OPINION

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 […]

Any day now, I figure the term “inner city” will go the way of “carbon paper” and “adding machine.” Already, it has a sort of disco, big-hair-and-shoulder-pads aura – a relic of a time when to many Americans the heart of the city was a place of poverty, crime and social dysfunction. Compare that image […]

The year was 1908. President Theodore Roosevelt, nearing the end of his second term, convened a Governors’ Conference at the White House with the primary goal to formulate a national philosophy of conservation based on efficient use of finite resources and scientific management of renewable ones. According to Edmund Morris’ Theodore Rex, the invitation list […]

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 […]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – On the day much of the Boston area stayed indoors for the manhunt of a Boston marathon bombing suspect, I was in town for a conference on “The Resilient City.” Like almost everyone in Boston, most conference attendees obeyed the April 19 “stay indoors” order. And the whole bizarre experience – seeing […]

The N.C. House is scheduled to vote this afternoon on a bill, “Zoning/Design & Aesthetic Controls,” (House Bill 150) that has enthusiastic support from the state’s home-building industry but that gravely concerns planners around the state, as well as some local elected officials. (Update: The N.C. House on Tuesday passed the bill 94-22 on second […]

In recent years, progressive developers have made an important discovery. If they incorporate design features into their development proposals to make them look and function better, communities will allow them to build more product. But their investment can be fundamentally devalued if communities aren’t allowed to establish basic design standards to ensure a similar quality […]

The debate over “Zoning/Design & Aesthetic Controls,” (House Bill 150) concerns two basic issues: first, how much control we want government to have over our power of consumer choice, and second, whether we want government in North Carolina to function as its founding fathers intended. Let’s address the latter issue first. To understand why the […]

What places in our region have a hold on your heart? Is there a building or a patch of woods so special to you that you’d lie down in front of a bulldozer to save it? We want to know about it. To celebrate our first anniversary, PlanCharlotte.org is sponsoring a photo contest to let […]