Charlotte, North Carolina

The Charlotte metropolitan area is a rapidly growing center of commerce and culture made up of a network of individual communities: Mecklenburg County, Charlotte, Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill, and Pine Level. Clarion Associates, teamed with ICMA, worked with the communities to prepare the Mecklenburg Livable Communities Plan, which establishes a unified vision for the future and a set of collaborative strategies and actions.

The project included a review of existing plans, programs, and policies currently in place in each of the eight jurisdictions to identify common themes and strategies. A focus was to highlight areas where the current work of individual local governments can be better coordinated to achieve

collaborative outcomes, and to highlight gap areas where new initiatives and discussions are needed. Clarion prepared the evaluation of local plans, policies, and programs, and assisted in designing and implementing an extensive community outreach effort to identify issues and test the viability of proposed new strategies. Outreach included community workshops, stakeholder meetings, presentations to elected governing boards, an interactive website, and use of social media. The completed plan includes a Vision, Guiding Principles, Strategies, and Recommended Actions. The Actions identify implementation partners and performance measures to be able to monitor success over time and have been used in recent implementation status reports.