He called Charlotte the world ‘sprawl capital.’ So why’d the urban expert praise the city?

Before he even arrived in Charlotte last month, Ray Delahanty had a list of things he could roast the city about.

Delahanty knows what he’s talking about when it comes to urban design issues: he’s a seasoned transportation planner with a budding YouTube page aptly named CityNerd.

Excessive suburban sprawl. Gargantuan parking decks built near light rail stations. Bike lanes and sidewalks that end with little warning. The city’s ill-located Amtrak station.

The most ridicule he should give, one of his Twitter followers suggested, was to Interstate 277. The highway forms a loop around uptown or, as the follower put it, “the epitome of a mid-century car sewer.”

Charlotte, one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, has earned some of the ridicule, Delahanty explained in a 16-minute video posted earlier this month to his YouTube page. It historically has balanced quick-pace growth with the impact new development can have on existing neighborhoods.

Using Google Earth images, Delahanty described the city as possibly the “sprawl capital of planet earth.”

He highlighted data showing that most people — 87% — use a car to get to work. He pointed to Charlotte’s poor rankings of walk, bike and transit scores compared to other U.S. cities. The scores generally measure how friendly the streets are to bicyclists and pedestrians as well as how close by amenities are.

Yes, the city has woeful transit, poor walking environments and car-oriented shopping centers, Delahanty said in his video.

But instead of spending the rest of his video ridiculing Charlotte, Delahanty took a more hopeful tone.

He called some of its more recent development impressive — the density being created in South End and the concentration of its sport entertainment venues in uptown as two positives for a growing city.

The Charlotte Observer caught up with Delahanty from his home in Las Vegas, a week after his visit to Charlotte for a panel talk in late May.

What is urbanism?

Before he was a prolific social media creator, Delahanty spent about 15 years in city planning and transportation, mostly in Portland, Oregon.

He has a master’s in urban and regional planning from Portland State University. He went to work for the Oregon Department of Transportation and then for the county government close to Portland, mostly in transportation planning.

In the summer of 2021, Delahanty decided to take a sabbatical. He was interested in talking about urban planning issues and found YouTube a great way to voice his ideas. The CityNerd page boasts more than 100 videos on topics like the value of streetcars, cities being overrun by tourists and suburbs that are ... good?

CityNerd has close to 170,000 subscribers.

Delahanty has found that topics around urbanism resonate with a passionate bunch who love to geek out on everything to do with city design. So what make his video segments click with a wide audience?

Part of it is people love to live in cities where you can walk or take transit to all their daily needs and be around a diverse group of people, Delahanty said.

Urbanists tend to think about issues through the lens of sustainability. They believe living in cities is viewed as a benefit to the environment — less infrastructure like sewer lines, for example, is needed compared to communities where everything is more spread out.

What else falls under urbanism?

But there’s another element at play, too.

People in their early 30s looking to buy a home are doing so at a time when it’s difficult to afford a place to live that’s in a walkable area with lots of stuff to do, Delahanty said.

Younger adults want a social life. They want to walk to places they frequent. “You’re not ready to live in a cul-de-sac,” he said.

In the past, a 25-year-old could afford a place to live in neighborhoods that were closer to a city’s downtown, but that’s generally not the case anymore, he said.

One move favored by urbanists is to increase the supply of housing by advocating for denser development close to the city center.

Chill vibes, urban sophistication in Charlotte

Delahanty was in town for a Strong Towns conference where he spoke on a panel titled “How to use social media to build a movement and create change.” The Minnesota-based Strong Towns nonprofit is centered around the “failures of the post-war North American development pattern” and educating people on how to make places better, according to its website.

While in town, Delahanty rented an Airbnb in Fourth Ward — which he found had great walkability.

He was impressed, too, with how the city has created some vibrant neighborhoods around the Lynx Blue Line, including the concentration of construction around places like Optimist Park, Belmont and Plaza Midwood.

Other stops on his Charlotte jaunt included Camp North End and rapidly changing areas like NoDa.

With all the growth, Delahanty pointed to an issue that comes with development. Neighborhoods around uptown were historically redlined — a process by which the government outlined areas where Black residents lived, and deemed the neighborhoods as risky investments.

Delahanty wondered who it is that gets to enjoy the value of new development and who is forced to look further out for a place to live because they can’t afford new housing units and “bougie food hall food.”

That’s something, he said, worthy of consideration.

As he explored Charlotte, Delahanty observed a mix of what he described as a “chill southern vibe” mixed with some “urban sophistication.”

“It’s a bit disarming and it’s hard for me to find things to be annoyed about,” he said in the video. Delahanty did find a minute to lament about how there is a big parking garage next to a light rail station platform. He pleaded for more housing near train stations.

Other Charlotte hot takes

Another surprise on Delahanty’s trip? The size and scale of development in South End.

There was much more height than he was expecting. South End has been booming in recent years, with office and apartment towers under construction or planned.

He said the Blue Line could be the only light rail line where the walking trail next to it is possibly more popular than the transit itself.

His last question for Charlotte: if you build urban amenities in a limited set of locations, does it really matter? The answer seems to be in the fact that people are swarming to places like South End.

So what was Delahanty’s takeaway from visiting what could be the most sprawling city in the world? A group of urbanists and others, he has found, are pushing to make Charlotte a better place.