PLANNING

Neighborhood activists fighting to preserve single-family-only neighborhoods, Charlotte City Council members worried about gentrification overwhelming historically Black neighborhoods and developers who want to stop any notion of new regulations like inclusionary zoning don’t often end up on the same side of an issue. But that’s the case in Charlotte, where concerns about the city’s proposed […]

Charlotte City Council members confronted an uncomfortable question Monday: How can you get people in the general public to pay attention to technical, somewhat boring, but extremely important matters like the city’s new development rules – before a major controversy erupts? Planning staff are nearing the finish line for Charlotte’s 2040 vision plan, which will […]

When the moving truck pulled up to the Dilworth duplex we’d been renting for years, I felt more than a twinge of regret to be leaving the urban amenities I’d come to love. Living within a short walk of two supermarkets, plentiful coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and some of Charlotte’s best parks was a fantastic […]

A few minutes after noon on a recent Friday, a single customer waited for lunch at the Halal food cart parked on the sidewalk at Trade and Tryon streets. A couple of workers in construction vests and a handful of security guards were the only other people in the plaza. The lunchtime crowd that would […]

I’ll never again look at a city’s Main Street the same way. In Mindy Thompson Fullilove’s newest book, Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All, she does something relatively rare for books about urban issues. Some focus on cities’ physical attributes, such as low-density single-family sprawl, building design, street grids, auto-dominated transportation, and […]

Parks in Charlotte can be a bit of a touchy subject. The system took a decade to recover funding and staffing levels after the Great Recession, and we’ve consistently placed near the bottom in national rankings for park space, spending and accessibility. So last week, Park & Recreation Director Lee Jones laid out three scenarios […]

Almost eight decades ago, Charlotte had just topped 100,000 residents, World War II raged, legal segregation was the law of the land and most of Mecklenburg County was still farmland. But despite the obvious differences from today, an urgent call in 1944 for the city to develop a plan to manage its growth still resonates […]

Charlotte is a city with growth embedded in its DNA, a community where striving to be “world-class” has both propelled us forward and papered over many disparities just beneath the surface. And Charlotte’s growth shows no signs of slowing down. With a host of plans coming together in 2021 that will set the city’s path […]

If we’re being completely honest, those of us who sat down this year to write traditional end-of-year reflections struggled to find something positive to say. I certainly did. Whether an organizational newsletter or a family’s holiday greeting card, it seemed the best one could say about 2020 is that it’s finally over. However, as I […]

As Charlotte continues its quest to become a more urban and cosmopolitan city, is it possible that the small towns and former mill villages dotting the land around Charlotte have something to teach us about how to solve some of the biggest and most pressing needs facing our big cities and suburbs today? Bill Fulton, […]