Community Development

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. 

It’s a familiar story: A new transit line opens, spurring gentrification in nearby neighborhoods and pushing out long-time residents. But is that always what happens? New research from Dr. Elizabeth Delmelle, Dr. Isabelle Nilsson, Dr. Claire Schuch, and Tonderai Mushipe – all from UNC Charlotte’s Department of Geography and Earth Sciences – shows that the […]

Contributor: Nancy Pierce Photos and text by Nancy Pierce / Feb 9, 2017 Near Charlotte’s sparkling center city, where development usually obliterates signs of the past, a 92-year-old factory with sturdy bones and a compelling history will be sticking around. New York real estate developer ATCO Properties late last year purchased the 75-acre site between North Graham Street […]

It’s a simple concept: Focus on fewer goals and bigger results. That’s the idea behind the Collective Impact approach United Way of Central Carolinas has adopted. For United Way, that goal for the next 10 years is to increase the graduation rate among the more than 13,000 at-risk children who receive services from 16 United […]

Could a bottle shop and tap room be the stimulus Cornelius needs to follow in the footsteps of Charlotte’s NoDa arts district, Raleigh’s Warehouse District, or Asheville’s River Arts District? The Old Town Public House will open Sept. 13 on Catawba Avenue in Cornelius, a onetime cotton mill hamlet in fast-growing north Mecklenburg County. The […]

In Charlotte, one neighborhood more than any other came to represent the housing crisis. Built between 2002 and 2004, the Windy Ridge neighborhood of 133 small, single-family homes fell victim. By 2008, 60 percent of the neighborhood’s homes were in foreclosure. Crime rates rose, property values plummeted and the homeowners association couldn’t afford to keep […]

Just northeast of uptown Charlotte in the Tryon Hills neighborhood, in a previously abandoned and cluttered warehouse, is Lila’s Garden. There is graffiti on the entrance, but once you step inside, you are met with a garden that appears to be from the future. Rows of leafy greens and microgreens are bathed in purple light […]

When Joe Howarth started working with UNC Charlotte’s Charlotte Action Research Project in Charlotte’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods in 2011, he kept hearing about the City of Charlotte’s Neighborhood Matching Grant program. The city program is designed to help neighborhoods with low to moderate resources improve their neighborhoods through grants for beautification projects and educational, public […]

Will Americans continue to be suburban creatures? The question has been widely debated by developers, planners and the press since the Great Recession. Surveys showing preferences for urban, walkable, in-town neighborhoods have been called fads by some, or hailed by others as the end of suburbia. Ultimately, it will be the attitudes of the Millennial […]

Redevelopment of textile mills across the Carolinas has increased in the past decade as local officials have been able to offer state tax credits for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In Charlotte and across the region, mills have been turned into condos and apartments, senior housing, offices, shopping complexes and restaurants. […]