Articles
A flower bed might have a vibrant assortment of blossoms, but without the movement and sparkle of pollinators, it can seem flat and static. It’s been a bad year for butterflies in my garden, and I’ve heard similar reports from across the Piedmont. Their numbers seem to be down. Their absence has made me even […]
Leaders in the Charlotte region are finalizing the details of the first coordinated transit plan to go well beyond the city limits, a document they hope to adopt this fall. Connect Beyond, a 12-county initiative led by the Charlotte Area Transit System and the Centralina Regional Council, will release its full report on Monday. The […]
The pandemic has transformed so much about the world, including how we work, where we work, and how we commute. As a result of these shifts, Charlotte area transit use has fallen to less than 50% of pre-pandemic levels. And while debates continue on whether these effects are permanent or temporary, city planners are pushing […]
Charlotte has a reputation as a shiny new city, one that tears down grand old buildings to replace them with bland new apartments and historic marker plaques. But that’s not the whole truth, and the guests on this episode of “Future Charlotte” are devoted to preserving and promoting more of Charlotte’s history. Historian Dan Morill, […]
Health and economic mobility are connected, and the burdens of poor health don’t fall equally on different groups in our society. In Charlotte, where you live — along with your race, income and other demographic factors — has a big impact on aspects of health, from access to pharmacies to fresh food and even average […]
There are, broadly, two big worlds that overlap in the planning and development realm: The dirty, hands-on physical world of building and construction, and the wonky, alphabet-soup-of-jargon world of zoning, regulation and land use policy. Right now, Charlotte’s in the heat of the wonky phase. Although it’s drawn far less attention than the contentious debate […]
Decades of housing policy, from redlining to legal segregation to “urban renewal,” have left Charlotte a deeply unequal city, contributing to a large racial wealth gap and vastly different rates of homeownership between residents of different races. On Aug. 24, UNC Charlotte Urban Institute researcher Angelique Gaines and assistant director Ely Portillo joined local experts […]
This story was originally published in the Transit Time newsletter, which is produced in partnership between the Charlotte Urban Institute, the Charlotte Ledger and WFAE. Find out more and subscribe here. As Charlotte prepares to invest billions more into building new light rail, local planners are also betting big on another, more humble transit technology: […]
Less than 70 miles. That’s the distance between my home in Charlotte and our place in the Uwharries. Sometimes the two feel worlds apart. Blue city, red county. Skyscrapers, silos. Congested streets, open roads. High-rise condos, low-slung ranch houses. It sometimes seems they have nothing in common. And then a rare occurrence reminds us just […]
Water seems like an almost limitless resource. Turn on the tap, and there it is, clean and ready to use. Until, one day, it isn’t. Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones joins this episode of the Future Charlotte podcast to talk about the biggest threats to our water (growth is high on the list, as we add […]
Charlotte is a city that’s often criticized for tearing down its history. But some of the most significant demolitions of the past few decades haven’t been historic structures, but rather buildings that didn’t make it to middle age — or even puberty. In a fast-growing city, plenty of change is to be expected. The built […]
Health influences everything from a person’s ability to work to medical debt, and health inequalities have big consequences in our community on economic mobility and people’s ability to get ahead. Yet the burden of poor health is not evenly spread, because of food deserts, lack of access to insurance, pharmacies and doctors, and the embedded […]