Articles

As charter school enrollment has more than doubled across the U.S. over 10 years, demographic data are showing that charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools. Nationally, 2.5 million students were enrolled in charter schools in 2013 across the U.S. Just 10 years prior, enrollment was less than 1 million.[1] Despite that growth, […]

Charlotte for years has had a love-hate view of Atlanta, with civic leaders envying their fellow southeastern metro for its big-city status, achieved decades earlier than Charlotte’s. But sprawling growth and traffic congestion in the Georgia capital city fuel a We Don’t Want To Become Like Atlanta counterpoint. Last year a Charlottean became Atlanta’s planning […]

Are Millennials really so different from other generations? When it comes to housing preferences and opinions, the answer seems to be: Yes. And no. A ULI Charlotte survey prepared by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute that was released Thursday of Charlotte region residents asking about views on housing, transportation and community found some commonalities among […]

Along with a new light rail station on the UNC Charlotte campus, the Blue Line Extension will mean transportation changes on- and off-campus – in parking patterns, bus routes and campus shuttles – and the debut of a bike-share program. Many of the changes were outlined Tuesday night at a public forum on campus. The […]

[highlightrule]Can lower South End survive the large-scale cookie-cutter development now ravaging South End and NoDa? Charlotte can learn some lessons from another Millennial magnet city, Des Moines. Yes, Des Moines. [/highlightrule] In post-election America, consensus seems as unreachable as the lost land of Atlantis. Republican “Middle America” has triumphed over the Democratic coastal regions, and […]

Highlights Reports using ISC data We highlight recent research that utilizes data from the ISC Community Database. READ MORE ISC out and about While we love numbers and analyzing data, we also love being a part of the community. Check out how we have recently been active and where you might spot us next. READ […]

My husband’s cousin lives on a farm abutting Dartmoor National Park in Devon, England. (As my friend Sam says, everyone should have family so well placed.) Like the Uwharries, it’s a landscape of rolling topography punctuated with rocky outcrops, and the park is fragmented by villages and farms. Trails traverse a patchwork of public and […]

Because today is worldwide GIS Day, we’re highlighting a recent map from one of our researchers showing poverty rates in Mecklenburg County by census tract. Researcher Zach Szczepaniak collected poverty data from the 2014 data in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey – the most recent available for this level of detail. The map shows […]

Imagine: Charlotte neighborhoods with their own master plans to care for their trees. A citywide initiative to pinpoint neighborhoods with few trees and then help get trees planted there. A dependable, dedicated source of public money to care for Charlotte’s street trees. Assistance for low-income homeowners who can’t afford to give proper care to large […]

[highlightrule]Choices made decades ago ruled out the preservation of large-scale green belts or farmlands in Mecklenburg. This is the story of how that came about. [/highlightrule] You can drive south down Dixie River Road beyond the venerable Dixie Grill & Grocery and for 2 miles you’ll see only woods, a few driveways and the scattered […]

With early voting underway in a presidential election that has seemed to last forever, it’s worth remembering local elections are also on the ballot, even if they draw far less attention. And in Charlotte’s recent local election, 2015, older voters punched far above their weight. MORE ABOUT VOTING MORE CHARLOTTE DATA MORE NATIONAL DATA In […]

If your agency or organization would like an affordable, reliable way to gauge public opinion and attitudes, participate in the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s Annual Survey of Mecklenburg County residents. Participating agencies pay only for the questions they want to ask, as a way to share the cost of conducting the survey. The cost also […]