General News

Think of an important waterway: You’re probably picturing a rushing river, a huge lake or a roaring waterfall. But what about the humble creek running through the woods near your house? That’s where most of our waterways start, and if those creeks aren’t healthy, our larger waterways won’t be healthy either. Creek Week is a […]

The Charlotte Area Transit System took another step towards expanding the region’s transit network this week, with recommendations for how to extend the Blue Line light rail about five miles through Pineville to Ballantyne. At the Metropolitan Transit Commission, staff presented their preferred routes, which would take the rail line across Carolina Place Mall along […]

Charlotte and the surrounding counties have changed dramatically over the past 250 years, evolving from an agrarian backwater to a manufacturing powerhouse to a hub of global finance. Our first European settlers’ hope was to support themselves by working the land, but 100 years of agriculture showed our predecessors that local farming was much more […]

[Read the full report here] It was a cold January day in 2018 when eight researchers from UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute stepped out into the brisk air in Hamlet, a small town in Richmond County, N.C. A dusting of snow from a surprise storm the previous day still covered the railroad tracks adjacent to the […]

The city of Charlotte has a long reach. While this is certainly not a surprise, we don’t really know much about how Charlotte influences its surroundings and how far this reach extends. We do have some conventions to help us understand the extent to which our region is connected. Metropolitan areas are commonly used to […]

While Duke was building the world’s largest electrical network in the Western Piedmont, some Charlotte mill owners recognized that more money could be made loaning money to aspiring industrialists than making cloth themselves.

From an agrarian system to an economy based on rural mills and factories drawing workers from former farms and sending goods to Charlotte for distribution, the region undergoes rapid change. 

A growing web of infrastructure and physical connections – both within the wider region and between the region and the outside world – has had a profound effect on where growth went, and where it stayed away from. People and industries in the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection study area followed trading paths, railroads, highways and, now, air service.

Charlotteans often lament how many old buildings here have been torn down, but there are still structures worth saving, along with groups and developers willing to put in the work. 

On Thursday, the Charlotte Museum of History announced the winners of its 2019 Historic Preservation Awards. The five honorees, from 27 nominations, include a historic high school gym, a hip, repurposed mill, and historic houses. 

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 […]