Quality of Life
Data You Can Use: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer
By Katie Zager and Mary Ann Priester
Are homes in your neighborhood getting bigger or smaller? Are residents in a specific community able to access essential services, such as grocery stores, or public transportation? Where should our community building efforts be focused? The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer can help answer these questions and […]
Data Made Better: How data pipeline automation transforms the Quality of Life Explorer
By Kailas Venkitasubramanian, Ph.D.
How can we understand Charlotte’s urban growth more holistically? With the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer, of course.
The Quality of Life Explorer: Big Value for Local Government
By Andrew Bowen, City of Charlotte The Charlotte Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer is a tool that provides incredible value to our local governments, especially the City of Charlotte. At its core, it is a single location that provides consistent, reliable, and up-to-date information about the City and its neighborhoods. Whether there is a need […]
Quality of Life Explorer Timeline
By Katie Zager Although we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Quality of Life Explorer, the history of Quality of Life in Charlotte actually goes back more than 25 years. Below is a brief timeline of the development of the Quality of Life project in Charlotte. 1993: Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Commission Identifies City Within […]
The Quality of Life Explorer: 10 years and Counting
Editor’s Note: We’re celebrating 10 years of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer. By Katie Zager The Charlotte Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer launched ten years ago as a collaboration between UNC Charlotte, The City of Charlotte, and Mecklenburg County. The dashboard, which can be found online at mcmap.org/qol is a neighborhood indicators project, showcasing […]
Quality of Life Explorer: Making data intelligible and available for journalists (like me!) who aren’t PhDs
By Ely Portillo What neighborhoods in Charlotte have a high share of renter households, and where are people most likely to own their homes? What parts of the county have the highest concentration of babies with low birth weights? Where can you find two adjacent communities with a nearly three-decade difference in average lifespans? If […]
Explore new data about Charlotte via interactive maps
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 […]
Explore everything from residential segregation to how much trash you generate with new maps
Which parts of Charlotte use the most water? Where is our growth eating up whatever vacant land is left in Mecklenburg County? Where are the racial, economic and other dividing lines that crisscross our community? You can answer these questions and more with the updated Quality of Life Explorer maps published online today. A joint […]
New maps let you explore patterns of income, racial segregation and more
Where you live in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County might reflect your race, income, education level, how old you are and even how likely you are to be in an area where eligible streams are adopted for clean-up. Newly updated maps from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer let you explore all these factors and more. […]
Updated maps let you explore Charlotte’s changing housing
Which Charlotte neighborhoods have gotten denser, with more residences per acre? Where have average home sizes ballooned? Is the proportion of single-family homes rising or falling in neighborhoods where new apartments and tear-downs vie for space? Newly updated maps on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer allow you to probe these questions and visualize changes […]