ENVIRONMENT

Density, transit, auto-free living and urban redevelopment are popular topics right now, as many US cities – including Charlotte – continue to boom, luring new residents and coveted millennials by the tens of thousands. But the future of development might still be in the suburbs, according to Joel Kotkin. A fellow in urban futures at […]

I was a preschooler with a bad case of eczema. My pediatrician sent us to an allergist in downtown Greensboro with an office on Elm Street. Growing up in the Uwharries, I’d never laid my country eyes on anything so grand — block after block of offices and shops towering over the sidewalks. (Including the […]

For years, food waste has been cast as a financial and moral issue, with money and opportunities to feed the hungry lost when food is tossed in the garbage. It also is increasingly becoming an environmental problem as scraps and spoiled food fill landfills across the country, where they emit potent greenhouse gases. In Charlotte […]

For vegetable gardeners in the Piedmont, 2018 was a challenging year. The weather whipsawed between mundane and extreme. January started with a blast of bitter cold. Temperatures dipped into the single digits, something we don’t experience every winter. I was so intimidated by the forecast, I didn’t even bother to cover my tiny front-yard food […]

The subtitle of Donald Seriff’s Birds of the Central Carolinas says a lot about its scope and ambition: Including Ornithological Records and Firsthand Accounts from the Civil War Era to Today. This book aspires to be much more than just another field guide. It’s a longitudinal documentation of avian life in the Piedmont, a region […]

“Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy As the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2019, we are reflecting on how our history and growth mirror both the region we focus […]

In August, “it becomes apparent that porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) is making a bold attempt at taking over the world.” This witty observation from the Virginia Native Plant Society no longer strikes me as hyperbole. In all my years of conservation work in the Uwharries, I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered porcelain berry in anyone’s […]

Tall and slender even into his 70s, Haywood Rankin claims he was never much of an athlete. He says he lacked the speed and agility needed for football or basketball and the hand-eye coordination for baseball or tennis. After college, he spent time in Oxford, England, and finally found a sport that fit his skill […]

On Father’s Day, my sister and I honored the finest man in the Uwharries and beyond, and also a remarkable barn owl named Harvey. According to the Carolina Raptor Center, the lifespan of a barn owl (Tyto alba) in the wild is generally only two to five years. They can easily live twice as long […]

A long-range game plan to dramatically reduce Charlotte’s greenhouse gas footprint has been an on-again, off-again priority since 2007. That’s when Charlotte City Council adopted its first greenhouse gas emission reduction resolution. And now, after a lapse of 11 years, it’s on again. In one of his first initiatives as newly elected mayor in 2009, […]