Articles

A proposal working its way through the city zoning process could create something new for Charlotte: a special kind of zoning designed specifically for one neighborhood. The proposed Gold District would give a section of the larger South End area its own zoning standards, tailored to what businesses and property owners in the area say […]

We feed them in our backyards, thrill to their springtime calls and watch with wonder as they flock in the fall. But for scientists, the birds of the Piedmont Carolinas also serve as messengers of the health of the region and as evidence of changes in the landscape. Now, for the first time, a mostly […]

With the arrival of fall, one of the most abundant wildflowers around is the yellow goldenrod. It is also one of the favorite hunting grounds of the unique crab spider (Misumena vatia), sometimes called the goldenrod crab spider. Although crab spiders occur all across the world, Misumena vatia is a Holarctic species, meaning it is […]

While gathering apples from my grandmother’s tree, or picking up persimmons early in the season, we had to deal with a pesky little insect – the yellow jacket. They had a colonial home in a stump near our persimmon tree. Fortunately, only once have I encountered a yellow jacket nest while walking in the woods. […]

[highlightrule] “We mourn the small stores lost and the neighborhood neutered, even as we recognize that cities depend for their future on new ways of selling and buying and living. Cities often produce whatever the next wave of social change is going to be, and then violently reject it for altering the nature of the […]

Charlotte isn’t unique in the country in wanting to create more mixed-use development. As in many cities, leaders in Charlotte see advantages to encouraging the kinds of neighborhoods where homes, stores and workplaces are close to each other. It’s a more efficient use of land, can reduce infrastructure costs and traffic congestion, and can make […]

[highlightrule] Three environmentally minded Charlotte entrepreneurs believe they can make a profit by diverting food waste into compost.[/highlightrule] Fact: Mecklenburg County residences generate some 60,000 tons of food waste annually, with only about 2 percent to 5 percent diverted from landfills by home composting. Fact: In Mecklenburg County, 22 percent of commercial solid waste (not […]

Now that the autumnal equinox has passed, our nights will become increasingly longer until the winter solstice, but three major meteor showers will brighten our skies in the coming months: the Orionids, Leonids and Geminids. This year, the moon shouldn’t interfere with any of these events at their peak, so conditions will be optimal as […]

[highlightrule] Charlotte’s strong urban planning is torpedoed by weak urban design. To change that, the city needs a new type of zoning ordinance.[/highlightrule] Add together Charlotte’s apartment boom plus the reinvention of urban districts such as South End, Plaza-Central and NoDa, and you come up with a lot of questions. Residents complain about the neighborhoods’ […]

When New Orleans flooded 10 years ago last month, it looked to many people in America as though the city could never recover. Today, when the word “resilience” dots virtually every scrap of writing on urban policy around the globe, New Orleans provides iconographic proof that a city is, in fact, a hard thing to […]

Are more Mecklenburg County parents these days opting for private school over public, or for charters or home schools? With the 2015-16 school year underway, UNC Charlotte Urban Institute researchers looked at how enrollment choices have changed for Mecklenburg families in the past 20 years. The animated graphic below shows how Mecklenburg County public, private, […]

[highlightrule]As an important block on Camden Road faces likely development, its recent history tells a complex narrative of a once-derelict area and a man with a vision, and shows how success changes a neighborhood.[/highlightrule] Recent news that one of the last remaining sites in Charlotte’s South End is scheduled for high-density redevelopment should come as […]