2026 and the regional road ahead
For more than 25 years, I have been driving from a blue dot to a red dot, from the cities where I have lived in my adulthood to the rural Appalachian home of my childhood, with which I remain physically, emotionally and spiritually connected. Over the past 10 years, I’ve watched the chasms along my routes grow, the distances between the assumptions about the other multiply – about how people in one place or the other raise their kids, who is more patriotic, who belongs and who does not, who is moral and good, why anyone would vote for the person the other voted for and so on – in unending proliferation. Gone seem the days when my Roosevelt grandfather and his Reagan sons-in-law would lovingly spar to both claim their own ground and understand their family.
Accompanied over time by cassettes then CDs then streaming and podcasts, I have become myself on these drives – making sense of what I see and feel, the way the world can be framed so differently, as well as the deep similarities of exhilarating to crushing human experience. As a social scientist, however, my road home isn’t just a personal journey, it’s substance for broader sensemaking. And in the past three years, since becoming the Executive Director of the Charlotte Urban Institute, I’ve been asking myself how that substance can inform how I lead this 56-year-old organization built to serve a diverse and urbanizing region through applied research, public service, and community engagement.
One answer the road has provided me is curiosity about the data behind our perceived differences and our similarities. I am aware, because I have a home in two different worlds, that both worlds worry about accessing and paying for healthcare, both worlds worry about the substitution of criminal justice for ongoing mental and behavioral health services when communities and families are wrecked by addiction, and both worlds worry about the ability for a full-time job to cover necessary expenses so people can build good lives for themselves and their families.
I am also aware that we have few resources that help us look across these worlds to understand where we can share or build common cause. We are a silo society and without real effort, it is too easy for me to sit in Mecklenburg County and have little understanding of what it means to sit in Gaston or Cleveland County beyond my regular drives on US 74. In 2026, the Institute will introduce two tools to help us see a bigger picture in our region, tools that we hope will help residents, change agents, and decision makers in our region take steps beyond the flood of misinformation and disinformation about the other toward action that supports everyone in our region.
Your Voice Carolinas
In February, we will field a first annual survey on quality of life and wellbeing for our 14-county Charlotte metro region, including both North and South Carolina counties. This marks the relaunch of the Institute’s survey center, now named Your Voice Carolinas, a previous service of the Institute that was shuttered during the pandemic.
The regional wellbeing survey will examine people’s perceptions of the biggest problems facing their communities, how satisfied people in the region are with their lives, their sense of belonging, and other key quality of life issues like safety, housing, food and financial security. It’s often these perceptions that drive decisions at individual and community levels, even if data on the number of housing units or episodes of violent crime suggests something different. We will combine different sampling methods and statistical tools to produce survey results that are representative of our regional population.
To understand issues, identify opportunities and get people engaged in solutions that work, it is important to use multiple types of data –
- data on public perceptions and opinion (for example, the percentage of people that believe housing is our biggest problem),
- data describing the extent and characteristics of an issue (for example, the number of housing units built in our region and the extent that supply is sufficient for current residents and those moving into the region),
- data detailing people’s experience of an issue (for example, a story of a family’s experience from eviction to housing stability),
- and, the historical and policy context of an issue (for example, the history of redlining that correlates with current housing and economic mobility outcomes).
Data from the regional wellbeing survey is one piece of an information puzzle that helps us see the bigger picture and other people’s perspectives better – it can help us be more informed and prepared to meet challenges and opportunities head on. We look forward to sharing your perspectives on our Charlotte region this Spring and we are grateful to The Gambrell Foundation for their sponsorship of this work and to the Happiness Research Institute and faculty members from the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences for their partnership in the research. For more information on the regional wellbeing survey, you can read our FAQs.
Carolinas Regional Explorer
Later this Spring, we will also release the Carolinas Regional Explorer, a web-based platform to examine data across our region at the county and census tract levels. Similar to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer, the Regional Explorer provides data across nine quality of life domains but with added functionality that enables users to identify clustering and hotspots and to understand how two variables are related in any given census tract.
The Carolinas Regional Explorer will also connect data about place to the context and stories that help us understand that place, the people, and the region better. In our hyper-divided society, particularly across urban and rural areas, data and stories that help us see others beyond differences and partisan politics create a firmer foundation for shared problem solving and a region that works for all of us.
You can take a peek now at the beta version of the mapping component of the Carolinas Regional Explorer, which includes a limited dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau. Leave us your questions or comments about the Explorer here and we’ll take those into consideration in the platform’s final design and functionality. If you’re a local or regional journalist or storyteller who would like to help us tell the story of our regional data from the Explorer and the regional wellbeing survey, please contact Asha Ellison for more information.
I have no illusion that data tools and research initiatives can fix the divides I have observed on my many trips home. The assumptions we make about ourselves, others and other places are powerful and they are engrained in our culture and our institutions. I have felt flattened to one dimension of myself by these assumptions, and I’m certain I’ve flattened others. It is hard to step outside the dominant division narratives.
I’m also mindful of the research literature that teaches us that to rush toward a forced unity without thoughtfully and meaningfully addressing the substance of divides is rarely effective and tends to reinforce the existing power dynamics, often creating further harm. Having data about where our perceptions, concerns, and hopes converge can’t fix what requires hard conversations, relationship building, and repair.
But I’m also aware of what’s at stake when we don’t push forward through the sea of divisive misinformation and disinformation toward a region that works for everyone – we risk our economy, our health, our environment, our safety, our future. The roads across our region and our state do not connect unrelated locations, but rather interconnected economic engines, resilience networks, and people whose welfare is tied to each other. At the Charlotte Urban Institute, we’re eager to provide tools and information that can equip our communities for this regional work.