Articles

UNC Charlotte’s Heather Smith, associate professor of geography, researches restructuring cities, immigrant settlement and adjustment, and the causes and implications of Hispanic “hyper-growth” in Charlotte and the South. She spoke recently with UNC Charlotte Urban Institute graduate student Josh McCann. Her remarks, edited for brevity and clarity: Q. You’ve said before that Charlotte is not […]

Whether you’re an avid birder or just enjoy watching those in your backyard, you likely have heard of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Although affiliated with the university of the same name, it is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of birds. Its mission is “to interpret and conserve the earth’s biological […]

It is commonly expected that consolidating Charlotte and Mecklenburg County will result in less government fragmentation, fewer elected officials and lower the cost of service provision. It very well may, but citizens should know that nothing is guaranteed when it comes to city-county consolidation. And some of the commonly held beliefs about consolidation may not, […]

The largest known stand of old-growth Piedmont longleaf pine remaining in the state will be preserved as an education forest, protected from development. The LandTrust for Central North Carolina and the N.C. Zoological Park last month completed their purchase of the 116-acre property in northern Montgomery County. Longleaf pine forests historically covered more than 90 […]

All parents ask themselves “Is my child prepared?” as they think about the first day of kindergarten. Some begin pondering this question even before their child enters a pre-k program. Preparing children for school begins well before they step inside the classroom. Developmental studies increasingly show the importance of a child’s first five years of […]

Two weeks ago, the Census Bureau’s announcement of national income and poverty figures for 2010 filled the headlines, and the news was not good. In 2010, real income continued to fall, settling about where it was in the mid-1990s, and the poverty rate increased for the third consecutive year to its highest level in 17 […]

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute collaborated with Council for Children’s Rights to map all YMCA locations in Mecklenburg County. These locations were then overlaid onto maps of individual indicators from the 2010 Charlotte Neighborhood Quality of Life Study. Finally, four of these indicators (teen births, high school dropouts, juvenile arrests, and food stamp recipients) were […]

This white paper was composed by researchers at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute for Urban League of Central Carolinas as part of their project, The State of Ethnic Charlotte. The State of Ethnic Charlotte, 2011 is the first project of the Joe Martin Institute for Inclusive Policy at the Urban League of Central Carolinas. The […]

I’ve never thought of a loblolly plantation as a bona fide forest. The rows of neatly spaced and stalky trees seem more akin to a long-rotation corn crop. In most pine plantations, trees are thinned in 15 years, and the rest are harvested at 30. Like other agricultural land, pine plantations provide open space, but […]

Although a hard word to pronounce, “gentian” is a group of pretty flowers that are found all over the world, on all continents except Antarctica. There are more than 1,000 species of gentian worldwide, and gentians are found in a wide variety of habitats, from rainforest to desert. In this area, gentians are typically found […]

Local business leaders’ expectations for the upcoming quarter have dipped into negative territory for the first time since March, when a new opinion survey began. Not only is their outlook negative for the national economy – as it was after the second quarter – but they’re feeling grimmer about the local economy as well. The […]

Summer officially ends Friday, and the close of a week of cloudy, unseasonably cool weather marks an occasion to look back and remind ourselves of the Carolinas Piedmont in summer 2011. It was a summer of hail storms, high winds and in some parts, even the fringes of tropical storm Irene. The National Oceanic and […]