Articles About Environment and Planning
Charlotte City Council on Tuesday approved two auto-centric developments in transit-oriented zones along the Blue Line light rail, a move some advocates fear will set a bad precedent as the city tries to move away from its dominant car culture. The developments — a Fifth Third Bank on Woodlawn Road with a drive-thru and a […]
At the beginning of 2021, I was on the hunt for an app to help me keep better records of my vegetable garden. After exploring several options, I decided they were all too cumbersome and fussy. If I provided all the information they demanded, I worried I’d spend more time on data entry than digging, […]
Editor’s note: As we approach the climax of the hectic holiday season, let’s take a minute to step back and reflect on that natural wonder all around us in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. At the beginning of November, I challenged myself to pause for a moment every day to contemplate and appreciate something […]
If all the pieces fall into place, some day in the future a new light rail train will pull out of the station at the Central Piedmont Community College Levine Campus in Matthews and head south into Union County. It will turn down a two-lane country road lined with pine trees; run alongside U.S. 74, […]
Despite the pandemic and economic uncertainty, 2021 was a banner year for Charlotte, with major developments announced, a long-awaited new vision plan for the city and big – if uncertain – steps towards a new transit plan. The city’s growth isn’t expected to slow in 2022, but the ways in which Charlotte grows could change. […]
Nowhere in Charlotte embodies the city’s awkward and aspirational transition from car-centric Sun Belt suburbia to denser, walkable urbanism quite like a pair of fried chicken restaurants in Cotswold. Located next to each other near the intersection of Randolph and Sharon Amity roads, Bojangles and Chick-fil-A have both filed rezoning requests to demolish their existing […]
When it comes to planning, development and land use regulation, it’s easy to let your eyes glaze over in the alphabet soup of jargo. So, let’s get a little nerdy and jump right into the alphabet soup of zoning, land use, planning and development on this episode. Join us for a talk with Keba Samuel […]
As the goldenrod and blue mist flowers in my Charlotte garden began to fade in early October, so too did my hope for overcoming what appears to be a dismal year for butterflies across the Piedmont. My native plant garden is in an urban neighborhood. There probably isn’t enough intact habitat to attract or host […]
When it comes to Charlotte’s urban design, there’s a perception that the city is dominated by apartments and bland, corporate towers. But a new award series is trying to prove that’s not the whole story. The Charlotte Urban Design Awards (or Urbies) relaunched this year, co-hosted by the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture […]
When you think “Charlotte” and “urban design,” do you think “bland” or “exciting”? A new awards series, the Charlotte Urban Design Awards, is meant to prompt you to think more of the latter and less of the former. While Charlotte might get an unfair rap as a city of bland office towers and five-story, stick-built […]
As fall arrives, migratory songbirds have begun journeying south for the winter. These birds traveled north in the spring to nest and raise their young, and now they are beginning to travel south to take advantage of the warmer weather and increased access to food. Some familiar migratory birds include hummingbirds, goldfinches, and many species […]
There are, broadly, two big worlds that overlap in the planning and development realm: The dirty, hands-on physical world of building and construction, and the wonky, alphabet-soup-of-jargon world of zoning, regulation and land use policy. Right now, Charlotte’s in the heat of the wonky phase. Although it’s drawn far less attention than the contentious debate […]