Articles

Race, segregation and profit in the American housing market

Nearly 60 years after the major legislative victories of the Civil Rights Movement, two troubling patterns persist–one economic, one geographic. First, Black Americans possess significantly lower levels of wealth than White Americans. Second, residential neighborhoods across the country remain highly segregated by race. 

These patterns and their connections to each other are largely...

Why not 1 billion Americans — or 3 million Charlotteans?

Quick–wherever you are, look at the people around you, or remember the last time you were in a group. Now imagine the group tripling in size. That’s the America Matthew Yglesias desires. In his book One Billion Americans, Yglesias argues that the U.S., with its 330 million people, is “empty,” with depressing future consequences for the nation and the world. His thesis: the U.S. should...

Data show Charlotte remains dangerous for pedestrians

Here’s another paradox from the COVID-19 pandemic: People drove less, but the streets got more deadly.

That’s especially true for pedestrians, a new report from Smart Growth America shows. “Dangerous by Design,” the group’s annual report highlighting pedestrian fatalities, shows that over 6,500 people were hit and killed while walking in 2020 – a 4.5% increase over 2019.

And...

How fast is Charlotte losing its tree canopy? No one knows

Charlotte’s losing three football fields a day worth of trees – or, at least, we were from 2012 to 2018. But after four more years of a torrid building boom, no one can say with any certainty whether that loss has accelerated, slowed down or remains unchanged.

The city of Charlotte hopes to soon begin work on an updated tree canopy analysis, to figure out how tree coverage is changing...