Whether you work in community or economic development, there has always been pressure to measure your success. CED professionals are very familiar with having to explain what type of impact they hope to have with their initiatives.  It is even harder to document success. Evidence-based decision-maki … Continued

Crowdfunding or the act of raising investment dollars locally within a community can be traced in North Carolina to the early 20th century and potentially even earlier. Many of our community’s most iconic buildings were developed with financing provided by local residents. In early 1921, a committee … Continued

Real estate ownership is one of the primary vehicles for wealth creation in the United States, and consequently one of the core drivers of the racial wealth gap after generations of disinvestment in and displacement of BIPOC communities. Andre Perry, senior fellow at Brookings Institution and author … Continued

It is never too soon to start thinking about recovery, even in the midst of the pandemic. As communities look toward recovery, leaders are wrestling with how to establish a legally permissible aid program to assist small businesses with reopening. Many local governments established small business lo … Continued

With Governor Cooper’s announcement of Phase II reopening on May 22nd, restaurants are allowed to seat customers for the first time since March 17th. Many communities are breathing a sigh of relief; downtowns have suffered dramatically from the loss of business due to COVID-19, and the reopening of … Continued

The national Main Street Program touts “coordinated, small-scale facade improvements” in rural downtown commercial districts as having the “power to not only preserve valuable historic resources in rural communities, but also to spur economic growth in the surrounding area.” What local government to … Continued

This blog post features a project undertaken by the UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative. The Development Finance Initiative (DFI) was established in 2011 to assist North Carolina communities with achieving their community economic development goals. DFI partners with communitie … Continued

The North Carolina Department of Commerce announced Tuesday that twenty-four communities  located in small and/or rural counties throughout the state (see Table, below) have been selected to participate in the new Downtown Strong Initiative of the N.C. Main Street & Rural Planning Center. The in … Continued

Having a vibrant downtown or town center can have numerous benefits for a community. Aside from creating a “sense of place” and a node of commercial and cultural activity, research shows that businesses prefer locating in downtowns or walkable “live-work-play” communities due to advantages in attrac … Continued

In recent years, cities across the country have chosen to convert their one-way street networks into traditional two-way streets. This blog post will explore the roots of this widespread planning trend, its potential impacts on city streetscapes, as well as some common counterarguments to this movem … Continued