Articles
[highlight] THE 2018 CHARLOTTE CITY WALKS HAVE CONCLUDED FOR THE YEAR. PLEASE SIGN UP FOR THE PLANCHARLOTTE.ORG NEWSLETTER (SEE SIGN-UP AT RIGHT ON THIS PAGE) TO BE NOTIFIED ABOUT 2019 CHARLOTTE CITY WALKS[/highlight] [highlight]SEE THE LIST OF 2018 CITY WALKS [/highlight] Charlotte neighborhoods have stories to tell – stories many residents have never heard. Explore […]
While Charlotte’s light rail line runs through the city’s glittering uptown – a tunnel of office towers and parking decks – at the farther reaches, the landscape tells different stories. Along the route of the Blue Line, from the edge of Pineville on the south to the UNC Charlotte campus at the north, you find […]
If you pay attention to Charlotte growth topics, you may have heard some unfamiliar words recently: Place Types. UDO. If you’re not a planner or a developer, or even if you are, those terms may baffle you. We hope what follows can help you sort out what it all means. Why now? The City of […]
As Raleigh’s chief planning and development officer for nearly a decade, Mitchell Silver oversaw the rules that shaped development in that fast-growing city. Silver, president of the American Planning Association 2011-2013, will talk Thursday in Charlotte about the importance of having a vision, and what must happen after that vision is created. The event is […]
They seem to pop up each summer like wild onions in the lettuce – small farmers markets around Charlotte selling produce that might or might not be locally grown. Some last barely a season, while others put down roots and continue for years. They’re part of a farm-to-city regional economic system that includes the large […]
Seventh-generation farmer Bent Barbee of Concord’s Barbee Farms credits Cabarrus County’s Voluntary Agricultural District program as an important reason his 70-acre farm is still in operation after almost being lost to a road widening project in 2009. WHAT’S NEXT? Leslie Vanden Herik of the Mecklenburg Soil & Water Conservation District said a next step is […]
In the spring of 1967, Norm Schul was an assistant professor of geography at UNC Greensboro focusing on urban studies when his chancellor asked him to attend a gathering in Charlotte of business leaders, government officials and academics to discuss some of the big policy issues then facing the state’s urbanizing Piedmont. Sponsored by Duke […]
Second in a series of illustrated essays: Part 2: How to make Charlotte a better city In the first illustrated essay in this series, I explained the importance of urban design in the process of improving our city and laid out six basic strategies that guide high quality and sustainable design and planning practice. The […]
While walking a property the other week, we stumbled on a tree with heavily furrowed bark. It took a few minutes of pondering, but we finally decided it was a cottonwood tree, and a large one. Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is a widespread deciduous native found along sandy riverbanks and in bottomlands – exactly where […]
We have an evening routine in the Uwharries. We wait until dark to saunter down the driveway and close the yellow gate. Even on a moonless night, we can usually find our way without flashlights. We tip our faces toward the sky, drinking in the stars, the planets and the Milky Way. In fall, we […]
If you drove down Belmont Avenue during one weekend in late September, you might have seen people in orange vests painting chairs, tables, kiosks – even crosswalks. They had come out to begin the transformation of Belmont Avenue. Community members, project leaders and employees of the nonprofit Better Block Foundation had come together to create […]
I recently took a trip with the Friends of Plant Conservation on the Black River near Wilmington. The Black River is home to the oldest trees east of the Rocky Mountains. They are bald cypress, which are known to grow to an ancient age. Bald cypress trees have a unique feature known as knees – […]