Restoration scaled back

The Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: June 19, 2008

Haste may not make waste after all.

Charlottesville City Council is wise to condense its Downtown Mall restoration project to shorten the period of disruption to businesses and visitors.

The city needn’t look too far for an example of what can go wrong.

Nearby Scottsville implemented an ambitious streetscape project that disturbed businesses and damaged commerce.

Granted, Charlottesville has experience in projects of this scale that Scottsville did not. However, the original plan would have stretched improvement projects out over several years. The current proposal would get the work finished in months.

To accomplish that goal, the city will have to both eliminate some projects as well as commit more funding up front (to the tune of $6 million in the next budget instead of $1.5 million).

The value of limiting disruption is significant, however hard it might be to quantify.

The Downtown Mall has been built — literally and figuratively — into a humming, thrumming, thriving commercial and cultural destination. While maintaining the physical structure of the Mall is necessary to also maintaining its spirit, too much change could be risky.

That is why some Mall aficionados have no problem with the idea of dropping some improvements for now. They fear that the pedestrian district will be “improved” out of all recognition.

Even such “improvements” as larger bricks are questioned. The Council decided to replace paving bricks with new ones of the same size.

Reducing the number of improvements, such new fountains and a children’s playground, will reduce the scale of change. Speeding up completion of the renovation, from years to months, also will limit the impact of change.

That sounds like a good plan. Keep it simple, make it fast, shorten the disruption.

This kind of haste may in fact prevent waste.

Humble defense

Wow. Now, there’s an argument for you.

China says it’s not sophisticated enough to hack into Congress’ computers as accused.

Now, this is the same China that fought to prove itself sufficiently modern to merit hosting the Olympic Games, the same China that sees its position among the world powers as a matter of pride and honor, and the same China that opened up many of its major cities to a semi-Western-style market economy precisely so it could advance in technology and compete with the rest of the globe — an advance that has remarkably succeeded.

And now China modestly claims it’s not capable of sophisticated hacking techniques?

We don’t know if that country’s operatives broke into congressional computers — computers that contained the names of Chinese political dissidents, by the way.

But we do find China’s argument in its defense to be less than convincing.