PLANNING

Nowhere in Charlotte embodies the city’s awkward and aspirational transition from car-centric Sun Belt suburbia to denser, walkable urbanism quite like a pair of fried chicken restaurants in Cotswold. Located next to each other near the intersection of Randolph and Sharon Amity roads, Bojangles and Chick-fil-A have both filed rezoning requests to demolish their existing […]

When it comes to planning, development and land use regulation, it’s easy to let your eyes glaze over in the alphabet soup of jargo. So, let’s get a little nerdy and jump right into the alphabet soup of zoning, land use, planning and development on this episode. Join us for a talk with Keba Samuel […]

When it comes to Charlotte’s urban design, there’s a perception that the city is dominated by apartments and bland, corporate towers. But a new award series is trying to prove that’s not the whole story. The Charlotte Urban Design Awards (or Urbies) relaunched this year, co-hosted by the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture […]

When you think “Charlotte” and “urban design,” do you think “bland” or “exciting”? A new awards series, the Charlotte Urban Design Awards, is meant to prompt you to think more of the latter and less of the former. While Charlotte might get an unfair rap as a city of bland office towers and five-story, stick-built […]

There are, broadly, two big worlds that overlap in the planning and development realm: The dirty, hands-on physical world of building and construction, and the wonky, alphabet-soup-of-jargon world of zoning, regulation and land use policy. Right now, Charlotte’s in the heat of the wonky phase. Although it’s drawn far less attention than the contentious debate […]

Charlotte’s growth rests, in the end, on the people who actually build our city: The construction industry. In this episode of the “Future Charlotte” podcast, general contractor Myers & Chapman CEO Marcus Rabun talks about the near-term challenges facing the industry such as covid-19, material and labor shortages. Rabun also discusses what might be an […]

As Charlotte grows rapidly, concerns about gentrification and displacement have become key issues for city government to address. Tracking gentrification and displacement can be challenging, as this process of neighborhood change is slow and takes many forms across space and time. However, when analyzed with viable data sources, areas that are potentially vulnerable to gentrification […]

After the City Council narrowly approved the 2040 plan, Charlotte leaders are turning from questions of how we grow to another key part of the city’s future: how we move around. Ambitious transit plans that call for a new sales tax funding the Silver Line east-west light rail, the stalled Red Line to the north, […]

This story is part of Transit Time, a joint production of The Charlotte Ledger, UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute, and WFAE. Learn more here, and subscribe to get weekly updates on how the Charlotte region moves. With smaller employers returning to the office and the big banks bringing most of their workers back over the next […]

For something that’s supposed to be a big-picture, high-level peek at the future, the Charlotte 2040 vision plan has gotten bogged down in the details since its debut last fall. After months of tense City Council meetings, contested straw votes, community and industry groups pushing for and against the plan, and interdepartmental sniping via competing […]