 “The whole point of the new zoning concept is to make it easy for developers to build the kind of neighborhoods that our citizens have said they want. ”
- Tim Keane, Charleston City Planning
“The whole point of the new zoning concept is to make it easy for developers to build the kind of neighborhoods that our citizens have said they want,” Keane says. “Of course, not everyone wants the same thing. Gathering places aren’t appropriate everywhere. Some people want to be in a more urban environment and some people like a more rural environment. The problem is that our rules have required just about everything to be suburban. We are trying to give people more choices.”
While Keane admits that traffic jams will never go away entirely, he sees gathering places as a way to help ease congestion. “For one thing, we will give people the option to not have to get in their car for some trips. Even people who like to walk are going to drive occasionally. But we strongly believe that some people want to walk to some things some of the time. And that’s very hard for most people in the suburbs to do now.”
Keane points out that little accomplishments can add up in a big way. “Right now the average single family home in America generates about ten car trips a day. If we can reduce those ten trips to eight or nine on the local level, we will have accomplished something significant. Let’s use Avondale Point as an example. For the sake of convenience, let’s say are just ten businesses in the area. If just twelve people a week walked to each of those businesses, you would have 480 car trips off the road each month. By the end of the year, you’d have taken 5,760 car trips off of Highway 17.”
CARTA Chairman Patterson Smith strongly favors the gathering places plan, partly because it meshes so well with his agency’s goals. “Our research tells us that people will walk about a quarter of a mile to get to a transit stop. If you can’t make it convenient for people, they will always drive instead. You have to have a certain amount of density in some areas for public transit to work.“
Smith points out that the business district at Avondale Point originally developed around the terminus of the old trolley line. Partly because they grew up around transit, neighborhoods like Avondale and Byrnes Downs have a lot of the features planners want to emulate for new gathering places. “Development and transportation planning have always gone hand in hand, “ he says.
Hollis Mays, a postal service employee and community leader who lives near the proposed McCleod Village on James Island, was happy to play a role in the planning a more pedestrian-friendly future for her neighborhood. She points out that auto-dependent sprawl affects some people more than others. “We have a lot of active senior citizens in our neighborhood, and they would love to be able to walk to a café and get together. I used to work as a caregiver for elderly people. I have seen how hard it is for many people when they lose the ability to drive. They become trapped in their own homes. “
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