General News

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, […]

My grandparents depended on fireplaces and a wood-fired cookstove to heat their farmhouse in the Uwharries. Today many of us have the luxury of turning down our thermostats on winter evenings when we want to enjoy the pleasures of a roaring fire. There’s the faint aroma of hickory and oak, the logs shifting and settling […]

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 […]

This has been a year of change and growth for the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. As I look back on the year’s highlights – and look forward to a new project we’ll debut early in 2012 – I’m reminded of the role the institute has played since 1969 in the greater Charlotte region. For those […]

MOORESVILLE – “Revolutionary” is not too strong a word for plans laid out Tuesday to a room full of government officials, consultants and interested laypeople. At a public workshop in Mooresville, some 150 people heard a lengthy and detailed proposal for reviving a planned but still unbuilt commuter rail line to Iredell County. Simply the […]

How do you define what makes people think of one neighborhood as “good” and another “bad”? Is it things such as crime, school quality and amenities? What about walkability, accessibility of employment or environmental quality? Whether you consider one or all of these characteristics, they are all important and affect the quality of life for […]

Say you wake up in the middle of the night with a few hives on your arms. You might take some Benadryl and go back to sleep. Another night, you wake up with hives covering your body. You’re also having trouble breathing. Your face and hands might be swelling. You end up in the emergency […]

Our new family Thanksgiving tradition is to run the neighborhood 5k and donate nonperishable food items as an entry fee. This run is my favorite of the year. It has social cause, allows one to eat guiltlessly and gives a good early winter jolt to the metabolism. Runners through the neighborhood see women parading into […]

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 […]