City Walks-Janes Walks

[highlightrule]“Typically, people look at abstract ideas and overwhelming macro-issues like poverty and homelessness. Often missed is the opportunity to tackle low-hanging fruit like sidewalks or improved lighting.” — Jason Roberts[/highlightrule] Sometimes, to build a better city – a city built for residents, not for cars or absentee landlords or development financiers – you start with […]

Did you know: ♦ At one time, if you lived on the north side of 37th Street in the NoDa neighborhood you could keep hogs and sell fireworks, but if you lived across the street on the south side you could not. The city limits line ran down the middle of the street. ♦ A […]

[highlightrule]Watch this space in early April for information on 2018 City Walks Thank you to our dedicated 2017 volunteer walk leaders and the approximately 350 participants. See a photo slideshow of the May 2017 City Walks.[/highlightrule] Charlotte neighborhoods have stories to tell – stories many residents have never heard. Explore some of the city’s neighborhoods […]

Are master plans really worth the effort? Skeptics discount them, charging that they are little more than feel-good exercises in wishful thinking. Such critiques have currency for some plans but not all. When done right, a plan states which policies are more important and includes metrics to gauge outcomes; it charts timelines for putting recommendations […]

Along with a new light rail station on the UNC Charlotte campus, the Blue Line Extension will mean transportation changes on- and off-campus – in parking patterns, bus routes and campus shuttles – and the debut of a bike-share program. Many of the changes were outlined Tuesday night at a public forum on campus. The […]

[highlightrule]Can lower South End survive the large-scale cookie-cutter development now ravaging South End and NoDa? Charlotte can learn some lessons from another Millennial magnet city, Des Moines. Yes, Des Moines. [/highlightrule] In post-election America, consensus seems as unreachable as the lost land of Atlantis. Republican “Middle America” has triumphed over the Democratic coastal regions, and […]

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and its PlanCharlotte.org web publication have been awarded a $15,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to continue their work as citywide organizers of a series of Charlotte neighborhood City Walks each May. The walks are inspired by the work of urban observer and writer Jane […]

By 2040 Charlotte will grow by 400,000 people, city transportation planners project – an increase equal to the population of the cities of Minneapolis, Cleveland, Miami or New Orleans. How can Charlotte handle all those new daily trips? The city’s Department of Transportation is proposing the city spend $5 billion over 25 years to keep […]

Although Charlotte is rapidly growing, the area just south of the city is growing even faster. From 2000 to 2014, Charlotte’s population grew 43 percent while that of unincorporated Indian Land more than tripled. Lancaster County Planning Director Penelope G. Karagounis. Photo: Mary Newsom Indian Land is in the Lancaster County, S.C., panhandle – a […]

Although Brian Miller grew up in Charlotte, he always felt drawn to Gastonia’s Loray Mill village, where his mother lived as a child. The 30-block neighborhood with about 500 small houses surrounded the historic Loray Mill, site of a bloody 1929 labor strike that claimed the lives of Gastonia Police Chief Orville Aderholt and union […]