General News
Two additions augment Urban Institute’s staff
Two recent staff changes at the Urban Institute have increased our capacity to work with partners and serve the community with data, research and outreach. First, Khou Xiong has joined the institute as Director of Community Research Services. Xiong has lived in Chapel Hill for most of the last two decades, and holds a Masters […]
Saving pollinators: The Great American Bee Count
The plight of honeybees has been well documented in recent years – their steep decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, and disease. The crisis has inspired many people to take up beekeeping in an effort to help stabilize bee populations. Even though honeybees aren’t native to the Americas – they arrived with European colonists […]
With Price’s closing, South End loses the last vestige from before “South End”
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Mary Newsom’s blog The Naked City. The first three paragraphs are from Newsom. I stood in line two hours today to order chicken from Price’s Chicken Coop, the iconic fried chicken takeout joint on Camden Road in South End that had just announced it will close in two […]
Poverty suburbanization and job access: A new study tests ‘spatial mismatch’
Does where you live — and what jobs you have access to — influence whether you work, and how much you earn? The long-held “spatial mismatch” theory posits that inner city unemployment and poverty has been driven in large part by the increasing physical separation of inner city residents from job opportunities, as suburbs boomed […]
Wall Street-backed landlords now own more than 11,000 single-family homes in Charlotte
For decades, the single-family home rental market was a small-scale industry, made up almost entirely of local landlords who rented out a few houses they bought as investment properties, or perhaps inherited, or held on to after relocating. But the years since the Great Recession have witnessed a dramatic shift, as Wall Street-backed rental companies […]
Three key terms to understand in the 2040 plan
For something that’s supposed to be a big-picture, high-level peek at the future, the Charlotte 2040 vision plan has gotten bogged down in the details since its debut last fall. After months of tense City Council meetings, contested straw votes, community and industry groups pushing for and against the plan, and interdepartmental sniping via competing […]
Buses eyed as the key to regional transit system
This story is part of the Transit Time newsletter, a partnership between the Urban Institute, the Charlotte Ledger and WFAE. Find out more and subscribe here. If you want to know what the future of a regional transit system for Charlotte and the surrounding counties looks like, think tires, not rails. Despite plans for the […]
Islay Walden’s Uwharries story is relevant today
Here we are in the midst of graduation season. Even though the school experience has been different for the past year, young people are still celebrating this milestone and figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives. In rural areas like the Uwharries, that often means leaving for opportunities in other places. […]
Watch our virtual transportation and economic mobility panel
How does the ability to move around our city influence one’s ability to move up the economic ladder? That was the topic of our second Schul Conversation, a virtual discussion series bringing together experts to discuss different aspects of economic mobility in our region. The panel featured Charlotte’s Assistant City Manager Taiwo Jaiyeoba, UNC Charlotte […]
The 2020 Census: What data are coming, what will we know – and when?
As community members and researchers, we are eagerly awaiting the results of the 2020 census. Here are some answers to common questions we’ve received about what’s happening. What data does the 2020 census include? The decennial census (2020) is required to be completed by every household in the U.S. The primary purpose of the census, […]