Charlotte has made significant progress in modernizing and broadening our toolbox for managing growth. Planning is an iterative process that requires multiple layers of guidance and direction. The Community Area Planning (CAP) process aligns with the following citywide policies, plans, and regulations, which influenced and shaped the resulting CAPs.
Equitable Growth Framework
The Comprehensive Plan’s Equitable Growth Framework (EGF) is a key organizing element for the CAPs, ensuring that local policy and investment decisions consider the needs of our most vulnerable populations to address inequities and support Charlotte as a place where all residents can thrive.
The EGF relies on four metrics, and a vulnerability to displacement overlay, to spatially assess varying conditions inform unique needs across different geographies of the city:
- Access to Essential Amenities, Goods, and Services
- Access to Employment Opportunities
- Access to Housing Opportunities
- Environmental Justice
Comprehensive Plan Goals
The Comprehensive Plan’s 10 Goals are the foundation for growth strategy in Charlotte. While all the goals are important across all geographies of the city, some rise to the top as most important, considering unique contextual factors and needs (e.g. EGF metrics). To advance the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan goals, the CAPs identify which goals are top priorities based on local needs for each geography.
All Charlotte households will have access to essential amenities, goods, and services within a comfortable and tree-shaded 10-minute walk, bike, or transit trip by 2040.
Charlotte will strive for all neighborhoods to have a diversity of housing options by increasing the presence of middle density housing (e.g. duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, accessory dwelling units, and other small lot housing types) and ensuring land use regulations allow for flexibility in creation of housing within neighborhoods.
Charlotte will ensure opportunities for residents of all incomes to access affordable housing through the preservation of naturally occurring affordable and workforce housing and increasing the number of affordable and workforce housing units through new construction.
Charlotte will promote moderate to high intensity, compact, mixed-use urban development along high-performance transit lines and near separated shared-use paths or trails.
Charlotte will provide safe and equitable mobility options for all travelers regardless of age, income, ability, race, where they live, or how they choose to travel. An integrated system of transit, bikeways, sidewalks, shared-use paths, and streets will support a sustainable, connected, prosperous, and innovative network that connects all Charlotteans to each other, jobs, housing, amenities, goods, services, and the region.
All Charlotteans will live and work in safe and resilient neighborhoods that enable healthy and active lifestyles by reducing exposure to harmful environmental contaminants, expanding and improving the quality of tree canopy, encouraging investment in walking, cycling, and recreation facilities, and providing access to healthy food options and health care services.
Charlotte will protect and enhance its surface water quality, tree canopy, and natural areas with a variety of trees, plantings, green infrastructure, green building practices, and open space at different scales throughout the entire community as a component of sustainable city infrastructure.
Charlotteans will have opportunity for upward economic mobility through access to a diverse mix of jobs and careers that align with education and skill levels of residents and the economic strengths of the region.
Charlotte will cultivate community-driven placemaking and identity, while limiting displacement and retaining the essence of existing neighborhoods by intentionally directing redevelopment.
Charlotte will align capital investments with the adopted growth strategy and ensure the benefit of public and private sector investments benefit all residents and limit the public costs of accommodating growth.
Comprehensive Plan Place Types & Policy Map
The Comprehensive Plan’s Place Types comprise place-based policies, providing essential direction for 10 unique types and intensities of future development and land uses, building form and design, mobility, and open space integration. The Policy Map represents a spatial translation of these Place Types to specific geographies, providing essential direction to support the City’s growth strategy.
Lower density housing areas primarily comprised of single-family or small multi-family homes or ADUs.
Higher density housing areas that provide a variety of housing types such as townhomes and apartments along side neighborhood-serving shops and services.
Small, walkable mixed-use areas, typically embedded within neighborhoods, that provide convenient access to goods, services, dining, and residential for nearby residents.
Serve to protect public parks and open space while providing rest, recreation, and gathering places.
Mid-sized mixed-use areas, typically along transit corridors or major roadways, that provide access to goods, services, dining, entertainment, and residential for nearby and regional residents.
Primarily car-oriented destinations for retail, services, hospitality, and dining, often along major streets or near interstates.
A cohesive group of buildings and public spaces that serve one institution such as a university, hospital, or office park.
Vibrant areas of mixed-use and employment, typically in older urban areas with uses such as light manufacturing, office, studios, research, retail, and dining.
Employment areas that provide a range of job types, services, and wage levels in sectors such as production, manufacturing, research, distribution, and logistics.
Large, high-density mixed-use areas, typically along transit corridors or major roadways, that provide access to goods, services, dining, offices, entertainment, and residential for regional residents and visitors.
Other Key Plans and Regulatory Tools
Strategic Mobility Plan (SMP)
The Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) developed and oversees implementation of the SMP (adopted in 2022), which outlines a vision to provide safe and equitable mobility choices for people of all ages and abilities. Through this plan, Charlotte will continue our commitment to Vision Zero, establish a 50-50 mode share aspiration, expand transit throughout our city, and prepare for the future of mobility.
The SMP includes the Charlotte Streets Map, which spatially illustrates the multi-modal vision for various arterial street design typologies across the city and provides guidance for public and private investments.
2040 Transit System Plan (TSP)
Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) is embarking on an update to the current 2030 Transit System Plan, with the goal to integrate current strategies and multiple aspects of the transit vision, including the Better Bus Plan, the Rapid Transit Corridor System Plan, and the Envision My Ride Plan.
Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP)
The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Charlotte Urban Area, which includes Iredell, Mecklenburg, and Union counties. The CRTPO leads transportation planning efforts for the region, along with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and supports 24 member jurisdictions through coordinated initiatives and the allocation of federal transportation funds. The MTP serves as a key planning resource for these regional efforts.
Meck Playbook
Mecklenburg County Parks & Recreation developed and oversees implementation of the Meck Playbook (adopted in 2021), which includes four guiding principles that shape system-wide goals, strategies, and recommendations to enhance and improve how the agency will serve the residents of Mecklenburg County. The Meck Playbook provides clear direction on actions that should be taken over then next 10 years and methods to measure progress.
Strategic Energy Action Plan (SEAP)
The “Sustainable and Resilient Charlotte by 2050 Resolution” was unanimously passed by City Council in 2018, setting ambitious municipal and community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals for Charlotte. Specifically, it strives for city fleets and facilities to be fueled 100% by zero-carbon sources by 2030 and for Charlotte to become a “low carbon city” by 2050 by reducing GHG emissions to less than two tons of CO2 equivalent per person annually. This resolution prescribed the development of the Strategic Energy Action Plan (SEAP), developed and implemented by the Office of Sustainability and Resilience, to provide guidance to the City for how to reach these goals.
Public Facilities & Services
Planning for the maintenance and expansion of public facilities and services is essential, particularly as the city grows, to maintain the high quality of life that residents expect. Key public service providers, including departments and agencies that oversee water and sewer, stormwater, police, fire, parks, and schools, provided critical input to the CAP process, ensuring a common understanding of citywide and place-specific growth projections and strategies. A collaborative planning approach enables providers to maintain existing facilities and effectively plan for future needs by aligning system planning with anticipated future demand.
Unified Development Ordinance (UDO)
Charlotte’s UDO (adopted in 2022, effective in 2023) simplifies, consolidates, and updates the regulations that guide development in Charlotte into a single document, making development standards easier to understand and navigate. The UDO aligns these standards with the vision of the Comprehensive Plan and other adopted City policies. The UDO Zoning Districts and Comprehensive Plan Place Types work symbiotically to realize the community’s vision for growth and development as there is at least one Zoning District that aligns with each of the 10 Place Types.
Corridors of Opportunity (COO)
Charlotte’s COO program is a coordinated and strategic investment initiative to foster thriving communities for residents and businesses, to build lasting legacies, and to grow communities equitably. The program, which is cross-collaborative among public agencies and institutions and private philanthropy, targets six historically underinvested corridors to effectively address concentrated areas with specific needs. Each corridor has a unique strategy (COO Playbooks), developed in collaboration with the community to ensure holistic and community-driven equitable investment, designed to guide implementation for projects, programs, and partnerships that advance six of the 10 Comprehensive Plan goals.