For two years, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Charlotte City Walks from hosting in-person walking tours to introduce people to the history, food, culture and challenges facing our diverse neighborhoods.
In 2020, the program was canceled. In 2021, City Walks went virtual, offering self-...
Read moreCharlotte is a fast-growing city where the skyline changes by the month and neighborhoods are reshaped at a disorienting pace. But there are a multitude of data sources to help you understand the city and your community.
You can start with interactive maps like the Quality of Life Explorer (produced by the Urban Institute in partnership with the...
Read moreAfter 18 years as director of UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute, it’s time to move on. And it’s only appropriate that the same field that first introduced me to the institute’s work is now leading me away to a new chapter, serving as North Carolinas’ Deputy Secretary of Natural...
Read moreA set of almost deserted railroad tracks runs from uptown Charlotte through Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson. In fast-growing, highly congested north Mecklenburg, people see those tracks and ask: Why not use them for mass transit?
For more than 20 years, that’s what the county’s transit plan has proposed: Use the tracks for a commuter rail service called the Red Line. Yet no...
Read moreSometimes I feel as if I'm watching a play. It's one I've seen before - performed many times in different venues. It's called "The City Wakes Up To Its Future." We have now reached the penultimate act. I'm referring, of course, to the recent cyclone of activity that's swirling around Charlotte's proposed 2040 Comprehensive Plan - a document that...
Read moreContributing writer Martin Zimmerman interviews Sarah Hazel, recently appointed as Chief Sustainability & Resiliency Officer for the city of Charlotte.
Sarah Hazel comes to the...
Down the middle of Hawthorne Lane at the corner of East 8th Street, the dust is just settling on the new LYX Gold Line Extension tracks. When the line opens later this year, it will be the first time a streetcar has rumbled down this block since 1938.
Still, the legacy of that old streetcar era is written all over the Elizabeth neighborhood in the preserved stone-arch shelters and tree...
Read moreCharlotte City Council members confronted an uncomfortable question Monday: How can you get people in the general public to pay attention to technical, somewhat boring, but extremely important matters like the city’s new development rules – before a major controversy erupts?
Planning staff are nearing the finish line for Charlotte’s...
Read moreCharlotte’s notorious “50-out-of-50” ranking for economic mobility has many roots, ranging from systemic discrimination to gaps in education, health and jobs training.
But one of the most consequential factors for intergenerational economic mobility is likely wealth, and the simple fact is that some families have much more than others. A key component of wealth is home ownership, an...
Read moreI’ll never again look at a city’s Main Street the same way. In Mindy Thompson Fullilove’s newest book, Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All, she does something relatively rare for books about urban issues.
Some focus on cities’ physical attributes, such as low-density single-family sprawl, building design, street...
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