We’re excited that Charlotte has launched two pilot projects in the North End Smart District, with the goal of reducing waste. The programs are funded through a Neighborhood Matching Grant. Photo credit: Leaf Burrito

Before you head off on your Biketoberfest presented by The Charlotte Knights urban adventure on October 14th, make sure you have the route map on your phone!  This customized Google Map will give you turn by turn directions in case you get lost along the way. You can download the map for offline use, too! 

https://www.facebook.com/openstreets704/videos/236842907179253/Thousands of people filled the streets on Sunday, September 30th for Open Streets 704!  We hope you had a chance to participate in this fun people-powered event that closed 4 miles of streets from Charlotte’s South End to West End.  If you missed it, Open Streets 704 happens bi-annually, once in the spring and once in the fall, so you’ll get another chance.

On Friday, September 21st, Sustain Charlotte partnered with LS3P to participate in PARK(ing) day, an annual, global event where participants temporarily transform parking spaces into pop-up parks. The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of our urban human habitat. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.

The Charlotte City Council's Transportation and Planning Committee met for their September meeting, where they discussed the City's new visioning process to develop a Comprehensive Plan, improvements to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, and the e-scooter program.

This is the fifth article in our 8-part series of weekly blog posts called "The Good, the Bad, the Possibilities". For this series, we are asking local experts three questions to give you a quick overview of recent local trends and solutions with respect to a range of important issues that affect our community's sustainability. This week’s topic is air quality, and our featured experts are June Blotnick, Executive Director of Clean Air Carolina, and Terry Lansdell, Executive Director of BikeWalk NC.

This is the seventh article in our 8-part series of weekly blog posts called "The Good, the Bad, the Possibilities". For this series, we are asking local experts three questions to give you a quick overview of recent local trends and solutions with respect to a range of important issues that affect our community's sustainability. This week’s topic is local food, and our featured expert is Erin Hostetler, Board Member for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Food Policy Council.

You may be familiar with your local farmers market, or try to buy locally grown foods when you grocery shop. But do you know how our Charlotte-regional food economy stacks up against other peer regions? On September 12th, over 100 people joined us at The Barrel Room at Catawba Brewing to learn about local foods and how they can make a difference. We were excited to have representatives from Carolina Farm Trust, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Food Policy Council, and Rivendell Farms in the room to talk to people about the work they’re doing, in addition to our presenter, Tom Warshauer, Assistant Director of Community Engagement for the City of Charlotte.

At their September 10th meeting, the Charlotte City Council Environment Committee received an update on the Strategic Energy Action Plan (SEAP) that outlined the timeline and stakeholder engagement process.

Many senior adults in Charlotte struggle to maintain their mobility as they age, often resulting in social isolation and inability to meet daily needs. The gaps in Charlotte’s transportation network and barriers to mobility for seniors, particularly for those seniors who rarely leave their homes, are not fully understood. Thanks to the generous support of Southminster, Sustain Charlotte partnered with residents in four neighborhoods to evaluate a wide variety of factors that may limit senior mobility including health, safety, infrastructure, personal finances, knowledge of transportation options, comfort level using various transportation modes, and desire to maintain personal mobility. The goal was to not only identify specific mobility challenges that prevent Charlotte seniors from traveling to their desired daily destinations, but to also envision how the mobility needs of senior residents could be addressed. In this way, this is both a research and an action project with the project’s approach and outcomes being replicable in other Charlotte neighborhoods in the future. Sustain Charlotte worked with residents in Lincoln Heights, Hidden Valley, Washington Heights, University Park, and the West Blvd corridor, hosting workshops and conducting door-to-door surveying to identify specific senior mobility challenges.