The future of transportation has arrived in Charlotte — but the future comes with a few asterisks.
This year has already seen a slew of announcements about futuristic transportation options in the Charlotte region (to say nothing of a new robot security guard uptown and...
Read moreMaybe it’s because I’ve spent the past two years obsessing over the squiggly lines charting COVID's peaks and troughs. I began to imagine the shape a graph might take if I plotted the occurrence of spring wildflowers and neotropical migrants.
I envision the wildflower display as two gentle but significant peaks – one in mid-March and the other in mid-April. Migrating birds increase at...
Read moreJohn Holmes III was a budding urbanist in Charlotte, reading books like "Street Fight" and wondering why we built our cities to drive everywhere. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran working at Chick-fil-A, Holmes was trying to reconcile his workplace's busy drive-thru with his own ideas about building better cities. When he posted his opinion online about a new drive-thru-only Chick-fil-A, he quickly...
Read moreYour access to medicine, lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines and other pharmacy services might depend on what part of town you live in.
The Urban Institute recently updated the Quality of Life Explorer data maps to include several new metrics, one of which is particularly relevant as we enter year three of the global pandemic. “Proximity to a pharmacy,” ...
Read moreHistorians, environmental scientists, urban designers, and planners will discuss implications of urban growth and potential futures at a symposium co-sponsored by the College of Arts + Architecture's City Building Lab, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, the Capitalism Studies program, and the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Guest...
Read moreWall Street-backed companies are buying thousands of single-family homes and turning them into rentals across the Charlotte region. Local officials are worried about the effects on affordability, home ownership and equity — but there isn’t much they can do to directly stop the trend.
That’s what Mecklenburg County commissioners heard this week from county staff and a panel of local...
Read moreCharlotte’s $13.5 billion transit and transportation plans might be on hold, but plans for how to build the signature Silver Line light rail are still pushing ahead.
Officials from the Charlotte Area Transit System reviewed a new study about how to facilitate transit-oriented development around each of the Silver Line’s 31 planned stops. The 29-mile light rail line, which would run...
Read moreFor the first time in three years, Charlotte City Walks are back with a full line-up of free, in-person, community-led tours to introduce Charlotteans to new sides of their city.
City Walks were canceled in 2020 and went virtual-only in 2021 because of the pandemic. This year, we are excited to welcome people from across our community to once again gather and learn about Charlotte's...
Read moreWe often paint Charlotte’s housing market in broad strokes: rising prices, bidding wars and gentrification reshaping neighborhoods.
Updated data on the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer lets you can dig deeper into the story told by those aggregate numbers. Charlotte’s neighborhoods are starkly different when it comes to...
Read moreHow do you make a sprawling city that came of age in the automobile era less car-dependent?
One approach: Don't devote so much space to cars.
That's the thinking behind the Joinery, a new, 83-unit apartment complex that's opening just north of the Parkwood station on the Blue Line light rail. The six-story building has no parking on-site, except for a few spaces devoted to...
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