DEVELOPMENT

Charlotte isn’t unique in the country in wanting to create more mixed-use development. As in many cities, leaders in Charlotte see advantages to encouraging the kinds of neighborhoods where homes, stores and workplaces are close to each other. It’s a more efficient use of land, can reduce infrastructure costs and traffic congestion, and can make […]

[highlightrule] Charlotte’s strong urban planning is torpedoed by weak urban design. To change that, the city needs a new type of zoning ordinance.[/highlightrule] Add together Charlotte’s apartment boom plus the reinvention of urban districts such as South End, Plaza-Central and NoDa, and you come up with a lot of questions. Residents complain about the neighborhoods’ […]

When New Orleans flooded 10 years ago last month, it looked to many people in America as though the city could never recover. Today, when the word “resilience” dots virtually every scrap of writing on urban policy around the globe, New Orleans provides iconographic proof that a city is, in fact, a hard thing to […]

[highlightrule]As an important block on Camden Road faces likely development, its recent history tells a complex narrative of a once-derelict area and a man with a vision, and shows how success changes a neighborhood.[/highlightrule] Recent news that one of the last remaining sites in Charlotte’s South End is scheduled for high-density redevelopment should come as […]

Three months ago my family and I moved into our first home. Something about buying a house makes you feel like a bona fide adult, and with that come adult decisions. When my husband and I were deciding where in the city we wanted to live, like many young families we fell into the trap […]

Two weeks ago I beamed with pride for Charlotte as U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Mayor Dan Clodfelter cut the ribbon to begin the CityLynx Gold Line streetcar service. I’ve lived in and visited cities with streetcar lines and often longed for an America where tracks once again crisscross our cities. The past can […]

[highlight]Charlotte leaders have been talking about the outerbelt, Interstate 485, for decades. While most residents were concerned primarily with what it would mean for drive times, planners and others spent time contemplating the highway’s effect on the area’s growth. A sampling of comments over the years.[/highlight] “We’re going to have to get far more serious […]

A bill has passed the N.C. House that would do away with a decades-old provision for rezonings, the protest petition, which lets nearby property owners petition for a supermajority vote by a city council or town board on whether to approve the rezoning. In this pro/con package of opinion articles, Dilworth resident Jill Walker discusses […]

The N.C. House in March passed a bill to do away with the use of protest petitions in rezonings statewide, and neighborhood groups in Charlotte and other fast-growing communities fear they will lose their voice in shaping development. They are mistaken. The majority of rezonings in Charlotte do not generate valid protest petitions from neighboring […]

It is exasperating that, once again, North Carolina homeowners face the prospect of losing the ability to file a protest petition in rezonings. The most recent effort – a bill that has passed the N.C. House – represents the third time in less than three years that our state has been threatened with the loss […]