Community and economic development has increasingly required participation from community members to be effective. Ensuring high levels of engagement throughout the design process is crucial to producing a product that serves the needs of the community. A creative approach to problem solving might b … Continued

The following are articles and reports on the web that the Community and Economic Development Program at the UNC School of Government shared through social media over the past month. Follow us on twitter or facebook to receive regular updates.   Items of interest related to CED in North Carolin … Continued

This post is Part 2 of a two-part series explaining how Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) are administered in North Carolina and how they’ve been used to help rebuild communities affected by Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew … Continued

Along the eastern seaboard, the intensity and frequency of severe weather caused by tropical storm systems and hurricanes is expected to increase. Most recently in North Carolina, Hurricanes Matthew and Florence caused severe damage to private property and public infrastructure. As similar storms ar … Continued

Why would you, as a local CED professional, hesitate to bring in a federal or state program to your community? Why do some federal and state programs struggle to recruit and maintain local partnerships? Many federal and state programs rely on community-based partners to implement and/or deliver serv … Continued

“[I]t is critical to learn from events such as Florence, to minimize the damages and streamline the response and recovery for the next storm…The growing economic and human costs of these events require that we not only change how we respond, but do so far more quickly than we have in the past.” This … Continued

Income inequality is not a new issue for CED professionals. In November 2011, the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco devoted an issue of its publication, Community Investments,to how income inequality was impacting community development. A Federal Reserve Board governor is quoted in the report, … Continued

Data are clearly no longer the purview of academics and government officials writing research reports with five pages of text and one hundred appendixes.   This post focuses briefly on several amazing datasets that are available with detailed information for CED professionals, as well as a reminder … Continued

North Carolina communities are undergoing rapid economic change at different rates in different parts of the state.  Issues such as affordable housing, appropriate rate levels for public services, costs of commuting and wage growth (or stagnation) are now key for CED officials, whether your communit … Continued

For the past five months I served as a visiting scholar to the University of Ghent in Belgium.   The link between food insecurity, a particular focus on my work in North Carolina, and larger overall economic insecurity issues has been getting increased focus across a number of European countries. Be … Continued