DEVELOPMENT

Which Charlotte neighborhoods have gotten denser, with more residences per acre? Where have average home sizes ballooned? Is the proportion of single-family homes rising or falling in neighborhoods where new apartments and tear-downs vie for space? Newly updated maps on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer allow you to probe these questions and visualize changes […]

Almost eight decades ago, Charlotte had just topped 100,000 residents, World War II raged, legal segregation was the law of the land and most of Mecklenburg County was still farmland. But despite the obvious differences from today, an urgent call in 1944 for the city to develop a plan to manage its growth still resonates […]

Charlotte is a city with growth embedded in its DNA, a community where striving to be “world-class” has both propelled us forward and papered over many disparities just beneath the surface. And Charlotte’s growth shows no signs of slowing down. With a host of plans coming together in 2021 that will set the city’s path […]

If we’re being completely honest, those of us who sat down this year to write traditional end-of-year reflections struggled to find something positive to say. I certainly did. Whether an organizational newsletter or a family’s holiday greeting card, it seemed the best one could say about 2020 is that it’s finally over. However, as I […]

When it comes to Charlotte’s transportation ambitions for the coming decades, the biggest question is simple: How will the city pay for it all? Austin, Tex., could point to an answer. Voters there approved a $7.1 billion transit plan on Election Day this year, with 58% supporting the referendum. The plan will raise property taxes […]

As Charlotte continues its quest to become a more urban and cosmopolitan city, is it possible that the small towns and former mill villages dotting the land around Charlotte have something to teach us about how to solve some of the biggest and most pressing needs facing our big cities and suburbs today? Bill Fulton, […]

It probably wasn’t the setting Charlotte planners would have picked to unveil their vision for the future: A parking lot off Independence Boulevard, acres of scarred asphalt surrounded by a tangle of some of the city’s least pedestrian-friendly streets. But in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, an in-person event at a densely packed brewery […]

Charlotte is losing over three football fields a day worth of trees. That’s the sobering conclusion of a study by the University of Vermont in collaboration with TreesCharlotte, detailing how development, age, storms and other factors have cut down Charlotte’s tree canopy. The percentage of Charlotte covered by tree canopy fell from 49% to 45% […]

Monday night’s rezoning meeting felt like most Charlotte City Council sessions from previous years, despite the mayor and staff sitting six feet apart and developers battling audio and video glitches in the remote setup. Council members heard proposals about denser developments in suburban enclaves. The biggest was a plan to transform Ballantyne Corporate Park from […]

Sitting in a gas station turned into a café and coffee shop along Rozzelles Ferry Road in Charlotte’s Historic West End, J’Tanya Adams, a longtime community activist, spotted a commercial real estate broker who has been working with developers interested in building new homes in the area. The conversation was brief, but packed with news. […]