General News

Charlotte’s transit plan is dead — long live the Charlotte region’s transit plan? It’s been almost two years since the $13.5 billion Charlotte MOVES plan was unveiled, and there have been weeks of hints that changes are coming to the city’s plan for expanded rail, bus and other transportation options. Now, the shape and scope […]

No local issue has been bigger than housing in Charlotte for the past few years — specifically, how much it costs to find a place to live. The soaring cost of housing dominates local news, local government meetings and local conversations. Talk to anyone in Charlotte, and it won’t be long before you hear some […]

The 1986 animated film An American Tail celebrates America’s story of immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s–using mice as stand-ins for the humans who came to these shores from Eastern and Southern Europe. The anthropomorphic rodents’ unrealistic hopes for their new home were best expressed in the song “There Are No Cats in […]

From seemingly endless heat waves in the west to catastrophic floods from Kentucky to Pakistan, a drumbeat of extreme weather has dominated the news this summer. In Charlotte, it can feel like we’re not on the front lines of climate change — we’re not on the coast watching sea levels creep up, or out west […]

I love playing matchmaker in my garden. I introduce plants that will be compatible in terms of color, texture and form. As with humans, the best relationships achieve a balance of contrast and harmony. For example, I paired little bluestem and rattlesnake master because they share the same blue foliage, but one is coarse and […]

Almost two years after Charlotte’s ambitious transit expansion plan was unveiled, local officials are admitting something that’s become increasingly apparent: It might not come to fruition, at least not as originally proposed. That’s because the linchpin of the whole $13.5 billion Charlotte MOVES plan — a one-cent local sales tax that would require approval from […]

With a “silver tsunami” of business owner retirements looming and major generational transfers of wealth on the horizon, employee ownership of small businesses could be an attractive strategy for many firms — as well as beneficial for society. That’s what a group of researchers from UNC Charlotte and the North Carolina Employee Ownership Center found […]

Let’s be honest: When you think “Charlotte,” the next words to pop into your head aren’t “creative powerhouse,” are they? People are more likely to think of Charlotte as a center of banking and finance, a busy airline hub, or a hothouse for the booming real estate market. But Charlotte is also a creative center […]

The Charlotte region is a banking hub, an air travel hub, even a sports hub — but is it a “brain hub”? That’s the most important question local policymakers will find themselves asking after reading Enrico Moretti’s The New Geography of Jobs. Brain hubs enjoy disproportionate prosperity and opportunity, and the gap between them and […]

The Quality of Life Explorer — Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s source for more than 80 interactively mapped variables about the economy, environment, demographics and more — has been updated with new information allowing you to explore our community. Maps that rely on data from the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey are now up-to-date. This includes variables such as […]