Zoning

In the past decade, City Council has only denied 27 rezoning petitions out of more than 1,200 filed, according to city records. That means there are more new breweries in Charlotte since 2009 than rezoning petitions turned down. 

What’s behind the high approval rate? 

You’ve probably heard a few catchy statistics about Charlotte’s explosive growth: For example, the city’s population increased by 47 people a day from 2010 to 2018. But did you know that over the same period, Charlotte also grew by more than a square mile each year? Since 2010, Charlotte’s total land area has increased by […]

Next year’s news cycle is already looking pretty crowded, between big-ticket events like the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, the summer Olympics in Tokyo and, of course, the 2020 presidential, gubernatorial and congressional elections. But if there weren’t so much else going on, 2020 might be known as something else in Charlotte: The Year of […]

Breweries, apartments, hip food halls, creative offices, coworking spaces: Charlotte developers keep finding new uses for the city’s old mills. As a post-war, Sunbelt boomtown, Charlotte has garnered a reputation for tearing down its old buildings and replacing them with sterile plaques to make way for the city’s glittering new skyline. But while many once-grand […]

What can a board game – especially a wonky, policy-oriented board game – teach us about how Charlotte should grow over the next two decades? Local officials are hoping the answer is quite a lot. As work on the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan rolls on, and city officials rework the rules governing development into […]

“How shall we grow?” That question was the dramatic title of a 1955 report examining the Charlotte region’s breakneck growth (Almost 200,000 residents and 75,000 cars in the county!) and looming challenges. Confronted with worsening traffic, inadequate transportation options, a lack of park space and the fear that growth was running away without a real, […]

It’s happening across Charlotte: Apartments, office buildings and restaurants are popping up in parking lots, as dense, mixed-use developments, connected by bicycle paths and walking trails, invade suburbia. Within the past month, major plans have been announced for densifying and transforming chunks of Ballantyne, SouthPark and University City – three of the biggest bastions of […]

With Charlotte’s population growing by dozens of people a day, planners, politicians and many residents agree that denser development is inevitable in the city’s future. But just how dense – and exactly where to build that extra density – remain thorny questions, especially when denser developments are proposed in single-family neighborhoods. The tension between wanting […]

In the midst of a torrent of growth, new residents and construction, Charlotte’s planning director is hoping the city can find a comprehensive vision for what it should look like in two decades. Taiwo Jaiyeoba is leading the Charlotte Future 2040 comprehensive planning effort. It’s an ambitious project with the goal of creating the city’s […]

As Raleigh’s chief planning and development officer for nearly a decade, Mitchell Silver oversaw the rules that shaped development in that fast-growing city. Silver, president of the American Planning Association 2011-2013, will talk Thursday in Charlotte about the importance of having a vision, and what must happen after that vision is created. The event is […]