Tag: news
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SEEN / UNSEEN GREENVILLE: What Happens When Multiple Visions of a City Collide at the Same Intersection?
A while back, I became involved in a project called Pleasant Roast — a proposed drive-thru coffee concept planned for a busy Greenville corridor. On the surface, it seemed simple enough: take an underused property, create a practical local business, and build something people would actually use. But the deeper we got into the process,…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: What South Carolinians Say They Actually Want
There’s a strange thing happening in South Carolina right now. On one side, the state is booming. Cranes everywhere. Subdivisions spreading into old fields and forests. Distribution centers. Data centers. Luxury apartments. “Top Places to Move.” “Fastest Growing.” “Business Friendly.” The official story is momentum. But underneath that polished story, there’s another South Carolina talking.…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: Woodruff Road and Greenville’s Growing System Problem
Future City Greenville is the systems and planning side of Seen / Unseen Greenville. Instead of focusing mainly on history, it explores where Greenville is headed and how growth, infrastructure, development, traffic, housing, and city-county coordination shape daily life. At its core, it asks a simple question: What kind of regional system are we actually…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Truth About Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville, South Carolina sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, tucked between Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia — close enough to all of them to feel their influence, but increasingly its own thing entirely. Once known primarily as a textile mill town, Greenville has reinvented itself repeatedly throughout its history: from frontier…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: Can We Avoid Woodruff Road (Part 2)?
Everyone who has seen Jaws 2 knows a few things: the shark is back and mad, and the same mayor is still in charge, doing the same damn things all over again. That’s the feeling you get if you look at what’s happening on Laurens Road—and what could be coming next. Because if we’re not…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: Unity Park, Social Justice, and the Tower to Nowhere
There is a lot to admire about Unity Park. It is beautiful, spacious, and full of life. It transformed long-overlooked land near the Reedy River into one of Greenville’s most impressive public spaces. Families gather there, kids play there, people walk and rest there, and for many residents it has become a genuine source of…
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Fear of a Post-Knox White Greenville
It is an odd thing to worry about a city after the departure of a leader who has been in office so long that many residents barely remember life before him. But that is where Greenville may now find itself. For nearly three decades, Knox White has been one of the defining faces of modern…
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The Whitening of Greenville: Gentrification and Pushed-Out People
Greenville’s Favorite Story About Itself Greenville loves the story it tells about itself. It is a story of redemption, polish, and smart civic leadership. A former mill town that once struggled with decline reinvented itself into one of the most celebrated small cities in America. Downtown was revived. Main Street became a destination. Falls Park…
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Seen/Unseen Greenville: This Place Has Never Been One Thing
Welcome to Seen / Unseen Greenville This blog will still have all kinds of posts. Politics, family, recovery, culture, whatever life puts in front of me. That part isn’t changing. But I wanted to mark a new direction I’m excited about. I’ve lived in Greenville most of my life, and like a lot of people,…
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Who Tells the Story of Greenville, SC?
There was a time when every city had a stronger sense of itself because it had people whose job was to pay attention. Not perfect people. Not always brave people. Not always right people. But reporters. Editors. Photographers. Columnists. The kind of people who sat through zoning meetings so you didn’t have to. The kind…
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Waiting Until It’s Safe: How Local Media Lost Its Nerve
I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of journalism—national and local. And the more I look at it, the more I see the same problem everywhere: no one wants to be first unless it’s guaranteed to be a win. I recently spoke to a local reporter at the Post and Courier about covering my…
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What Are We Trying to Conserve?
A personal reckoning with the myths, machinery, and morality of modern conservatism I’m not a political scientist. I’m not a historian.I’m not trying to go viral, win an argument, or “own” anybody. I’m just someone who’s been thinking—really thinking—about how we got here. How certain ideas took hold.How they shaped the world around us.And why…
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 