Publications and Reports

It is commonly expected that consolidating Charlotte and Mecklenburg County will result in less government fragmentation, fewer elected officials and lower the cost of service provision. It very well may, but citizens should know that nothing is guaranteed when it comes to city-county consolidation. And some of the commonly held beliefs about consolidation may not, […]

A Comparison of Findings and Recommendations of Two Reports: “Preparing Our Youth for Work: A Community Assessment”, August 2010 UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and “Workforce Development Sector Analysis: Focusing on Workforce Development for Adults with Barriers to Employment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg”, August 2011 Carol Morris Consulting and The Lee Institute Two different studies in the past […]

Since the completion of the report in May, UWCC and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute have held several meetings to inform the greater community about the findings and recommendations from the study. Presentations were made to top CEOs in Mecklenburg County, the United Way Board of Directors, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Cabinet. Additional presentations […]

In June 2010, United Way of Central Carolinas commissioned the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute to conduct a comprehensive community needs assessment for its five-county service area. The primary purpose of the study was to pinpoint the community’s greatest needs and identify gaps in the current array of human services. This study is one of several […]

The needs assessment was in response to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s emergence as what Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer of the Pew Hispanic Center and Brookings Institution termed a “Hispanic Hypergrowth Metro.” Between 1990 and 2000 Mecklenburg’s Hispanic population – as captured by the census – grew by more than 38,000 persons (from about 7,000 to 45,000). In […]

City-County consolidation, when a county and the cities within a county merge to form a single government entity, is the most visible and comprehensive change in the local government structure. With an average passage rate of fifteen percent, and only forty total consolidations in the US, city-county consolidation is an extremely rare event. Yet, during […]

How do you define good school bus service? If you ask parents or students, you may hear about pickup times, long rides and time spent waiting at school for class to start or the evening bus to arrive. With tightening budgets, school officials are more focused than ever on efficiency, but everyone wants the best […]

The Transportation Service Indicator Report is released annually by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and compiled at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute in cooperation with the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University. This report summarizes operational data for every North Carolina public school district. Based on data […]

The Reporting on Growth and Open Space Project produced the Open Space Journalism Resource Manual. The manual combines a wealth of information for journalists on generating story ideas and researching stories on growth, open space and related issues. The Open Space Journalism Resource Manual is available in our web publications section. (Note: this is a […]

This 1995 report on the region was published in multiple regional newspapers. Written by Neal Peirce, Curtis Johnson and Alex Marshall, it examines a range of regional issues. Download PDF