Articles
[highlightrule]Charlotte neighborhoods have plenty of stories to tell, and during a month of City Walks hundreds of participants heard some of them. See photo slideshow at end of article.[/highlightrule] The secret inscription on a statue of an almost forgotten Charlotte heroine. A teacher who gave her life in 1931 trying to save a student. The […]
Cohousing is a concept that tries to fit an unusual form of housing into current-day development regulations—a square peg in a round hole is how Robert Boyer puts it. Boyer is an assistant professor in the UNC Charlotte Department of Geography & Earth Sciences where he teaches classes in urban and regional planning and sustainability. […]
Kannapolis is unlike any other municipality in North Carolina. Founded in 1906, for much of its history it was owned by Cannon Mills, which by 1914 was the world’s largest producer of sheets and towels. Kannapolis was the largest unincorporated community in the United States in 1984, when it finally incorporated as a city two […]
When we think about jobs coming to Charlotte, we may think of the flurry of press releases, photo ops, and political backslapping that all accompany a big announcement. Yet despite the role the city plays in promoting job growth, jobs are not spread evenly across the city’s seven Charlotte City Council districts. Since jobs are […]
Red clay. It’s the bane of Piedmont gardeners. Heavy and lumpy when wet, it dries as hard as a terra cotta pot. We spend bundles of money on soil conditioners to make it friable. We complain about it as much as the English do about chalk, the highly alkaline soil found throughout much of the […]
The most recent count of homelessness in Mecklenburg County—undertaken on one night in January— found overall homelessness had decreased by 36 percent since 2010. The same count also found a 9 percent decrease since last year, even as the county’s total population grew. Click on image to download the full report. The findings are outlined […]
Is Jim Garges, Mecklenburg County’s normally ebullient director of parks and recreation, fretting right now? He might be, and for much the same reasons that Janette Sadik-Khan worried eight years ago as commissioner of the massive New York City Department of Transportation. For Sadik-Khan, the summer of 2008 was when her staff decided to gamble. […]
Develop a historical asset map. Improve physical connections to public spaces and neighborhoods. Conduct a business needs assessment. Explore whether to list the neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. Those were among more than two dozen proposals for improving the neighborhoods just west of uptown Charlotte, near Johnson C. Smith University and the […]
One reason North Carolina had more Rosenwald Schools than any other state is the strong advocacy for their construction by Charlotte’s George E. Davis. Davis was the first black professor at Biddle Institute, now Johnson C. Smith University. He taught mathematics, science and sociology during his 35-year tenure there. He became dean of the faculty […]
[highlightrule]A handful of these historically significant Mecklenburg buildings survive in conditions ranging from splendid restoration to painful decline. But all are reminders of how grit and hard work, coupled with philanthropy, can create important change. [/highlightrule] Newell Rosenwald School quietly endures at the end of Torrence Grove Church Road in northeastern Mecklenburg County, its declining […]
Are you new to North Carolina and looking to discover one of the state’s great main streets? Or are you a life-long resident searching for a new place to explore? Or do you want other North Carolinians to know about the great places in your town? Welcome to the fifth annual Great Places in NC […]
[highlightrule]You probably know places you like. And you probably don’t know whether they’re MUDD-O, R-22MF or UR-2(CD). A new approach to zoning lets us envision places we like and then come up with ordinances that allow us to build them—without the arcane sets of letters and formulas.[/highlightrule] If I described a well-known locale in Charlotte […]