General News

Last September, a group of enthusiasts pulled together a series of eight small parks-for-a-day in on-street parking spots along Tryon Street in uptown Charlotte. Now, the city’s Department of Transportation is offering its official stamp of approval to these “parklets.” Or at least, it’s offering a process for you to get a permit to install […]

[highlight]Charlotte leaders have been talking about the outerbelt, Interstate 485, for decades. While most residents were concerned primarily with what it would mean for drive times, planners and others spent time contemplating the highway’s effect on the area’s growth. A sampling of comments over the years.[/highlight] “We’re going to have to get far more serious […]

In 1995, the year the Land trust for Central North Carolina was founded, our state’s population was 7.35 million. Remember those days? Back when we bought CDs by Coolie and Joe Diffie (really?) and drove to video stores to rent copies of Toy Story, Clueless and Braveheart? When we flocked to AOL for this newfangled […]

As an urban planner with a national practice, I am frequently asked by friends and colleagues for an opinion on the Interstate 77 toll lane discussion. I’ve been all across the country this past year in areas that were either growing fast or dying slowly. So when I return home to see how a seemingly […]

Since the 1990s, the NoDa neighborhood surrounding North Davidson and 36th streets in Charlotte has been branded as the city’s arts district. But in recent years the galleries that once clustered there have dwindled. Is NoDa still an arts district? Or has South End, along South Boulevard near uptown, overtaken it? Morgan Hamer, an artist […]

The following is excerpted, with permission, from Margins of a Greater Wildness: Nature Essays on Stanley Creek and Beyond, a collection of essays by Richard Rankin on local topics from the Stanley Creek community in eastern Gaston County, where the Rankin family has lived for many generations. One person is primarily responsible for the rediscovery […]

Ever wondered … what’s the oldest building in uptown Charlotte? If one were to compare the Charlotte skyline of 1975 with today’s, the city would be almost unrecognizable. Charlotte’s exponential growth over the past 40 years has produced a city much different in size and shape than even 20 years ago. But in creating this […]

A bill has passed the N.C. House that would do away with a decades-old provision for rezonings, the protest petition, which lets nearby property owners petition for a supermajority vote by a city council or town board on whether to approve the rezoning. In this pro/con package of opinion articles, Dilworth resident Jill Walker discusses […]

The N.C. House in March passed a bill to do away with the use of protest petitions in rezonings statewide, and neighborhood groups in Charlotte and other fast-growing communities fear they will lose their voice in shaping development. They are mistaken. The majority of rezonings in Charlotte do not generate valid protest petitions from neighboring […]

It is exasperating that, once again, North Carolina homeowners face the prospect of losing the ability to file a protest petition in rezonings. The most recent effort – a bill that has passed the N.C. House – represents the third time in less than three years that our state has been threatened with the loss […]