PLANNING

The late author and urban thinker Jane Jacobs tends to be pegged as a historic preservationist, an advocate who wanted to preserve her Greenwich Village neighborhood in amber. Although this great champion of cities wrote much about the importance of old buildings to a city, and as an activist fought valiantly to kill a proposed […]

Can Charlotte residents get used to development that looks different from what they’re used to – new houses on small lots instead of large lots, more apartments and condos? Charlotte Planning Director Debra Campbell, in a recent interview, described that as one of the challenges Charlotte faces in coming years. Another, she said, is to […]

Recent headlines have trumpeted the U.S. Census finding that between 2000 and 2010, the Charlotte “urbanized area” was the nation’s fastest growing among areas with 1 million or more people, at 64.6 percent. But the statistic also highlighted the inconsistent, even chaotic, differences in how the so-called Charlotte region gets defined, based on who’s doing […]

New York City and Gastonia don’t, at first glance, appear to have much in common. Yet both Manhattan and the much smaller city in the Piedmont of North Carolina can offer an example of “urbanism.” And both have suffered grave harm from well-intentioned “progress.” Charlotte architect Terry Shook, speaking last month at the showing of […]

As Charlotte’s real estate market continues to recover from one of the worst economic downturns in modern times, it might be easy to assume that housing affordability is no longer an issue of great concern. But in south Charlotte and other highly desirable parts of Mecklenburg County, home prices continue to remain out of reach […]

Is it prescient and forward-thinking for the city to encourage subsidized housing at rapid transit stations in coming decades? Or would that be the nail in the coffin, killing any near-term chance to halt a pattern of sinking property values near some of those stations, especially in troubled parts of east and northeast Charlotte? Two […]

Smart cities around the world use two secret weapons to form leadership and stay ahead of the pack in planning and economic development. One mechanism is internal, an informal, diverse but cohesive planning elite. Another is external, an outward-looking and systematic search for new knowledge, often by visiting other cities. I use “planning” in a […]

Architect, planner and author Stephen Mouzon, did more than just give some lectures from his book, Original Green: Unlocking the Mystery of True Sustainability, when he was in town recently. He also took a look at a section of south Charlotte that he thinks might be ripe for a different kind of long-range plan: the […]

There I was, pencil poised over a large drawing of Gastonia. It was 1997 and I was running a public workshop to design a network of greenways and open spaces for residents to enjoy as recreational and natural amenities. Someone in the background was fiddling with a radio. Then, as I remember the moment, the […]

Amid the pervasive gloom and depression about the future of American cities I was lucky enough to visit recently two very different American places that hold out some hopes for a sustainable future here in the USA. On the face of it, Champaign-Urbana, Ill., and Boston, Mass., could not be more different: one a large […]