Michael Gallis is a longtime planner with a big idea for Charlotte: Throw out the city's transit expansion plans and start from scratch. Gallis, who's been involved in some of the big plans guiding Charlotte's future, doesn't hold back when he talks about what's wrong with Charlotte's plans and how the city should do something different. Gallis joined the Future Charlotte podcast to talk about transit, transportation, what's driving economic growth and why the city he nicknames "Boosterville" needs to get real about the threats looming on the horizon, from climate change to a lack of equitable ..read more

Charlotte loves its trees. But are we willing to do all that we can to save them? That's the paradoxical question confronting Jane Singleton Myers, executive director of TreesCharlotte. The city's iconic tree canopy has shrunk from 49% to 45% coverage as of 2017, and likely more in the five years since the last comprehensive measurement. Myers joined the Future Charlotte podcast to talk about how Charlotte can preserve its tree canopy, why it matters that we do so (hint: shade and rain), and how a city that loves both growth and trees can balance competing interests. Myers also talks about her ..read more

From seemingly endless heat waves in the west to catastrophic floods from Kentucky to Pakistan, a drumbeat of extreme weather has dominated the news this summer. In Charlotte, it can feel like we’re not on the front lines of climate change — we’re not on the coast watching sea levels creep up, or out west watching rivers wither under record droughts — but we’re seeing the effects too. Hotter, muggier summers, heavier downpours, stronger storms. And we’re going to see more changes in the coming years. There are few people watching our weather as closely as Brad Panovich, chief meteorologist for ..read more

When it comes to the creative scene, Charlotte isn’t often mentioned in the same breath as peer cities like Austin or Nashville. After all, our city’s unofficial tagline is “Banktown,” not “Music City” or “Keep Austin Weird.” But Charlotte does have a thriving creative community. And a new study by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute provides more details about that community’s assets, challenges and what we can do to provide artists, singers, graphic designers and other creatives with more support. Based on a survey of more than 630 local creatives, this new study found many encouraging signs ..read more

Charlotte’s seen rapid growth over the past several decades, but many say that boom has come at the cost of inclusivity and, perhaps, even a bit of the city’s soul. With the loss of many historic buildings and without much of an identifiable design vernacular — aside, perhaps, from the profusion of five-story apartment buildings — Charlotte’s even been accused of looking bland. And many of the city’s residents have been excluded from decision-making about Charlotte’s growth, exemplified most strikingly in the urban renewal program that demolished Black neighborhoods such as Brooklyn in uptown ..read more

One of Charlotte's quintessential suburban communities has big plans to transform itself into a dense, walkable, mixed-use center. Greenways, sidewalks, protected bike lanes and transit would replace the car-choked expressways and huge parking lots that dominate the auto-centric area now. We're not talking about Ballantyne or SouthPark. Leaders in University City — Charlotte's second-largest employment district and youngest neighborhood — are betting they can take a part of the city that developed in the heyday of the car and turn it into a walkable neighborhood. Tobe Holmes, interim executive ..read more

When WFAE, The Charlotte Ledger and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute launched a joint newsletter last year to cover transit and transportation, we assumed that the main focus would be the 1-cent transit sales tax vote. Well, that vote didn't happen and the transit plan is in a bit of limbo, but we've still found plenty to write about, from Chick-fil-A's humongous backups to the NC DOT's yawning budget hole, the "stigma" facing bus riders to the real reason there are no plans for a train directly to the airport. Hear from Ely Portillo (UNC Charlotte), Steve Harrison (WFAE) and Tony Mecia (Char ..read more

Corporate landlords like American Homes 4 Rent and Invitation Homes now own 40,000 single-family homes across North Carolina. In Mecklenburg County, they now account for one in four rental properties. That's according to a new, months-long investigation by the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer. The series, "Security for Sale," details how Wall Street-backed companies built a money-making machine in the aftermath of the Great Recession, buying huge portfolios of houses and converting them into financial products. Tyler Dukes, one of the investigative reporters behind the se ..read more

Lots of people want to make Charlotte less car-dependent. Harrison Tucker, the CEO of SpaceCraft, is taking concrete steps to do so. He's the developer behind the Joinery, a parking-free apartment building along the Blue Line in Charlotte. The city's first such development, Tucker's project is a test case for Charlotte - are enough people ready for a car-free (or car-lite) lifestyle to make it work ..read more

Charlotte is usually described as a car-dependent city, where you have to have an automobile to effectively get around. Pam Murray tries to show that's not the case, living her life almost car-free in sprawling Charlotte. And she thinks a lot more of us could be doing the same - even if it sounds a little daunting at first ..read more