General News

Is it possible “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower” as poet William Blake suggested? According to biologist David George Haskell, this “search for the universal within the infinitesimally small” runs through many cultures. Tibetan monks create mandalas, paintings of sand that represent the entire universe within […]

The City of Charlotte and other local organizations are offering neighborhoods opportunities to improve neighborhood tree canopies and to boost traditional neighborhood newsletters by using digital tools such as Twitter, texting and other web-based formats. Learn new digital skills at neighborhood communications workshop Charlotte community leaders and homeowners associations wanting to send neighborhood updates to […]

U.S. Secretary of Transportation and former Charlotte mayor Anthony Foxx gave urbanists and bike enthusiasts hope this week with his remarks at the Transportation Research Board, Streetsblog D.C. writer Tanya Snyder reports. Foxx, referencing increasing pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and deaths on Charlotte streets during his time as mayor, said he would “look out for […]

A North Carolina Department of Transportation letter has planners and officials in several Union County towns scrambling to figure out how they’ll maintain new subdivision streets in what has long been one of the fastest growing counties in the state. The September letter from Division 10 engineer Louis Mitchell said NCDOT would no longer accept […]

Just northeast of uptown Charlotte in the Tryon Hills neighborhood, in a previously abandoned and cluttered warehouse, is Lila’s Garden. There is graffiti on the entrance, but once you step inside, you are met with a garden that appears to be from the future. Rows of leafy greens and microgreens are bathed in purple light […]

If your agency or organization is looking for an affordable and reliable way to gauge public opinion and attitudes, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s annual survey of Mecklenburg County residents is available for your survey research needs. For more than 30 years, the institute’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg Annual Survey has been an important resource for local governments […]

An expert in planning neighborhoods for walkability will speak Thursday at the UNC Charlotte uptown campus. Julie Campoli, author of Made for Walking: Neighborhood Density and Urban Form, gives a presentation at a 5:30 p.m. event that will also see the launch a new regional group focused on transportation choices, the Transportation Choices Alliance. The […]

Welcome to the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s weekly email newsletter. You may already be on our mailing list, but this week we’re emailing a wider group of regional thought leaders and policymakers. We hope you’ll enjoy articles we offer on the institute’s suite of three web publications. The institute’s main page, ui.charlotte.edu, provides articles and […]

As I write this article, temperatures are forecast to be in the low 70s later this week, so it’s unlikely we’ll have a white Christmas this year. While the arrival of significant winter weather is always questionable in North Carolina, an occasional white coating is not uncommon. Although you probably won’t see any snow for […]

It’s a quirky fact about all three of the most recent directors of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute: We all came, not from large urban centers, but from small, rural communities. Jim Clay, director from 1979 to 1984, was from Crum, W.Va. Bill McCoy (director 1985-2001) hailed from Ekron, Ky. And me? My friends are […]