City Walks-Janes Walks

It’s happening across Charlotte: Apartments, office buildings and restaurants are popping up in parking lots, as dense, mixed-use developments, connected by bicycle paths and walking trails, invade suburbia. Within the past month, major plans have been announced for densifying and transforming chunks of Ballantyne, SouthPark and University City – three of the biggest bastions of […]

Charlotte City Walks 2019 wrapped up after a record-setting year, with 40 walks and more than 600 attendees. The programs explored food, history, art, murals, the lived experiences of being blind or homeless in Charlotte, tree canopy and more.

As Charlotte grows denser and more urban, parts of the city built decades ago on an auto-centric, suburban framework are struggling to both absorb more traffic and adapt to new beliefs about how people should get around. A one-mile stretch of congested road in fast-growing University City illustrates the tensions between balancing the needs of […]

What does Charlotte really, really need from its 2040 comprehensive plan? That’s what we asked a dozen community leaders from different walks of life: Architects and planners, developers and brokers, activists and academics. The Charlotte Future 2040 plan is meant to be, well, comprehensive, covering everything from growth, new construction and zoning regulations to parks, […]

Cycling advocates hope the future of Charlotte biking is on display behind a row of plastic bollards lining Sixth Street – but they caution that the city has a long way to go. The Charlotte Department of Transportation last week opened the city’s first substantial, protected, two-way bicycle lane, connecting the Little Sugar Creek Greenway […]

In 2012, local historian Tom Hanchett wanted to explore his fascination with Central Avenue. He led a community walk down the busy thoroughfare, bustling with new businesses, older neighborhoods and a growing immigrant community. “I was beginning to see Central Ave as an urban place, which at that point in time sounded like a contradiction […]

I was a preschooler with a bad case of eczema. My pediatrician sent us to an allergist in downtown Greensboro with an office on Elm Street. Growing up in the Uwharries, I’d never laid my country eyes on anything so grand — block after block of offices and shops towering over the sidewalks. (Including the […]

There are three things most Charlotteans seem to agree on: a victory streak for the Panthers, a cool brew at a neighborhood brewpub, and free (or mostly free) parking. But with the surge of new and promising technologies and platforms in recent years – Uber, Lyft, autonomous cars, dockless bike sharing, and even electric scooters […]

Charlotte saw a boom of low-cost, single-family subdivisions from the late 1990s until a recession hit in 2007. In a new research article, two scholars conclude that many of those subdivisions, touted as “affordable housing,” did not improve life for the lower-income households who moved in. They characterize the unfortunate outcomes of some of those […]

Tall and slender even into his 70s, Haywood Rankin claims he was never much of an athlete. He says he lacked the speed and agility needed for football or basketball and the hand-eye coordination for baseball or tennis. After college, he spent time in Oxford, England, and finally found a sport that fit his skill […]