lived-combined-in-weird-and-wondrous-ways/s-KcHis

I’m Kristen. For seven years I’ve used this space and a few others to make sense of the world around me. Learn more about me and read more of my archives. Subscribe to my newsletter (which comes out mostly weekly) and stay up to date with me. Or, come be one of those Twitter folks who make me think a little harder about what I do. Or I can talk to you, with my co-host and friend and fellow urbanist Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, roughly every week as well about the next wave of urbanism.

Image of a line of row houses and cars parked on the street on a sunny day in Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill neighborhood. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Smallbones – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18756953

Maps, North Carolina, Rail, transit, Transportation

It Really Started With A Train Part 1– My North Carolina Amtrak Fantasy Map

2 Comments

Mid-Day Piedmont train in route to Charlotte from Raleigh, as seen from the balcony of CityView Apartments in Greensboro. Photo by Kristen Jeffers, the author.

I’m finally getting around to doing a fantasy transit map.

My inspiration? My trip home from D.C. to Greensboro via the train.

It takes approximately 8 hours to do it in the daylight and 5.5 hours to do it in the middle of the night. And those are the only choices, just the two trains a day.

However, years ago, there were at least 5 trains a day, if not more. I think we could get back to that point and do so quite cheaply. Also, I think there’s no real excuse why we can’t have trains going to every major city, at at least 60 miles, if not 90 miles an hour.

This idea actually was planted in me years before I decided to do planning work, but not long after my first ever train trip just before I started kindergarten.

North Carolinian fourth and eighth graders study their home state in social studies classes.  Being the social studies and history nerd I still am and was very much so then, I read my textbook from cover to cover.

My fourth grade social studies textbook. This was the only image I could find.
My fourth grade social studies textbook. This was the only image I could find.

There was a section in it that talked about life in North Carolina in 2032. Part of that life was being able to have lunch on the coast and dinner in the mountains (And I’m sure breakfast in one of the three regions and other meals on other coasts, but still, you can wake up one place, lunch in another and dinner in yet another).

As it stands right now, thanks to the routing of the Carolinian and the Piedmont, you can have an early breakfast in NoDA in Charlotte, a high noon lunch at Natty Greene’s in Greensboro and a dinner at one of Ashley Christensen’s fabulous James Beard Award-winning joints in Raleigh. You could do all of this in reverse. (probably need a different breakfast spot though…)

However, what if you could have dinner at the Chef and the Farmer in Kinston instead of that dinner in Raleigh and still get back to Greensboro before midnight?

That’s the fantasy I’m creating with my North Carolina Passenger Rail Map.

Before I reveal the map, a few rules that I worked with:

1.This assumes that we can start putting commuter rail stops and tracks down the interstates and state highway medians immediately.

2. This is not by any means parallel or inspired by the existing maps for the High Speed Rail corridor or any strategic plans. Please do dig up the strategic plans, especially for the Durham-Orange Corridor, the Wake County Corridor. The regional transit authority sites are good places to start for this and I may be back here to add those links in.

3. In the interest of still keeping some realistic planning in place, I’m using those highway medians with the assumption that the lanes lost in the process would be absorbed by people taking the train more often, especially in the Charlotte Raleigh corridor. Also, the costs would be lower, as basically this can be rolled into the existing plan to add second rail from Charlotte to Raleigh and also highway resurfacing and widening.

4.I decided to overlay a Google Map, because all the work is done for me. The map is blurry, yes, but it’s really just there for perspective and once I started drawing the lines and circles over top, I didn’t want to re-center it. I will revisit this later as well.

So, all aboard (couldn’t resist)! In my fantasy world, you can get to just about any city in the state in less than 5 hours, many within 2-3 hours.

My trunk line is the existing Piedmont routing. I’m assuming that almost everyone, save the folks on Asheville to Wilmington line, will come through Greensboro, Raleigh or Charlotte at some point.

(Here are the raw distance calculations, using Google Maps and following existing interstate, U.S. or state highway routes where possible).

I imagine these stations will be massive park and rides, utilizing space right next to highway interchanges for cars and regional buses to areas that still can’t be served by rail efficiently. These buses will still sync up directly with arrivals and departures and will leave the cities they originate in promptly. Also, there will be transit to major commercial areas in the cities represented.

Or, I could go even more fantastical and make all these stations downtown stations, much like all the existing ones are. A lot of these places will need new track anyway, why not go downtown to downtown and save money on parking and buses.

Now, what you’ve been waiting for, the map!

North Carolina Fantasy Amtrak Map

Existing Amtrak service is represented by blue lines. Fantasy service is represented, with slight approximations, by the green lines. In the Google Drive, distance is calculated using state highways, of which many do have a passenger or freight railroad paralleling or hugging anyway.

Also, if you’ve not seen the infrastructure maps, especially the railroad maps, the Washington Post recently published, you should. It will also point out that a lot of my fantasy map, could become very real and very viable–if only we reinstated some of the old railroads or allowed more passenger traffic on the ones we have.

Finally, there’s some great information on the N.C. By Rail website, including this awesome video of the progress and modifications to the primary state-owned and operated route that the Piedmont travels.

I expect you to critique the mess out of this. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

I’m Kristen. I started blogging here to make sense of the built environment around me. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can find out more about me at my portfolio website, www.kristenejeffers.com. Or get an email from me weekly on Tuesday’s with links, other posts and job/fellowship opportunities.