General News

[highlightrule]Watch this space in early April for information on 2018 City Walks Thank you to our dedicated 2017 volunteer walk leaders and the approximately 350 participants. See a photo slideshow of the May 2017 City Walks.[/highlightrule] Charlotte neighborhoods have stories to tell – stories many residents have never heard. Explore some of the city’s neighborhoods […]

Are master plans really worth the effort? Skeptics discount them, charging that they are little more than feel-good exercises in wishful thinking. Such critiques have currency for some plans but not all. When done right, a plan states which policies are more important and includes metrics to gauge outcomes; it charts timelines for putting recommendations […]

I’ve spent time walking in the woods this spring, and I’m always excited by what I find. The other day, while evaluating a property the LandTrust for Central North Carolina is considering for protection, we found a patch of pink lady slippers with a few in bloom. Another wetland the landowner is considering protecting was […]

Charlotte is joining dozens of other cities around the world, as well as the departments of transportation for North Carolina and the U.S., in declaring its intent to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries – including bicycle and pedestrians as well as autos. It’s a movement called Vision Zero. And it might result in the […]

[highlightrule]The annual Point-in-Time Count finds that since 2010, the number of permanent housing beds has increased and overall homelessness has decreased.[/highlightrule] Click image to download PDF version of the report. Even while Mecklenburg County’s population has grown, a yearly count since 2010 has found declining numbers of people who were experiencing homelessness during a one-night […]

T.S. Eliot claimed April is the cruelest month, but for gardeners, I’d argue it’s the busiest. In the Piedmont, it’s our last chance to plant trees and shrubs until fall. The soil is warm enough to sow cucumbers, peppers, green beans and squash, and it’s finally safe to set out tomatoes and basil. Catalogues and […]

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department has begun a large public initiative to produce a new zoning ordinance – the first big rewrite since a contentious one in the 1980s-1990s. PlanCharlotte editor Mary Newsom met with interim Planning Director Ed McKinney to hear how the process is going. They talked about how to preserve neighborhood character, what […]

With damp spring rains, snails and slugs may be more visible in gardens and woods. North Carolina is home to more than 200 species of native terrestrial gastropods, 30-plus introduced species of land snails or slugs, and approximately 52 species of freshwater snails. Snails are members of the phylum Mollusca and in the taxonomic class […]

The northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) is native to most of North America, parts of Central America, Cuba and the Cayman islands. It is one of a few species of woodpeckers that migrate. Flickers in the northern part of their range move south for the winter. It is a medium-sized woodpecker, brown with black spots and […]

Since the highly contentious 2016 election cycle, the growing divide between Americans of different backgrounds on many issues has been well documented. But do those divides show up between residents of a single city? The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s most recent Annual Survey of Mecklenburg County provides insight into how such differences show up on […]