UNC Charlotte

The first recipient of a faculty research grant from the Institute for Social Capital, Inc. (ISC) will be Dr. Mason Haber, assistant professor in the UNC Charlotte Department of Psychology. The ISC this fall announced the creation of its first ISC Faculty Research Grant. The purpose of the grant is to provide funding to UNC […]

What would happen if Tryon Street in uptown Charlotte sprouted a series of small parklets? You can find out on Friday. Friday is international PARK(ing) Day, a do-it-yourself initiative taking place around the globe where people take places built for cars – parking places – and turn them into temporary parks. Although Charlotte urban designer […]

An economic meltdown threatens America’s middle class. UNC Charlotte sociologist Scott Fitzgerald’s most recent book, Middle Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences and Remedies, co-authored with Kevin T. Leicht, examines the political, economic and cultural changes that have created today’s situation. Fitzgerald will discuss the issues at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, in a free […]

Local streets have jammed with back-to-school traffic this week, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools opened for a new year. In most parts of the city, the start of UNC Charlotte’s academic year has not been as noticeable. But those of us at UNC Charlotte’s 1,000-acre campus 8 miles northeast of uptown see our own back-to-school jams, as […]

A 10-foot-wide asphalt path that officially opened Tuesday offers a glimpse of what could be a more pedestrian- and bike-oriented future for some of Charlotte’s least pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares. The path, 0.9 miles along University City Boulevard from Mallard Creek Church Road to UNC Charlotte’s main entrance at Broadrick Boulevard, is the first bike-ped trail along […]

When you hear that a new book “opens my eyes to an entirely new way of thinking,” as “Better! Cities & Towns” editor Rob Steuteville wrote, you may want to pay attention. Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism, by Benjamin Ross (Oxford University Press, 2014) has the potential to change the […]

When we turned from Mayflower Road onto Hendren Avenue, it hit me. This Revolution Park neighborhood in west Charlotte was a dead ringer for the neighborhood in southeast Charlotte where I bought a tiny house when I first moved to town three decades ago. That neighborhood, Chantilly, built in the 1940s, has now gone upscale, […]

Americans use an average of 60,000 plastic bags every minute – single-use disposable bags that we mindlessly throw away. It takes an estimated 12 million barrels of oil a year to make the plastic bags that Americans consume. And that’s just bags. Plastics surround us. Although Mecklenburg County now accepts most types of plastics for […]

When David Walters moved to Charlotte in 1990, you could pretty much fit all the people here who understood urbanism into one room. And when that happened – for instance, at the loosely organized Charlotte Urban Forum breakfast group – Walters was generally right in the thick of it. He’s been in the thick of […]

From Hyde Park to Sheffield Park to Madison Park, plenty of Charlotte-area neighborhoods are filled with people who love where they live. Now, they have an opportunity to show the world what’s remarkable about their neighborhoods. Learn more Want to lead a walk? Some tips Read about previous years’ walks: In Jane Jacobs’ footsteps, exploring […]