Fighting Sprawl With Smart Growth

"Intense neighborhood opposition has helped kill a handful of townhome developments and higher-density housing projects in Charlotte over the past year. It's a small number, compared with the scores of proposals the city has approved, but enough to make some anti-sprawl advocates and transit backers nervous. For Charlotte to combat suburban sprawl, they say, the city needs to embrace more concentrated development styles, particularly along transit corridors. That's a major tenet of "smart growth," a philosophy geared toward preserving undeveloped land on a city's edge, redirecting growth into older neighborhoods. It's an approach the City Council has endorsed."