Demographics

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

Between 2006 and 2013, the rate of N.C. high school students graduating on time (in four years) has increased from 68.3 percent to 82.5 percent. The state’s two largest districts, Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, now have the same rate, 81 percent. With our interactive dashboards, below, you can explore the data for all districts in North […]

Will Americans continue to be suburban creatures? The question has been widely debated by developers, planners and the press since the Great Recession. Surveys showing preferences for urban, walkable, in-town neighborhoods have been called fads by some, or hailed by others as the end of suburbia. Ultimately, it will be the attitudes of the Millennial […]

You’d think I would have known better. After all, I’ve been writing about growth since before they called it Smart Growth, and I’m still writing about it now that it’s “resiliency,” or “sustainable growth” or whatever the next term is. I can’t count how many times I’ve explained that when you decide where you want […]

“Smart Growth was an intellectual fetish of a self-selected liberal Eastern elite.” Robert J. Grow, president and CEO of Envision Utah, a public-private collaboration in the Salt Lake City region, told about 400 Charlotte region residents that his Western region calls what it does “quality growth.” “It was our growth,” he said. “It was our […]

As Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools strives to meet the needs of all 141,171 students, part of its charge is to ensure that all students are ready for either careers or college. Of the almost 40,000 CMS high school students, how many will graduate ready for college? AP as a measure of college readiness CMS has clearly stated […]

Recent changes to the way metropolitan areas are defined added nearly a half-million in population to Charlotte’s MSA, making it the 23rd most populous MSA in the country. What happened in other metros across the country? Some saw great changes in their definitions, like Charlotte, while others remained entirely intact. The Charlotte Regional Indicators project […]

In the Carolinas, only Charlotte’s metro area tops 2 million people. Raleigh is roughly half Charlotte’s size at 1.2 million. These two metros have pulled away from the pack of the other Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the Carolinas; no others top 1 million in population. Ten years ago, the metros in the two states were […]

In January, Charlotte had 1.8 million people. Today it has 2.3 million people. And no, there was no airlift of half a million residents from the Rust Belt or anywhere else. How can a city gain a half-million people almost overnight? How can a metro area vault from No. 33 in population to No. 23? […]