Articles About Environment and Planning
It was a hot night in a hot city the day after the hottest month ever recorded in the United States. By 7 the temperature had slid from the 90s to the high 80s, as I pulled up in front of a 1960s split-level on a half-acre lot in a vast subdivision of 2,450 single-family […]
The city of Charlotte voted July 23 to buy 80 acres of the old Eastland Mall site for $13.2 million. It’s a big investment, and some say it’s a risky one as well. Eastland, opened in 1975 as one of Charlotte’s most popular shopping spots, with a popular indoor ice rink, fell on hard times. […]
The Handy Sanitary District offered its plan to bring wastewater treatment service to the Badin Lake area more than a decade ago. Given concerns about leaking septic tanks, few disputed the need, but when people learned the proposal included a discharge into the Uwharrie River, the community rallied to oppose it. Scores attended community meetings, […]
Although some folks find snakes incredibly fascinating, and others shriek in terror and run from them, most people are somewhere in the middle – either casually interested or coolly indifferent. If I see a snake in the woods, I’ll likely get close enough to take a picture and identify it, and then carry on my […]
Salisbury is one of the first 17 recipients of the new HUD “Choice Neighborhoods” Planning Grants. The program is part of a new approach by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that is replacing its HOPE VI projects. In addition, Salisbury has been chosen for a case study by the International City/County Management […]
Tea has been synonymous with political protest ever since colonists dumped shiploads of the stuff into Boston Harbor in a 1773 act of rebellion against the Crown. In historian Eric Rutkow’s recent book, American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, he notes that trees were an equally potent symbol of liberty in […]
Several years ago, when we were planning to change the way we manage some of our land, I happened to meet Bob Askins, a biology professor at Connecticut College and author of Restoring North America’s Birds: Lessons from Landscape Ecology. As we discussed my projects, he encouraged me to do a baseline inventory before we […]
Amid a political environment attacking global sustainability initiatives, a new national poll by the American Planning Association released Thursday finds bipartisan support for planning, as well as belief that community planners play a key role in economic recovery. Some political groups have attacked planning and are crafting laws that would bar cooperative planning or ban […]
What better summertime activity for a kid in the country than playing in a creek? There is really nothing better than sticking your feet in a cool stream under the forest canopy where it feels 10 degrees cooler than in the sun. And whenever I walk in the woods and come up to a rocky […]
More than a half century after Park Road Shopping Center sprouted at what was then Charlotte’s southern edge, the Park Road-Woodlawn Road area has held up remarkably well. Residents say they love living in the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes that surround a busy cluster of shops and restaurants near the intersection of […]
A new Charlotte Knights stadium uptown will be a catalyst for urban development, add to the character of the cityscape and let families and friends savor a spectacular skyline view while enjoying America’s pastime. An analysis of multiple potential sites, plus interviews with more than 100 civic leaders and stakeholders all produced this conclusion: The […]
This article opposes plans to build a new ballpark for the Charlotte Knights uptown. Read architect Marley Carroll’s article supporting the idea here. Missing from recent discussions about granting more public money for a privately developed baseball park in Third Ward is any talk about the potential advantages of using the land for public purposes […]