Articles

I was a preschooler with a bad case of eczema. My pediatrician sent us to an allergist in downtown Greensboro with an office on Elm Street. Growing up in the Uwharries, I’d never laid my country eyes on anything so grand — block after block of offices and shops towering over the sidewalks. (Including the […]

Everyone wants to be included and accounted for. This is no different for our homeless population, a group that often feels overlooked and ignored. Charlotte-Mecklenburg is doing their best to remedy this with their annual Point-In-Time Count. The Point-In-Time (PIT) Count is an unduplicated estimate of individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night in January. […]

Nearly five years ago, Amber Lineback bought a bungalow in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood not only to enjoy the eclectic community and its proximity to Uptown, but as a place where her parents might one day live too. She built a garage with a second-floor furnished one-bedroom apartment, featuring a full kitchen, washer, dryer and […]

For vegetable gardeners in the Piedmont, 2018 was a challenging year. The weather whipsawed between mundane and extreme. January started with a blast of bitter cold. Temperatures dipped into the single digits, something we don’t experience every winter. I was so intimidated by the forecast, I didn’t even bother to cover my tiny front-yard food […]

Ryan Gravel, an urban planner, designer and author of “Where We Want to Live,” travels the country talking about the need for a bold and provocative approach to managing the growth of cities and its impact on lifestyles of residents. Gravel’s 1999 master’s thesis was the catalyst for creating the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile transit […]

The subtitle of Donald Seriff’s Birds of the Central Carolinas says a lot about its scope and ambition: Including Ornithological Records and Firsthand Accounts from the Civil War Era to Today. This book aspires to be much more than just another field guide. It’s a longitudinal documentation of avian life in the Piedmont, a region […]

“Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy As the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2019, we are reflecting on how our history and growth mirror both the region we focus […]

Charlotte boasts a demographically diverse population, well-educated residents, and a thriving economy. Home to the largest population in the state, the Queen City also serves as the economic epicenter of the state. Nevertheless, our community is paradoxical in many ways, with social, economic, and political barriers that hinder equitable growth, opportunity, and prosperity for those […]

A major gift to the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute from the institute’s first director, Dr. Norm Schul, and his wife, Marianne ‘73, will establish an annual speaker series focused on policy issues affecting the Charlotte region. The Marianne M. & Norman W. Schul Urban Institute Forum Series was announced Nov. 13 at a gathering of […]

There are three things most Charlotteans seem to agree on: a victory streak for the Panthers, a cool brew at a neighborhood brewpub, and free (or mostly free) parking. But with the surge of new and promising technologies and platforms in recent years – Uber, Lyft, autonomous cars, dockless bike sharing, and even electric scooters […]

In August, “it becomes apparent that porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) is making a bold attempt at taking over the world.” This witty observation from the Virginia Native Plant Society no longer strikes me as hyperbole. In all my years of conservation work in the Uwharries, I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered porcelain berry in anyone’s […]

In recent years there has been a trend (unfortunate, in my view) among a number of housing professionals and political officials to use the term “affordable housing” only in the context of lower-cost, assisted or subsidized housing. In fact, these three terms that describe housing have grown somewhat out of favor and have been conveniently, […]