General News
CATS is zeroing in on light rail expansion to Pineville, Ballantyne
The Charlotte Area Transit System took another step towards expanding the region’s transit network this week, with recommendations for how to extend the Blue Line light rail about five miles through Pineville to Ballantyne. At the Metropolitan Transit Commission, staff presented their preferred routes, which would take the rail line across Carolina Place Mall along […]
The Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection: Strengthening ties to revitalize communities
[Read the full report here] It was a cold January day in 2018 when eight researchers from UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute stepped out into the brisk air in Hamlet, a small town in Richmond County, N.C. A dusting of snow from a surprise storm the previous day still covered the railroad tracks adjacent to the […]
Defining our study area: How we picked the 32 counties
The city of Charlotte has a long reach. While this is certainly not a surprise, we don’t really know much about how Charlotte influences its surroundings and how far this reach extends. We do have some conventions to help us understand the extent to which our region is connected. Metropolitan areas are commonly used to […]
Historical Overview Part 3: The rise of banking builds a globally connected region
While Duke was building the world’s largest electrical network in the Western Piedmont, some Charlotte mill owners recognized that more money could be made loaning money to aspiring industrialists than making cloth themselves.
Historical Overview Part 2: Post-Civil War, the region becomes an industrial system
From an agrarian system to an economy based on rural mills and factories drawing workers from former farms and sending goods to Charlotte for distribution, the region undergoes rapid change.
Trails, roads, rails and sky: The changing physical connections that knit our region together
A growing web of infrastructure and physical connections – both within the wider region and between the region and the outside world – has had a profound effect on where growth went, and where it stayed away from. People and industries in the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection study area followed trading paths, railroads, highways and, now, air service.
Preserving rare plants: In search of Heller’s blazing star
How do you protect a plant that grows only on rocky outcrops at high elevations in the Amphibolite Mountains of northwestern North Carolina? It takes a team.
Finding the beauty in a bagworm
The overall cluster was about the size of my fist. A woven cylindrical core was decorated with willow oak leaves, some of them whole and others torn. They had been applied in an intriguingly symmetrical pattern, creating the effect of wings and a tail. Tiny twigs with swollen buds had also been incorporated into the design, their weight providing a ballast. The creature twirled and fluttered in the breeze, a sylvan ballerina.
The Urban Institute Research Faculty Fellows seek to better our region
A new program designed to identify solutions for some of the pressing needs and issues facing the greater Charlotte region is getting underway this fall at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. For the first time, the Institute has named a cohort of Faculty Fellows to conduct research projects and work alongside local stakeholders to understand […]
Charlotte’s torn down a lot of old buildings. But one type has staying power.
Breweries, apartments, hip food halls, creative offices, coworking spaces: Charlotte developers keep finding new uses for the city’s old mills. As a post-war, Sunbelt boomtown, Charlotte has garnered a reputation for tearing down its old buildings and replacing them with sterile plaques to make way for the city’s glittering new skyline. But while many once-grand […]