ECONOMY

The following commentary first appeared in the April 29, 2011 issue of the Charlotte Business Journal: Initial population data from the 2010 Census show that the Charlotte region maintained its status as one of the nation’s fastest growing metro areas. Charlotte grew to a population of 731,424 in 2010, an increase of 35.24% since 2000. […]

The March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated the northeast coastal area of Japan has highlighted the extreme vulnerability of man-made infrastructure to natural hazards. Despite tremendous advances in engineering and construction, disasters of this magnitude lead us to question whether or not we should build infrastructure robust enough to withstand such a devastating […]

Controversies over school closures in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County over the past year have refocused public attention on issues of race in our community. While the explosive growth of the Hispanic population has been a more recent demographic trend, the issue of residential segregation among blacks and whites has a much longer history in this […]

On Wednesday, March 2nd, the first set of data from the 2010 Census was released for North Carolina counties, cities, towns, etc., providing the first hard population counts for these areas since 2000. We know that the Charlotte region as a whole has grown rapidly in the last decade, but how has that growth been […]

What should Charlotte look like? When discussing urban design many planners, architects and developers assume that what works in New York, San Francisco and Portland should work here. This assumption ignores the reality that Southerners have a very different perspective on “urbanness” than non-Southerners. No one has asked Charlotteans what they want their city to […]

Among the many state programs whose futures hang in the balance as North Carolina’s leadership wrestles with how to close the state’s projected budget shortfall are the four “trust funds” that have served as the primary sources of funding for land conservation over the past few decades. As leaders debate their future, a new report […]

Headlines have highlighted multiple demographic trends affecting Charlotte and the metro area over the last decade. “Carolinas lead the nation in Hispanic growth,” read the headline of a Charlotte Observer story in 2008. The city has ranked highly on “Best City” lists for African Americans throughout the 2000s. Moving beyond the headlines, however, is there […]

The emergence of the biotechnology sector was not due to luck, rather it was due to vision, the ability to see the invisible and do the impossible. Our state prepared for success by investing in roads, K-12 education, community colleges, universities, research, innovation, business parks and biotechnology agencies (e.g. BioNetwork, NC Biotechnology Center and the […]

Today’s public libraries are expected to deliver traditional services in a rapidly changing technological environment . As libraries struggle to maintain high quality programs that are financially sustainable, the impact of the recent recession and the consequent decline in financial support further challenges libraries to find ways to survive while continuing to deliver essential services. […]

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 […]