General News

PlanCharlotte.org is asking readers to nominate spots in the Charlotte region that need a design makeover. (See our first installment in this series here.) Urban designers Keihly Moore and Alex Borisenko have launched a website, www.completeblocks.com, where they’re proposing a series of urban design retrofits, many of them nominated by readers. Among their designs so […]

The following is an excerpt from Chuck McShane’s new book, A History of Lake Norman: Fish Camps to Ferraris, published by the History Press. Flood plains don’t respect our artificial political boundaries. So when the waters filled up Lake Norman, a 660-acre peninsula of Mecklenburg County just south of the Iredell County line remained dry, […]

“Downtown was the center of the universe. And then it all changed.” Matt Cullen, CEO of Rock Ventures, a major real estate player in downtown Detroit, was speaking to out-of-town visitors and describing changes in the once thriving, now seriously ailing Motor City. I was in town for a conference (Meeting of the Minds 2014) […]

The following is an excerpt from Chuck McShane’s new book, A History of Lake Norman: Fish Camps to Ferraris, published by the History Press. “Lake Norman may seem as fixed a part of the hillsides that enfold it,” began the Charlotte Observer editorial on Oct.1, 1977. “But it is a baby, scarcely older than a […]

The Cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia) with a wingspan of 5-6 inches, is the largest moth found in North America. They are a member of Saturniidae family, or giant silk moths, and inhabit hardwood forests east of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. and Canada. They live only 5-6 days typically and are mostly nocturnal, but […]

The following is an excerpt from Chuck McShane’s new book, A History of Lake Norman: Fish Camps to Ferraris, published by the History Press. Twenty miles south of the Cowan’s Ford Dam, Charlotte was booming in the 1980s. After deregulation of the interstate banking industry, locally headquartered North Carolina National Bank and First Union battled […]

What should be the end goal of K-12 education? To prepare students for college, the workforce, military, trade school, life? I support Common Core standards because I believe including rigorous standards that require higher-order thinking skills prepare all students for a variety of career and educational paths. The Common Core is a set of standards […]

Recently the site FiveThirtyEight.com reported that of the largest U.S. metros, only Charlotte’s median income, “experienced a statistically significant decline” in 2013. What’s going on? That statement may signal to the casual reader that wages are sinking in the Charlotte region. In reality, however, that “statistically significant decline” appears to be the result of a […]

Even though late summer brings the promise of cooler weather to the Piedmont, we still have the sultry presence of two old-fashioned and fragrant Southern favorites in our gardens – the ginger lily and the tuberose. Everything about the ginger lily (Hedychium coronarium) speaks of its origins in the tropical regions of Asia. This lush, […]

Talk of the Towns is a PlanCharlotte series visiting planners from the 14-county Charlotte region. This installment takes us to Iredell County. This county of 162,708 people covers a lot of ground – from Charlotte suburbs on Lake Norman shores, to an older industrial county seat of Statesville, to rural communities in the northern part […]