General News

As the Charlotte region reckons with both the immediate aftermath of COVID-19 and longstanding challenges such as segregation and educational inequities, the Gambrell Faculty Fellows program has named a new cohort of scholars to help illuminate the way to a more equitable community. The fourth cohort of Fellows will investigate a wide range of challenges, […]

Earlier this summer, the transit system that serves Columbus, Ohio, made a big announcement: It wouldn’t be seeking voter approval for a half-cent sales tax for transit. “Now is not the right time,” Patrick Harris, the vice president of external relations for the Central Ohio Transit Authority told the Columbus Dispatch in July. “There are […]

Charlotte’s seen rapid growth over the past several decades, but many say that boom has come at the cost of inclusivity and, perhaps, even a bit of the city’s soul. With the loss of many historic buildings and without much of an identifiable design vernacular — aside, perhaps, from the profusion of five-story apartment buildings […]

When it comes to the creative scene, Charlotte isn’t often mentioned in the same breath with peer cities like Austin or Nashville. After all, the city’s unofficial tagline is “Banktown,” not something like “Music City” or “Keep Austin Weird.” But Charlotte has a thriving creative community. And a new survey by the UNC Charlotte Urban […]

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 undisputed in […]

The message seems to be getting out — monarchs need milkweed. The charismatic orange and black butterflies seek nectar on a wide variety of flowers, but their caterpillars feed on no other plant. And that appears to be where the clarity ends. Even after planting and managing for several of the 16 milkweed species native […]

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 […]

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% […]

Neighborhood Defenders Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, and Maxwell Palmer Available in paperback from $24.99 Hometown Inequality Brian F. Schaffner, Jesse H. Rhodes, and Raymond J. La Raja Available in paperback from $34.99 One of the favorite mythologies of American politics is that local government is the closest thing we have to direct democracy. […]

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 […]