I got a big chuckle out of the Uptown paper of record today advising the city of Charlotte to “keep talking” with developers and not give up on a big transit-oriented development at the Scaleybark light rail stop. The city can talk all it wants, what is going to actually get developers to listen is cash money. The city’s. Yours and mine. Green stuff that could go for cops or roads or other stuff.

Public subsidy of development at Scaleybark is the only leverage the city has with developers — and it certainly has less now than at any point it has been gabbing about the Scaleybark site during the past year. Bottomline, city staff and Uptown paper of record want to force developers to build something on the site — low-income housing — that will cost developers money. They are going to want to made whole one way or another.

Then there is glaring reality that building a light rail line is evidently just an arm of social policy, and a very particular social policy at that. Light rail stops provide the opportunity — probably the duty — to pick up, move, and disperse low-income populations all over the county.

Forget train engineering, light rail is all about social engineering.

And we all know no cost is too great when we are re-making society for the better.