Articles

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Mapping CMS high school data
   January 15, 2013

How well do you understand the differences between high schools in CMS? After years of rapid growth and changing demographics in Mecklenburg County, it may be time to update your perspective. Read more


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Clouds create dramatic skies
   January 14, 2013
Ruth Ann Grissom
Old Man Winter is stingy with his days.  He seems to begrudge us every second of tepid light.  At sunset, though, he becomes an extravagant spender – the bon vivant who picks up the tab for everyone at the bar. Read more


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Charlotte economic outlook improves for first quarter
   January 10, 2013

The first quarter 2013 Charlotte Business Confidence Index report, released Jan. 2, shows Mecklenburg County business leaders' optimism about economic prospects in the first quarter 2013 improved compared to their expectations for the fourth quarter 2012. Read more


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Tracking neighborhood trends just got easier
   January 10, 2013
Mary Newsom
Since 1993 the City of Charlotte has tallied information about some (and in later years all) city neighborhoods, in its regular Quality of Life reports. But this year major changes are afoot for the project, which opened its online doors to the public on Monday. Read more


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How to find information on your neighborhood
   January 9, 2013

The new Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Dashboard gives information on a variety of neighborhood conditions, providing some of the most extensive neighborhood-level information available in the United States. Read more


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Can Charlotte learn to love Modernist homes?
   January 8, 2013
Mae Israel

The house at 1154 Cedarwood Lane in Charlotte once sat on the eastern outskirts of the city, a wooded, secluded haven in the 1960s where artists would gather on Sunday afternoons. Today, it’s a potential historic landmark in a city that has never opened its heart to Mid-Century Modern architecture.

The original owners, potter Herb Cohen and visual artist and textile designer José...

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In 2013, can region apply lessons from past 5 years?
   December 17, 2012
Jeff Michael
2013 may be a year historians look back on as the time local leaders hit the “reset” button on issues that had been at the forefront of public policy discussions before the 2008 economic meltdown. Will leaders revisit these issues following the same assumptions and conventional strategies as before? Or will lessons learned in the past five years and a new set of leaders take the region down an... Read more


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How green is your ‘green’ tree?
   December 13, 2012
Ruth Ann Grissom
What if you want a “green” Christmas tree but don’t share my sentimental attachment to scrawny, prickly cedars cut down from the fields – or don’t have access to one? “Reduce, reuse and recycle” might point you toward a fake tree to be used year after year, but with Christmas trees, the issues are a little more complicated. Read more


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Mecklenburg charter schools: Maps, data and more
   December 11, 2012

Charter school students make up less than 6 percent of Mecklenburg’s public school student population. However, the county leads the state in the number of students attending charter schools. Interactive maps show where schools are and how they compare to each other. Read more


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We live with ghosts of cities past
   December 6, 2012

Ghosts and cities often occur together, and not only in fiction. Kevin Lynch writes about how we "read" cities. Many descriptions of our surroundings are accompanied by the ghosts of what used to be there. Changes can leave scars on our mental map. Read more