Statesville
A rare encounter with a beautiful bird this spring
If you’ve spent any time in the woods recently, you’ve probably heard some of the neotropical migratory birds who come here in the summertime to breed. I’ve been hearing black-and-white warblers, and last week heard my first wood thrush of the year. I’ve also heard hooded warblers, northern parulas, scarlet and summer tanagers and red-eyed […]
10 key questions for public administrators in the time of COVID-19
There will certainly be scores of studies and articles for years to come about lessons for public administrators from how our multiple levels and units of government managed the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis. An important place to start is asking the right set of questions. To assist me with this task, we have the good fortune […]
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.
A road runs through it: U.S. 21 tells the region’s story
Photographer Nancy Pierce’s visual story of people and places along U.S. 21 offers a window into the way the road, like the region, has reinvented itself over time. The map (left) shows the areas along U.S. 21 that the photo gallery shows. The links to the three inset areas give a PDF map with more […]
Gallery: Farmers Markets of the Charlotte Region
While they have a long history in the area, farmers markets have seen a burst of activity in the Charlotte region in recent years. New markets are now springing up inside Charlotte as well as in the towns that ring the center city. Photographer Nancy Pierce visited several farmers markets to capture the life and […]