Mary Newsom

UNC Charlotte Urban Institute

Director of Urban Policy Initiatives

Biography

Mary is a lifelong newspaper journalist who spent several decades at The Charlotte Observer as an editorial board member and columnist, concentrating on Charlotte regional urban and suburban growth, planning, urban design, transportation and land preservation. She left the Observer and joined the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute in June 2011, where she works on strategic community and university partnerships and oversees the institute’s online publications. She had a year-long Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University 2007-08, and in 2005-06 was a Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami.

Education

A.B. Journalism UNC Chapel Hill

Expertise

Urban and suburban issues, Charlotte region and North Carolina politics and government, writing, editing and journalism.

Articles

Sun Belt cities are driving much of our urban growth. Let’s study them.

ui.uncc.edu

Jul 06, 2020

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 those Sun Belt cities – treating them as a specific genre that needs its own body of research.
Post-coronavirus, everything will change in cities — or not

ui.uncc.edu

Jun 04, 2020

We who write about cities are quick to make predictions. Some will prove prescient. Some won’t. But nobody really knows. Cities aren’t all alike. New York’s texture, way of life and pandemic experience are not Charlotte’s, or Houston’s, or Seattle’s. And this: We humans have a long history of behaving both predictably and unpredictably.
Review: In ‘A Delicious Country,’ an author rediscovers the Carolinas

ui.uncc.edu

Jul 22, 2019

You probably have never heard of John Lawson. Scott Huler aims to change that. Lawson was an Englishman and explorer who, over two months in late 1700 and early 1701, traveled almost 600 miles through the Carolinas, including through what’s now Charlotte. His book, A New Voyage to Carolina, recorded the terrain, plants and people he found. It was, as Huler writes, one of the most important early books to emerge from the colonial South.
Thoughts on a journey through small-town America

ui.uncc.edu

Oct 10, 2018

Authors James and Deborah Fallows, who’ll appear in Charlotte on Nov. 13, talk about their travels through America and what they discovered about civic revitalization.
Thoughts on a journey through small-town America

plancharlotte.org

Oct 10, 2018

Authors James and Deborah Fallows, who’ll appear in Charlotte on Nov. 13, talk about their travels through America and what they discovered about civic revitalization.
‘Repackaged Urban Renewal’? Research examines starter-home neighborhoods

plancharlotte.org

Aug 14, 2018

Two researchers conclude in a new article that many starter-home subdivisions in Charlotte, often built in industrial areas, saw neighborhood decline.
‘Repackaged Urban Renewal’? Research examines starter-home neighborhoods

ui.uncc.edu

Aug 14, 2018

Two researchers conclude in a new article that many starter-home subdivisions in Charlotte, often built in industrial areas, saw neighborhood decline.
Study: Charlotte region lags in food economy, farmers markets

plancharlotte.org

Jul 09, 2018

A new report finds Charlotte and its region are underperforming in many measurements of its local food economy.
Study: Charlotte region lags in food economy, farmers markets

ui.uncc.edu

Jul 09, 2018

A new report finds Charlotte and its region are underperforming in many measurements of its local food economy.
Eviction court: Where tenants, landlords, and the law converge

plancharlotte.org

Jun 07, 2018

When eviction lands in court, landlords usually have lawyers, and tenants rarely do. A local program to arm tenants with information aims to alter that imbalance.