The early 20th century's "Watch Charlotte Grow" Drum and Bugle Corps. Because Charlotte always wants to grow. Photo courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.   At 9 a.m.Tuesday, I’ll be on a panel of four long-time Charlotteans on NPR station WFAE 90.7, discussing what Big Things have influenced Charlotte in the past 40 years. It’s part of WFAE’s celebrating its 40th anniversary. Learn more here. I hope you can listen in, or better yet join us in person. My fellow panelists – historian Tom Hanchett, documentary filmmaker Steve Crump, W ..read more

  I took this photo Thursday, after an hour in line waiting to get into the soon-to-close Price’s Chicken Coop. Almost another hour went by before I got to order. A grease-spotted takeout box, familiar to generations I stood in line two hours today to order chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, the iconic fried chicken takeout joint on Camden Road in South End that had just announced it will close in two days, on Saturday.   While I waited, all nostalgic with a bunch of mostly strangers, for that familiar grease-stained cardboard box and the amazingly tender Price’s f ..read more

   The 1930s Masonic Temple in downtown Scranton, Pa., is now the city's Cultural Center. Apologies that  the photo doesn’t do the building justice (thank you, electric wires).   SCRANTON, Pa. – I’ll get to why I'm in Scranton a bit later. I went for a Saturday morning stroll around downtown Scranton on a cloudy, temps-in-the-’40s day. Headline for those unfamiliar with northeast Pennsylvania: Scranton is not a booming Sun Belt city. One clue among many: There is an Anthracite Heritage Museum here. The city’s population is about 77,000, down from a peak of 143,000 ..read more

Image from draft of the 2040 Center City Vision Plan, of what might (in some distant future) be a large park where the Norfolk Southern rail yard is today, on North Tryon Street A few thoughts follow, after I listened this morning as Michael Smith of Charlotte Center City Partners briefed the City Council’s Transportation, Planning and Environment Committee on the 2040 uptown plan, known as the All In 2040: Center City Vision Plan. (Watch the meeting here.) That plan will be part of the massive Charlotte Future: 2040 Comprehensive Plan. (See draft here.) The Center City plan is still ..read more

Weeds that blocked the sidewalk have been removed. Now, anyone want to report that campaign sign illegally posted in the right-of-way? Photo: Mary Newsom Here’s a quick update to “A good walk spoiled," about the problem of vegetation, leaves and mud obstructing sidewalks. (Headline: Report it to the city via 311, via the “CLT+” smartphone app, or online here – it’s considered a nuisance report). After reporting it to 311 on Aug. 11, I got a call Monday, Aug. 17, from a city code enforcement inspector. He needed a specific address for the perennial problem on the Runnymede Lane sidewa ..read more

At least there’s a sidewalk. But shouldn’t walking be more comfortable than getting slapped in the face with overgrown weeds? Photo: Mary Newsom It was a morning walk along pandemic-cleared Providence Road. That means the street was seeing dramatically fewer vehicles than the 32,000-some it normally carries. And for once the pandemic was helpful, because the sidewalk was so obstructed in several spots that a couple of times I had to walk in the right lane of Providence Road. During rush hour. I was briefly – only very briefly – thankful for Covid-19. That morning walk in late July sp ..read more

Charlotte shares many urban problems with other boomimg Sun Belt cities. Photo: Daniel Weiss/Unsplash This article has also been published by my former employer, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. Read more of the institute’s offerings. The U.S. population, like that in Charlotte, is growing, and much of the growth is in the cities of the Sun Belt. A new report from a Houston university research center says the country should be paying more attention to Sun Belt cities like Charlotte – treating them as a specific genre that needs its own body of research. “Unfortunately, much of Am ..read more

Uptown Charlotte’s Brevard Court, before Covid-19 shut down bars. Photo courtesy of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute  After Covid-19, cities will change forever. Here’s a sampling of predictions I’m seeing: People will avoid close physical encounters. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll flock to crowded bars and restaurants after weeks of lockdown. Stores, bludgeoned by pandemic closings and high rents, will close. So will smaller, non-chain restaurants. Cities will become blander and more homogenized. Or maybe this: For a while small businesses will die and renters will flee. But t ..read more

Charlotte's first zoning map from 1947 shows development patterns that continue today almost 75 years later. Hanchett's book, with a new preface, describes how government actions like zoning shaped today's racial and economic segregation. Today's wealthiest area of south and southeast Charlotte appears here in green at the lower right corner, because the map is not oriented north-south. “Today’s decisions, consciously or unconsciously, rest on the platform of the past.”  –– Tom Hanchett, Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1975-1975 ..read more

The corner in NoDa where a scruffy deli-live music venue called Fat City once lived. Where the dumpster sits in this photo is where, 20 years ago, you would find bongo circles on Friday nights. Photo: Google Street View Through a roundabout way, someone emailed me something I wrote in 2002 for The Charlotte Observer about the NoDa neighborhood. It seems, today, oddly prescient. Almost two decades later, I can look at the neighborhood, which retains some of its original spirit, and at the column I wrote and see a description of organic, urban change, the kind where small investments create a ..read more