Articles

Recycling containers sit in classrooms in every Charlotte-Mecklenburg public school, and students at nearly half of them make the extra effort to dump leftover liquid from milk and juice cartons before tossing them into bins. “The recycling systems are in place in the schools,” says Laurette Hall, environmental manager for Mecklenburg County Solid Waste Services, […]

Where there once were weeds, there is now a farm field, planted in potatoes, broccoli and greens. Where there once was a defunct greenhouse, there are now floating trays bursting with lettuce, fed by water circulating through a tank of tilapia. A year has passed since Friendship Gardens’ Henry Owen and his team of enthusiastic […]

For another 10 days the public can vote to choose North Carolina’s best Main Street and best public place, part of a statewide awards program. Four Charlotte-area places are among the contestants: Main Streets in Belmont and Mooresville, and North Davidson Street in Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood are among the contestants for Great Main Street. Charlottes […]

Tucked at the end of a dead-end street in an industrial area just north of uptown Charlotte, Mecklenburg’s recycling processing plant sits as a storyteller of the area’s challenges in figuring out how to reduce its dependence on landfills. KEEPING WATCH This article is part of the three-year KEEPING WATCH initiative. Learn more about the […]

When you hear “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night … ” you probably think of the U.S. Postal Service. But if you found yourself around Plaza Midwood on one of this past winter’s cold and snowy Tuesday nights, you may well associate that phrase with something else: hardy bicyclists pedaling despite […]

Have you ever been out swimming or kayaking in the streams and lakes of North Carolina and seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks and logs? If so, then chances are that you have spotted the painted turtle at least once. The painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) is one of the most common and widespread species of […]

PlanCharlotte.org is asking readers to nominate spots in the Charlotte region that need a design makeover. (See our first installment in this series here and last week’s installment here.) Urban designers Keihly Moore and Alex Borisenko have launched a website, www.completeblocks.com, where they’re proposing a series of urban design retrofits, many of them nominated by […]

Shredded paper Paper is a popular recycling item so it may seem a bit puzzling that shredded paper is on the do-not-toss list for your curbside recycling bin. It’s just too small for the sorting machines used at Mecklenburg’s recycling processing facility. It can be composted, put in the recycling container at your grocery store […]

As part of the 2009 youth needs assessment, the institute inventoried youth workforce development programs in Mecklenburg County. The resulting Youth Services Catalog includes all organizations that provide workforce development services for at-risk and disconnected youth in the Charlotte area. It contains a range of information on each program/organization, including basic contact information, whom it […]

When David Walters moved to Charlotte in 1990, you could pretty much fit all the people here who understood urbanism into one room. And when that happened – for instance, at the loosely organized Charlotte Urban Forum breakfast group – Walters was generally right in the thick of it. He’s been in the thick of […]

Back in 2012, Chef Barry Francois had an idea for a new business – a mobile farmers market that would take fresh fruits and vegetables to Charlotte neighborhoods without grocery stores. The idea, pitched as a way to encourage entrepreneurship while providing fresh produce to “food deserts” and other economically distressed areas, won him $12,500 […]

We asked UNC Charlotte professor David Walters, who is retiring, what three major planning breakthroughs would he want to see made in North Carolina? “I’d work my first miracle at home. For Charlotte we would have a funded transit system with the associated private development, the tens of thousands of homes and new jobs.” “I’d […]