A city without people

I'm at a conference in Charlotte, NC. When I planned this trip, last November, I noticed that it coincided with March break, and so contemplated bringing the family with me. I'd never been here and, though it didn't seem to have much of a reputation as a recreation spot, I thought that it would at least be a break for everyone. Then I took a good look at an aerial photograph of Charlotte, and had some suspicions about what we might find here. The downtown core looked as though it was composed of more than 50% flat parking lots. Not a good sign. The rest of the core was made up of office buildings. So no family vacation.

On the taxi ride in, I asked the friendly cabbie about crime -- the usual newbie question-- where can I walk late at night without fear of getting shot? Usually that's a question that gets laughed off. But this time, the answer I got was a long list of 'safe' streets and 'unsafe' ones. It was dark when I got to the hotel, so I decided to just stay put, slink up to the bar, hang out here.

Today, in daylight, I ventured out (but only after 4 hours of technical talks, I might add). But I needn't have bothered. Here, in the city, there are no people. There is no retail sector. There is nowhere to be. Nobody lives here. Charlotte, it turns out, is the second largest banking capital after NYC. And I guess that's what people do here. They bank. And then they rush out to the fringes in their cars. Walking the streets on a weekend was a bit like walking through an apocalyptic world. No people, as if they'd all been dispatched cleanly with a neutron bomb, leaving the nice, shiny buildings intact. With all the lights on 24 hours a day as far as I can tell.

There's a tiny fountain in front of the hotel. It's not much, just a flat ribbon of water gushing down about a meter of rocks. In fifteen minutes of sitting outside today, I saw two people from my conference taking painstaking photographs of the water. Curious, I went over to have a look. There isn't much to see. I guess they just couldn't find anything else to photograph.

How does this happen to cities? Who decides that they will be nothing more than stacks of offices with the occasional corporate chain restaurant interleaved so no-one starves (mind you, most of even the few restaurants in the city are closed for the weekend. No trade because there's nobody here). Who said this was ok?

It's going to be a long week. Luckily, it's an interesting conference. Luckily, there are lots of movies on my big wall-sized HDTV. Suspecting there'd be not much life here, I booked an upgraded room. Nice furnishings, marble, 6 kajillion thread count sheets on my big lonely kingbed. There's a strange whooshing sound that never ceases, and a slight vibration of the floor. We're all being kept on life support in here. This city has to strain a bit to keep anything alive inside its limits.