DEVELOPMENT

A University City-area rezoning petition quietly winding toward a public hearing Monday raises serious questions about whether the city can stand behind its plans for transit-friendly development along the proposed Blue Line Extension light rail line. The case also highlights this fact: Today, almost all the properties in the station areas north of the NoDa […]

Last month, after about a year of study, consultants for the City of Charlotte delivered their assessment of the city’s zoning ordinance and associated development regulations. The study, which can be viewed at this link, was delivered in two parts, the Assessment Report and the Approach Report. Like the two parts of the report, after […]

Charlotte’s current zoning ordinance sometimes gets in the way of carrying out the city’s adopted plans, a consultant’s report concludes. It also can be a Byzantine set of confusing and sometimes contradictory requirements. The ordinance “does not include many modern zoning tools that would help ensure effective implementation of Charlotte’s land use policy goals,” says […]

Charlotte’s current zoning ordinance sometimes gets in the way of carrying out the city’s adopted plans, a consultant’s report concludes. It also can be a Byzantine set of confusing and sometimes contradictory requirements. The ordinance “does not include many modern zoning tools that would help ensure effective implementation of Charlotte’s land use policy goals,” says […]

It’s no secret that the Charlotte region experienced a huge influx of new residents in recent decades. The region has consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing. All those newcomers also needed homes – so new homes were built by the thousands. The recently released American Community Survey 2007-2011 five-year estimates, reflected in the interactive map […]

Mae Jones looks out her front door every day at the empty, massive Loray Mill, about a mile from downtown Gastonia, and remembers the rumble of machines, the acrid odors and her hard work there for 35 years. Once, it was the lifeline of the surrounding mill village, and Jones, 93, is thrilled by efforts […]

WAXHAW – The question came from the back row of the small audience, during a presentation from planning consultants about the future for N.C. 16 as it bisects the fast-growing Union County town. “If we do all this, will we still be considered a small town?” Consultant Monica Holmes of Lawrence Group paused briefly before […]

You’d think I would have known better. After all, I’ve been writing about growth since before they called it Smart Growth, and I’m still writing about it now that it’s “resiliency,” or “sustainable growth” or whatever the next term is. I can’t count how many times I’ve explained that when you decide where you want […]

“Smart Growth was an intellectual fetish of a self-selected liberal Eastern elite.” Robert J. Grow, president and CEO of Envision Utah, a public-private collaboration in the Salt Lake City region, told about 400 Charlotte region residents that his Western region calls what it does “quality growth.” “It was our growth,” he said. “It was our […]

Charlotte ranks near the bottom in a recent study of access to jobs via automobiles in the top 51 U.S. metro areas. Raleigh ranks even lower. The study, Access Across America, by David Levinson, the R.P. Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation Engineering at the University of Minnesota, ranks the Charlotte metro area No. 40, with the […]