Quality of Life Explorer

​​About the Quality of Life Explorer

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer is an online tool to explore the social, housing, economic, environmental, and safety conditions in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

This tool includes more than 80 maps, all of which free, interactive and fully embeddable on any website.

Local residents, businesses, service providers, government agencies, Realtors, universities and more can use the Explorer to learn more about the county and its neighborhoods, develop programs and services, and plan for the future. Each map also includes data sources, comparisons with previous years and additional context to help viewers understand and interpret the data.

[Explore all the Quality of Life maps online here]

What’s includ​ed?

  • More than 80 variables are mapped, providing detailed information about neighborhood demographics, the average age of houses, household income, jobs, health, education, tree canopy coverage, crime rates, code violations, community engagement, energy consumption and much more.
  • Maps, trend information, data tables and summary reports for 462 neighborhood profile areas.
  • The ability to explore data by custom geographies (i.e., the light rail corridor, school zones, business districts, or by jurisdiction such as the City of Charlotte).
  • Links to related city, county and community resources to help people learn more and take action.

The Quality of Life Explorer is created in partnership among the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, with participation from the towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill and Pineville.

The Quality of Life Explorer, formerly the Quality of Life Study, has been a resource to our community for more than 20 years. In 2012, the study transformed into an interactive dashboard that included all of Mecklenburg County. Prior to this, the data was available only in very large, printed reports (you can see historical reports below). Because of these changes, data prior to 2010 is not comparable to the data found on the dashboard today.

​Past reports:

If you have questions about the Quality of Life Explorer please contact:

Katie Zager
Research Associate
kzager@charlotte.edu