General News

This article opposes plans to build a new ballpark for the Charlotte Knights uptown. Read architect Marley Carroll’s article supporting the idea here. Missing from recent discussions about granting more public money for a privately developed baseball park in Third Ward is any talk about the potential advantages of using the land for public purposes […]

Does uptown Charlotte need a baseball stadium, or a large public park dedicated to showcase energy technology and local food? Two well-known Charlotte architects – Marley Carroll and Murray Whisnant – take different stands. • Spectacular amenity / Marley Carroll • Don’t squander chance / Murray Whisnant The Charlotte City Council is expected to vote […]

Katydids, (also known as bush-crickets in Britain), are insects in the family Tettigoniidae. They are sometimes referred to as long-horned grasshoppers, but are actually more closely related to crickets. Katydids differ from grasshoppers in that they have very long antennae, while grasshoppers have short and thick antennae. Of the more than 6,400 species of katydid, […]

As a resident of Third Ward uptown, urban design student and enthusiastic cyclist, I frequent the streets of uptown. Most of my trips through its streets are not in my car, which means I travel at a slower pace and am better able to absorb the cityscape experience. On one of these trips through the […]

At first glance, Eastern hardwood forests seem a homogenous block of green, but if you train your eye and look closer, you’ll notice subtle differences. Wild North Carolina: Discovering the Wonders of Our State’s Natural Communities helps amateur naturalists do just that. Botanist Michael Schafale describes more than two dozen unique communities, several of which […]

Photos by Ruth Ann Grissom Related article: The abundant diversity of the hardwood forest

Tom Hanchett and I have been having this discussion – some might call it a debate – over what’s the most “urban” part of Charlotte. Hanchett, staff historian at Levine Museum of the New South, contends that the most urban corner in the city is Central Avenue at Rosehaven Drive. For weeks I have respectfully […]

The city, instead of holding its traditional spring summit conference for neighborhood groups, will offer them space and time with facilitators in July to encourage strategic goal-setting and planning. The meetings will be in Foundation For The Carolinas’ uptown meeting rooms, which can accommodate as many as 17 organizations. Trained facilitators from the city and […]

At a rural crossroads 30 miles from Charlotte, an experiment is under way that could reshape the national retail landscape. Walmart, famous for its ubiquitous supercenters averaging 185,000 square feet, is testing a much smaller, 15,000-square-foot format called a Walmart Express store in the Stanly County town of Richfield, population 516. The Richfield store, newly […]

The Charlotte neighborhoods of Belmont and Villa Heights are experiencing an influx of white, professional residents in search of affordable housing close to uptown. Piedmont Courts, a housing project that dates to the 1940s, is gone, and crime is declining. Click here to read the article about the neighborhoods’ revival. Photographs by Nancy Pierce.