ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Charlotte is home to the world’s sixth-busiest airport by takeoffs and landings, and Charlotte Douglas International is often cited as the region’s most important economic asset. That’s why the airline industry’s sudden existential crisis could be especially consequential for the region. In a joint leader to government leaders this week, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker […]

Restaurant workers are grappling with the industry’s near shutdown in North Carolina due to coronavirus. Another category of workers being hit hard is those employed by the retail sector. The closures have come swiftly over the past week, engulfing an ever-widening swath of stores locally: SouthPark mall, Concord Mills and Charlotte Premium Outlets have all […]

Everything from the NCAA basketball tournament to this spring’s garden parties at Buckingham Palace has been canceled, and the disruptions have also reached into the rhythm of meetings and public input sessions that drives much of planning and development in Charlotte. It might seem like a comparatively minor impact, but the disruptions to public input […]

There’s a growing consensus that if we want to get out of the housing affordability mess we’re in, we need to hear a lot more swinging hammers. While local governments, including in Charlotte, have raised more money to subsidize affordable apartments and low-income rent payments, the scale of the problem is daunting. Mecklenburg County is […]

Leaders from across the region gathered Monday in a conference room at Charlotte Douglas International Airport with an ambitious goal: Creating a comprehensive plan for public transit, covering a dozen counties and setting the transit agenda for decades. Called CONNECT Beyond, the 18-month planning effort by the Centralina Council of Governments is, to put it […]

A vacant park in a bustling downtown. A waterside bandshell and lawn that sit empty most days of the year. A busy intersection thousands of people drive through every day without a pause. In a fast-growing city that lacks parks and other public gathering spaces, planners are looking at ways to make these places into […]

The 2010s in uptown Charlotte were a decade with a split personality, starting with an epic crash and swinging to a huge boom that transformed the skyline and left an enormous mark on the city. At the start of the decade, rusting rebar poked up from the EpiCentre, a reminder of a condo project that […]

As urban areas boom while many rural areas and small towns struggle, experts and local leaders are looking at success stories like Shelby’s embrace of its musical heritage as a roadmap to revitalization. The Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection A special project from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute Read about the project here Introduction: Strengthening ties to […]

Charlotte faces a wide range of needs, from affordable housing to more police, bigger parks and better transit, but they all share a similar root cause: growth. That was one of the main themes at City Council’s annual planning retreat, held this week over four days in Durham at the Washington Duke Inn. There was […]

A new, mixed-income housing development is set to take the place of a long-troubled, low-income housing complex in South End. Brookhill Village is a paradox: An oasis of affordability in the midst of a booming and fast-gentrifying part of the city, but full of run-down units, many of them boarded up and visibly decaying from […]