Articles
Charlotte is known for its tree canopy, and if you’ve ever flown in here or driven on streets lined with towering oaks, you know why. But that canopy is under threat, shrinking by the equivalent of three football fields a day as development spreads and iconic trees planted decades ago age and die. And the […]
“The key to its success will be for residents and leaders to dare to dream big ,” Chris Beynon, Center City Vision Plan team leader, MIG consultants, Charlotte Business Journal, August 9, 2019. “We will see our major employers on a timeline to restore the use of office space. It depends on the workforce coming […]
When it comes to growth, Charlotte continues to add not just people, but land. Unlike many other large cities landlocked by either political borders, rivers or oceans, Charlotte is still surrounded by thousands of acres of unincorporated land that can be brought into the city limits. In fall of 2019, a quick analysis showed that […]
A study released this week by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute sheds light on the unique challenges minority-owned small businesses face and how the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community can better support these enterprises, which are key to community well-being and wealth-building. Defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees, small businesses comprise 99.9% of all businesses. Small […]
After the City Council narrowly approved the 2040 plan, Charlotte leaders are turning from questions of how we grow to another key part of the city’s future: how we move around. Ambitious transit plans that call for a new sales tax funding the Silver Line east-west light rail, the stalled Red Line to the north, […]
This story is part of Transit Time, a joint production of The Charlotte Ledger, UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute, and WFAE. Learn more here, and subscribe to get weekly updates on how the Charlotte region moves. With smaller employers returning to the office and the big banks bringing most of their workers back over the next […]
Two recent staff changes at the Urban Institute have increased our capacity to work with partners and serve the community with data, research and outreach. First, Khou Xiong has joined the institute as Director of Community Research Services. Xiong has lived in Chapel Hill for most of the last two decades, and holds a Masters […]
The plight of honeybees has been well documented in recent years – their steep decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and disease. The crisis has inspired many people to take up beekeeping in an effort to help stabilize bee populations. Even though honeybees aren’t native to the Americas – they arrived with European colonists […]
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Mary Newsom’s blog The Naked City. The first three paragraphs are from Newsom. I stood in line two hours today to order chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, the iconic fried chicken takeout joint on Camden Road in South End that had just announced it will close in two […]
Does where you live — and what jobs you have access to — influence whether you work, and how much you earn? The long-held “spatial mismatch” theory posits that inner city unemployment and poverty has been driven in large part by the increasing physical separation of inner city residents from job opportunities, as suburbs boomed […]
For decades, the single-family home rental market was a small-scale industry, made up almost entirely of local landlords who rented out a few houses they bought as investment properties, or perhaps inherited, or held on to after relocating. But the years since the Great Recession have witnessed a dramatic shift, as Wall Street-backed rental companies […]
For something that’s supposed to be a big-picture, high-level peek at the future, the Charlotte 2040 vision plan has gotten bogged down in the details since its debut last fall. After months of tense City Council meetings, contested straw votes, community and industry groups pushing for and against the plan, and interdepartmental sniping via competing […]