Shelby
Farms and sprawl: Conservationists worry they’re losing the battle
About 45 minutes from Charlotte in neighboring Cabarrus County, the owners of 1,000-acre Porter Farms raise chickens and pigs on part of their land. The chickens are sold to Tysons Foods, and the pigs become sausage, pork chops and spare ribs for Smithfield Foods. Another part of the property is a cattle farm, and since […]
Downtown Shelby turns to music for a revival
Music has helped power the revival of downtown (or uptown, as the locals call it) Shelby. The Earl Scruggs Center and Don Gibson Theatre draw on the town’s musical history.
Community foundations demonstrate the importance of regional links
Can philanthropy foster greater regional connection? Yes, according to our research for the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection project. But it’s not just the movement of money that matters, say local leaders: it’s the regional exchange of ideas about how to put that money to work that seems to make a difference. Community foundations, by definition, have […]
How can we reconnect North Carolinians to opportunities and good jobs?
To move up the ladder of opportunity, there’s generally consensus that people need jobs that pay a living wage, where they can grow their earnings over time. But what’s the best way to get workers, especially low-income workers with barriers such as low educational attainment, connected to those jobs? That’s the focus of the ReCONNECT […]
Historical Overview Part 3: The rise of banking builds a globally connected region
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.
Historical Overview Part 2: Post-Civil War, the region becomes an industrial system
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.
Trails, roads, rails and sky: The changing physical connections that knit our region together
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.
A Carolina summer comes to an end
Summer officially ends Friday, and the close of a week of cloudy, unseasonably cool weather marks an occasion to look back and remind ourselves of the Carolinas Piedmont in summer 2011. It was a summer of hail storms, high winds and in some parts, even the fringes of tropical storm Irene. The National Oceanic and […]