OPINION

Since Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx gave his State of the City speech Monday, most of the publicity has focused on his remarks about the proposed streetcar, about a proposal in the legislature to remove Charlotte/Douglas International Airport from city control, and his comments about the Charlotte Chamber. Those are important issues. But another issue may […]

2013 may be a year historians look back on as the time local leaders hit the “reset” button on issues that had been at the forefront of public policy discussions before the 2008 economic meltdown. Will leaders revisit these issues following the same assumptions and conventional strategies as before? Or will lessons learned in the […]

When I moved to Charlotte more than 30 years ago, Matthews was the suburb. It lay directly in the path of the major growth trajectory – southeast. The drive to central Charlotte was a reasonable 25-30 minutes. The cute, but miniature, downtown Matthews and a few surrounding blocks of turn-of-the-century houses gave a historic feel […]

It’s that time of year again – when the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come arrive to haunt the old miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. It is nearly impossible to extricate Charles Dickens’ works, including his beloved A Christmas Carol, from the city in which they are set: Victorian-era, dirty, industrial London. You can […]

It’s easy to gush about the things we love. Kids, pets, restaurants, sports – no problems there, we understand each other pretty well. (Q: What is “You can’t handle the truth!” A: Best movie line EVER! See what I mean?) But what about our love for all things urban? Maybe it’s time to sort a […]

PARIS – I saw the future in Paris. It looks a lot like the past. To be specific, it looks like uptown Charlotte circa 1989, but with flashier architecture. While in the French capital earlier this year for a conference of urban planners and scholars, we toured La Défense, the huge development just west of […]

The big picture may have gotten buried Tuesday as Charlotte City Council members chewed – and chewed and chewed – on different alternative revenue strategies that might enable the city to build the second leg of its proposed streetcar. Most of the discussion was about finding ways to pay for the streetcar project that weren’t […]

When the Democratic National Convention finished its activities in Charlotte, from most reports visitors found Charlotte an exemplary host city. We saw comments such as “retail oriented,” “pedestrian-friendly,” even “lively.” What a difference a couple of decades can make! Recall that in 1994, when Charlotte hosted the NCAA Final Four tournament, Tryon Street was so […]

So, how did it go? When I thought about it the next day, it all felt like a dream. I had – with plenty of help – organized Charlotte’s second PARK(ing) Day event in recent memory. The first, also created by UNC Charlotte students, was in 2008 in an uptown parking lot. This year’s was […]

By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had become sensitized to the environmental damage caused by harmful human practices, particularly the use of pesticides and DDT, following Rachel Carson’s 1962 pivotal book on this issue, Silent Spring. Carson was an eminent biologist, ecologist, and writer at a time when women in the fields of science and research […]