History

I’ve long had a question about the nature of uptown Charlotte. Why do Charlotte’s uptown blocks look more like “diamonds” than “squares”? Streets in other cities (such as Raleigh, Chicago and New York, for instance) go north-south and east-west in a classic grid pattern. Charlotte’s uptown streets are also in a grid, but they lie […]

The following is excerpted, with permission, from The Margins of a Greater Wildness: Nature Essays on Stanley Creek and Beyond, a collection of essays on local topics from the Stanley Creek community in eastern Gaston County, where the Rankin family has lived for many generations. Most people around the Gaston County town of Stanley today […]

The first comprehensive survey of Charlotte historic resources in 30 years recommends reducing the areas of several of the city’s historic districts, saying development has reduced the historic footprint in those neighborhoods. Among the findings in the first phase of Charlotte’s Historic Resources Survey: In the last 30 years, 37 percent of Charlotte’s potential historic […]

One hundred years ago, when North Carolina had a population of about 2.5 million people, more than nine out of 10 residents were native Tar Heels. Today’s North Carolina, in contrast, approaches a population of 10 million, with more than 4 million residents born in another state or country. Population growth and change have had […]

When we turned from Mayflower Road onto Hendren Avenue, it hit me. This Revolution Park neighborhood in west Charlotte was a dead ringer for the neighborhood in southeast Charlotte where I bought a tiny house when I first moved to town three decades ago. That neighborhood, Chantilly, built in the 1940s, has now gone upscale, […]

From Hyde Park to Sheffield Park to Madison Park, plenty of Charlotte-area neighborhoods are filled with people who love where they live. Now, they have an opportunity to show the world what’s remarkable about their neighborhoods. Learn more Want to lead a walk? Some tips Read about previous years’ walks: In Jane Jacobs’ footsteps, exploring […]

Envision this: A man draped in a cape, brandishing a gold-tipped cane, strolls through a 79-acre[1], 16-block chunk of South End. He’s costumed as the colorful Count Chevalier Vincent de Rivafinoli, an Italian gold-digger (literally) who swept into town during Charlotte’s early 19th-century gold rush, settled in a house at South Tryon and West Morehead […]

When you get right down to it, any city or town is built of neighborhoods – block by block and street by street. That formula is part of the magic behind the idea of Jane’s Walks, an international movement that encourages people to get out for a neighborhood walk on the first weekend in May. […]

It’s a quirky fact about all three of the most recent directors of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute: We all came, not from large urban centers, but from small, rural communities. Jim Clay, director from 1979 to 1984, was from Crum, W.Va. Bill McCoy (director 1985-2001) hailed from Ekron, Ky. And me? My friends are […]

Less than two weeks after an inspiring visit to Yosemite National Park in California, I found myself back in Crowders Mountain State Park hiking the Kings Pinnacle Trail. I try to visit Crowders at least twice a month, usually hiking that same path. Even after a visit to the spectacular Yosemite, my enjoyment of Crowders […]