Articles

As the Chicago Cubs began their historic run in the major league baseball playoffs, I realized I had built my own field of dreams this season – a backyard pollinator garden at my house in Charlotte – and the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds had come. After clearing a tangle of invasive plants last winter – […]

Richard Fry, featured speaker at Charlotte Data Day 2015, asserted that Millenials (born 1981-96) are the most diverse and best educated generation but also face a tougher economy at the start of their careers than previous generations. Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, spoke October 7 at the third annual Charlotte Data […]

The following is an edited version of a talk I gave Sept. 23 to a gathering of folks concerned about changes in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood. The event was organized by the group Plaza Midwood Shows Up in cooperation with the Plaza Midwood Neighborhood Association and the Charlotte section of the American Institute of Architects. […]

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 […]

A higher proportion of middle school students who participated in STEM activities sponsored by a public-private partnership passed eighth- and ninth-grade Common Core math and science exams. Participants also averaged fewer days absent from school in 2013-14 than their counterparts at the school, in the school district and statewide. [highlight] Download a summary of the […]

Research by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute for United Way of Central Carolinas has found that almost 90 percent of at-risk Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students who took part in programs from 14 local United Way-funded agencies over three or more years graduated from high school. The research also found that at-risk students served by UWCC-funded agencies […]

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] One map shows that almost every unprotected woodlot in the N.C. Piedmont is at risk of being lost to development.[/highlightrule] There’s a difference between spending time in the woods and understanding the complex dynamics of a forest. For far too many people, even outdoor enthusiasts, nuances such as species diversity and forest succession are […]

[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’ […]