ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

In Gastonia, construction is underway on the Parkside on Hudson apartments, an 80-unit, garden-style affordable housing development that will offer a gazebo and picnic shelter — for monthly rents mostly ranging from $600 to $800. Early next year, work is expected to start on the first project in Mooresville under the town’s new zoning ordinance, […]

There’s a common narrative about people in rural areas seeking opportunities: they should go to the big city and leave the country behind. Rural counties are often seen as hollowed out or in decline, while cities and their adjacent suburbs boom. While population in the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection study area has become much more concentrated […]

Charlotte has struggled with housing affordability in recent years, as the city faces rising rents and home prices driven by rapid growth and low supply. But urban areas are not the only places grappling with these challenges, even though affordable housing is typically seen as an urban problem. Rural areas in the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection […]

We don’t often think about crossing state lines. Other than changes in gas prices or the availability of fireworks, there’s little visible difference as you cross from North Carolina into South Carolina, or vice versa. This similarity was one of the fundamental assumptions of our Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection project – we expected our 32-county region […]

Cities boom while rural areas struggle. People seeking opportunity leave the countryside for urban areas. Small towns left behind after the local mill or factory closes down are hollowed-out shells. We’ve heard these tropes before; cliches about the urban-rural divide abound. But the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection project is built on the premise that there’s more […]

“Regionalism” has become something of a public policy bromide these days — an unwritten assumption that informs the planning, economic and growth decisions that supersede any one political jurisdiction. But what is easy to say can be hard to do. For the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection project, a two-year effort to understand the distinct ways Charlotte […]

There’s a not-too-surprising insight about how the labor market is changing across the Carolinas Urban-Rural Connection region, which became clearer from real-time commuter data: out-of-county commuting rates are rising. Many more people work in a different county from where they live. While people are traveling farther for well-paying work, leaders charged with workforce and job […]

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute is marking its 50th anniversary in 2019-20 with a five-part series recalling its history. Sources for these stories include interviews, newspaper articles, university documents and two books – Charlotte and UNC Charlotte: Growing Up Together by Ken Sanford and Dean W. Colvard: Quiet Leader, by Marion A. Ellis. When Bill […]

From basketball to banks, Charlotte’s got a lot (as the slogan goes). But critics say one thing is missing: an actual brand. Compared to iconic city identities such as Nashville’s “Music City” and even Rockland, Maine’s claim to fame as the “lobster capital of the world,” Charlotte seems to lack one defining characteristic that sets […]

It’s Monday, and farmer Isaac Oliver begins his week at the computer. Out on their 72-acre Harmony Ridge Farms in Tobaccoville, Isaac and dad Kevin raise ducks, harvest eggs and grow produce. At the start of each week, Isaac emails his list of available products to nearly 70 restaurants in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Raleigh and […]