A Letter from the Director

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute is pleased to present this inaugural report of the Charlotte Regional Indicators Project.  This report is the culmination of over a year’s work on the part of the Institute’s staff, the UNC Charlotte Center for Applied GIS, and over 100 volunteers from throughout the region.

The seeds for a Regional Indicators Project were sown in 2004, when the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute conducted a “listening tour” of community leaders as part of its 35th Anniversary celebration.  We asked leaders a simple question:  what should the Institute do to continue serving the public policy needs of the greater Charlotte region?  More than any other response, we heard that people wanted, indeed expected, the Institute to be a reliable and objective source of information to assist the region’s residents and leaders in addressing the many public policy challenges facing this rapidly growing region.

Responding to this call, our staff set about exploring ways to build the Institute’s capacity to deliver such information on a consistent basis.  Fortunately, a foundation had already been laid by several earlier attempts to establish a benchmarking initiative for the Charlotte region.  In 1997 and again in 1998, the former Central Carolinas Choices published “Focus on the Region: Benchmarking and Annual Assessment of the Greater Charlotte Region.”  Central Carolinas Choices’ successor organization, Voices & Choices, conducted another benchmarking study resulting in the “2004 State of the Region” report, which focused more narrowly on the environment.  Unfortunately, Voices & Choices eventually dissolved as an organization, and the State of the Region report was discontinued.

While the organizations behind these earlier reports were unable to sustain their operations, the public reception to their research was positive. With this in mind, we extended our review of benchmarking initiatives nationally, paying particular attention to several regional models, including the widely respected Boston Indicators Project, for lessons on how to sustain success.  What impressed us the most about these successful initiatives was not only the breadth and depth of their research, but their power to transform the way in which public policy decisions are being addressed in their respective communities.  And central to their ability to do that was their embrace of technology, and in particular their use of the Internet to “democratize” access to their data.

Informed by these local precedents and national models, the Institute launched the Charlotte Regional Indicators Project in early 2007. This report is the first tangible result of our work.  With nearly 40 years of experience in applied public policy research, the Institute is well-positioned to provide a permanent home for the research essential to sustaining a successful benchmarking initiative for the Charlotte region.  We are also committed to using the latest in technology to ensure that the data is accessible to a broad cross-section of the region’s residents.  This use of the Internet is one of the things that distinguishes this effort from previous benchmarking initiatives in the Charlotte region, and one that we think will solidify its ongoing relevance to both policymakers and residents.  It is our hope that over time the Charlotte Regional Indicators Project will grow to the point that it truly engages the entire region, providing the general public, business and government leaders, and other organizations with the information they need to effect positive change in the region’s quality of life.

In closing, I would like to thank the many individuals and organizations whose early support of the Charlotte Regional Indicators Project made this initial report possible (see the full list of sponsoring organizations and individuals elsewhere in this report).  In particular, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the Open Space Protection Collaborative (with funds from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation) provided the project’s first major research funding.  The Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation, an affiliate of The Foundation For The Carolinas, made possible the publication of this inaugural report and the Indicators Project website.  We are also indebted to more than 100 individuals, both external and internal to the university, who gave countless hours to making this report possible.

I hope you find the report useful and look forward to working with you to maintain and enhance the region’s quality of life.

Jeff Michael, Director
UNC Charlotte Urban Institute