Urban Growth

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

By Owen Furuseth The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the […]

Charlotte area planning and sustainability enthusiasts can have their say about the future of the region in coming weeks by taking part in two long-range regional planning efforts. In Mecklenburg County, volunteers are being sought to help draft the Mecklenburg Livable Communities Plan. Mecklenburg County residents can apply to participate in a work group through […]

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 […]

It’s no secret that the Charlotte region experienced a huge influx of new residents in recent decades. The region has consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing. All those newcomers also needed homes – so new homes were built by the thousands. The recently released American Community Survey 2007-2011 five-year estimates, reflected in the interactive map […]

WAXHAW – The question came from the back row of the small audience, during a presentation from planning consultants about the future for N.C. 16 as it bisects the fast-growing Union County town. “If we do all this, will we still be considered a small town?” Consultant Monica Holmes of Lawrence Group paused briefly before […]

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 […]

“Smart Growth was an intellectual fetish of a self-selected liberal Eastern elite.” Robert J. Grow, president and CEO of Envision Utah, a public-private collaboration in the Salt Lake City region, told about 400 Charlotte region residents that his Western region calls what it does “quality growth.” “It was our growth,” he said. “It was our […]

In the Carolinas, only Charlotte’s metro area tops 2 million people. Raleigh is roughly half Charlotte’s size at 1.2 million. These two metros have pulled away from the pack of the other Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the Carolinas; no others top 1 million in population. Ten years ago, the metros in the two states were […]

Charlotte ranks near the bottom in a recent study of access to jobs via automobiles in the top 51 U.S. metro areas. Raleigh ranks even lower. The study, Access Across America, by David Levinson, the R.P. Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation Engineering at the University of Minnesota, ranks the Charlotte metro area No. 40, with the […]