PLANNING

Local streets have jammed with back-to-school traffic this week, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools opened for a new year. In most parts of the city, the start of UNC Charlotte’s academic year has not been as noticeable. But those of us at UNC Charlotte’s 1,000-acre campus 8 miles northeast of uptown see our own back-to-school jams, as […]

Talk of the Towns is a PlanCharlotte series visiting planners from the 14-county Charlotte region. This installment takes us to Rock Hill in York County, S.C. The former industrial town of about 68,000 people is searching for a new image. Bill Meyer has been planning and development director in Rock Hill since 2006. He talked […]

How did Copenhagen become an international model of urbanism? Four leaders from Charlotte and Mecklenburg County government, philanthropy and real estate will find out next month on a six-day study trip. Brian Collier from the Foundation For The Carolinas, Assistant Mecklenburg County Manager Leslie Johnson, at-large City Council member Vi Lyles and Crescent Communities CEO […]

In this new series, PlanCharlotte visits planners from around the 14-county Charlotte region. In this second installment, we head north on I-85 to Salisbury in Rowan County. Salisbury, population 33,612, is the oldest city in the region. Its roots date to the 1750s, when colonial authorities established it as a county seat. Historic preservation remains […]

In this new series, PlanCharlotte visits planners from around the 14-county Charlotte region. In this first installment, we head east to Albemarle. Much of the Charlotte region is fast-growing, but Albemarle’s population has remained flat. Keith Wolf has been with the city’s planning department since 2004 and planning director since 2011. He talked about economic […]

With the real estate market on the rebound, construction crews and renovators are hard at work in Charlotte neighborhoods. The city’s six historic districts are no exception. The number of applications for additions or renovations on properties within the historic districts, averaging about 200 a year, has risen every year since 2010. In 2014, says […]

PlanCharlotte.org is asking readers to nominate spots in the Charlotte region that need a design makeover. (See our first installment in this series here and our most recent installment here.) Urban designers Keihly Moore and Alex Borisenko have launched a website, www.completeblocks.com, where they’re proposing a series of urban design retrofits, many of them nominated […]

Think quick – where’s the closest public park to your home or office? If you’re in Charlotte, chances are you can’t walk to it. That’s one major takeaway from the Trust For Public Land’s ParkScore index report released Tuesday. The report shows Charlotte ranking 57th out of 60 cities, winning only one out of a […]

A 10-foot-wide asphalt path that officially opened Tuesday offers a glimpse of what could be a more pedestrian- and bike-oriented future for some of Charlotte’s least pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares. The path, 0.9 miles along University City Boulevard from Mallard Creek Church Road to UNC Charlotte’s main entrance at Broadrick Boulevard, is the first bike-ped trail along […]

It’s not easy getting around the Charlotte region on foot. It can be deadly, too. The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia area ranks 10th most dangerous metro for pedestrians, according to a study, Dangerous by Design, released this week by the National Complete Streets Coalition and Smart Growth America. Last month, Smart Growth America ranked the Charlotte metro as […]