DEVELOPMENT

Are Millennials really so different from other generations? When it comes to housing preferences and opinions, the answer seems to be: Yes. And no. A ULI Charlotte survey prepared by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute that was released Thursday of Charlotte region residents asking about views on housing, transportation and community found some commonalities among […]

From the woods surrounding her Lake Wylie home, Nancy Hayes watches turkeys, deer, raccoons and other animals, including a pair of bald eagles. The wildlife is threatened, she says, by a residential development proposed for more than 400 homes, and she’s angry about it. “It’s outrageous,” says Hayes, who moved to the area three years […]

In the booming South Carolina communities nudging the southern edges of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County a civil war of sorts is erupting over how to manage growth. It is not unusual for intense passions to shape local dialogue over what should and shouldn’t be built, and what it should look like. But in Lancaster and […]

Cohousing is a concept that tries to fit an unusual form of housing into current-day development regulations—a square peg in a round hole is how Robert Boyer puts it. Boyer is an assistant professor in the UNC Charlotte Department of Geography & Earth Sciences where he teaches classes in urban and regional planning and sustainability. […]

Develop a historical asset map. Improve physical connections to public spaces and neighborhoods. Conduct a business needs assessment. Explore whether to list the neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. Those were among more than two dozen proposals for improving the neighborhoods just west of uptown Charlotte, near Johnson C. Smith University and the […]

Most of the ideas about SouthPark offered last week by a group of out-of-town development experts were what you’d hope to hear from 21st-century planners: create connections, try public-private partnerships, build a better public realm. But a few of their comments might raise questions or even baffle some Charlotteans. The advisory panel from the nonprofit […]

For many decades, the complex and difficult challenges of housing low-income Charlotteans have been the source of local studies, public debate, public policy formation and a variety of actions. This short paper is intended to trace the evolution of the challenges in Charlotte and the responses to them, with an eye toward the future for […]

[highlightrule] “ ‘Status quo,’ you know, is Latin for the mess we’re in.” — President Ronald Reagan [/highlightrule] The tension and rhetoric about whether to build toll lanes on Interstate 77 is something I’m watching with dispassionate interest. I’m familiar with North Mecklenburg after work there some years ago, but my professional stake in the […]

[highlightrule] The City of Kannapolis bought its own downtown. It’s one of dozens of towns and cities across North Carolina hoping to make their downtowns more vibrant. [/highlightrule] In Kannapolis, plans for revitalizing downtown are ambitious, the stakes are high, and, residents say, there is a chance “to create our own destiny.” Unlike any other […]

The old planners’ joke is that Americans hate two things for their cities—urban sprawl and high density. The joke, of course, is that developing at low densities, such as one house per acre or half acre, spreads the same amount of housing across more acreage—in other words, sprawl. Higher-density development—typically multifamily—has been a topic of […]