Mary Newsom

Biography

Mary is a lifelong newspaper journalist who spent several decades at The Charlotte Observer as an editorial board member and columnist, concentrating on Charlotte regional urban and suburban growth, planning, urban design, transportation and land preservation. She left the Observer and joined the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute in 2011. She had a year-long Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University 2007-08, and in 2005-06 was a Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami. Newsom retired from the insitute in 2018 as Director of Urban Policy Initiatives, and is now a freelance writer in Charlotte. 

Education

A.B. Journalism UNC Chapel Hill

Expertise

Urban and suburban issues, Charlotte region and North Carolina politics and government, writing, editing and journalism.

Stories by Mary Newsom

A game of homes (and jobs, farms and more)

How can the Charlotte region prepare for the thousands of new jobs and houses expected to come here? RealityCheck2050, part of the CONNECT process, let regional participants develop their own...

Imagining a trail of parks through South End

Fact: A workmanlike sidewalk runs beside South End’s light rail tracks. Fact: South End today has no park. Add those facts. Thus was born the idea for a 3.3-mile Rail Trail featuring a series...

Can Charlotte growth policies get smarter?

  • How can the city of Charlotte boost both the value of its neighborhoods and their quality of life?


Resilience: Many cities, many meanings

A resilient city can thrive amid challenges and survive disasters like earthquakes, rising sea levels and economic depression. But unlike so-called legacy cities, for a city like Charlotte the...

Contest-winning photos evoke sense of place

A moody night-time shot of a more than 200-year-old house outside Huntersville, and a sliver of a moon over uptown Charlotte. Those photos, by Kevin J. Beaty, were what cinched top honors in...