Community Development

The old planners’ joke is that Americans hate two things for their cities—urban sprawl and high density. The joke, of course, is that developing at low densities, such as one house per acre or half acre, spreads the same amount of housing across more acreage—in other words, sprawl. Higher-density development—typically multifamily—has been a topic of […]

You don’t attend many conferences where the first question you are asked is, “What’s your favorite dataset?” However, that was the question we heard when we represented Charlotte at the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) conference in Denver. The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, along with the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, partnered to join […]

It’s a simple concept: Focus on fewer goals and bigger results. That’s the idea behind the Collective Impact approach United Way of Central Carolinas (UWCC) has adopted. For United Way that goal for the next 10 years is to increase the graduation rate among the more than 13,000 at-risk children who receive services from 16 […]

Envision a small town Main Street, and a town hall or courthouse square probably comes to mind. But in the Charlotte region, that image may need updating. Several local governments around the N.C. Piedmont are considering moving offices out of older downtown buildings to outlying areas with underused retail and office space. Those proposals worry […]

Could a bottle shop and tap room be the stimulus Cornelius needs to follow in the footsteps of Charlotte’s NoDa arts district, Raleigh’s Warehouse District, or Asheville’s River Arts District? The Old Town Public House will open Sept. 13 on Catawba Avenue in Cornelius, a onetime cotton mill hamlet in fast-growing north Mecklenburg County. The […]

In Charlotte, one neighborhood more than any other came to represent the housing crisis. Built between 2002 and 2004, the Windy Ridge neighborhood of 133 small, single-family homes fell victim. By 2008, 60 percent of the neighborhood’s homes were in foreclosure. Crime rates rose, property values plummeted and the homeowners association couldn’t afford to keep […]

The City of Charlotte and other local organizations are offering neighborhoods opportunities to improve neighborhood tree canopies and to boost traditional neighborhood newsletters by using digital tools such as Twitter, texting and other web-based formats. Learn new digital skills at neighborhood communications workshop Charlotte community leaders and homeowners associations wanting to send neighborhood updates to […]

Just northeast of uptown Charlotte in the Tryon Hills neighborhood, in a previously abandoned and cluttered warehouse, is Lila’s Garden. There is graffiti on the entrance, but once you step inside, you are met with a garden that appears to be from the future. Rows of leafy greens and microgreens are bathed in purple light […]

When Joe Howarth started working with UNC Charlotte’s Charlotte Action Research Project in Charlotte’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods in 2011, he kept hearing about the City of Charlotte’s Neighborhood Matching Grant program. The city program is designed to help neighborhoods with low to moderate resources improve their neighborhoods through grants for beautification projects and educational, public […]

Will Americans continue to be suburban creatures? The question has been widely debated by developers, planners and the press since the Great Recession. Surveys showing preferences for urban, walkable, in-town neighborhoods have been called fads by some, or hailed by others as the end of suburbia. Ultimately, it will be the attitudes of the Millennial […]