General News

Naeema Muhammad, organizing co-director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, will speak on campus this week at UNC Charlotte. Muhammad’s work includes a focus on promoting health and equality for people around issues of air quality, water quality, coal ash, fracking and more, through grassroots organizing and grassroots solutions. Her career ncludes advocating for […]

As urban areas boom while many rural areas and small towns struggle, experts and local leaders are looking at success stories like Shelby’s embrace of its musical heritage as a roadmap to revitalization. The Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection A special project from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute Read about the project here Introduction: Strengthening ties to […]

Cold and wintry weather have (finally) settled in, but spring will be upon us before you know it. In honor of the soon-to-be warmer weather, here are some of my favorite hikes for springtime in the Uwharries, east of Charlotte. There are lots of great places there to hike any time of year, but these […]

Air pollution, runoff and sediment in our waterways, disappearing open space and development chipping away at our tree canopy: Charlotte’s facing many environmental challenges with one common cause. Growth. About 18 percent of land in the city is considered “vacant,” and that number is shrinking as development roars ahead. The city recently changed its tree […]

Charlotte faces a wide range of needs, from affordable housing to more police, bigger parks and better transit, but they all share a similar root cause: growth. That was one of the main themes at City Council’s annual planning retreat, held this week over four days in Durham at the Washington Duke Inn. There was […]

There’s been a lot of planning lately for Charlotte’s growing transit system, with new rail lines, improved bus service and the first inter-county transit links in the works — as well as questions about how to pay for that growth. But one Charlotte City Council member raised a different idea this week at the group’s […]

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute is hiring an Associate Director of Research who will also serve as the Director of Community Research Services. The Director will serve as the day-to-day manager of the Institute research team and will manage ongoing tasks that enable the Institute to provide research with and for the Charlotte, North Carolina […]

A new, mixed-income housing development is set to take the place of a long-troubled, low-income housing complex in South End. Brookhill Village is a paradox: An oasis of affordability in the midst of a booming and fast-gentrifying part of the city, but full of run-down units, many of them boarded up and visibly decaying from […]

A film I recently watched at the Bechtler Museum about the planning conflicts between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses in 1950s New York City got me thinking about how issues with planners and the planning process play out today. (Disclaimer: As a teenage surfer in NYC at the time, I had a very high regard […]

HunterWood and several surrounding neighborhoods were carved from 200 acres once owned by the Hunter family, whose homestead still stands on Charlotte’s Sardis Road. The Rev. John Hunter, installed as the minister at nearby Sardis Presbyterian Church in 1859, began assembling the property during the Civil War in the 1860s and lived there until he […]