This dashboard contains information about Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. It focuses specifically on three towns in the northern part of the county: Huntersville, Cornelius, and Davidson. It also includes information from surveys distributed to our Focus Neighborhoods: Huntington Green (located in Huntersville) and Pottstown (located in Cornelius). There were 62 survey respondents from Pottstown and 68 from Huntington Green. The information on this dashboard can be used to better understand the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of the area, as well as for program and service planning, educating the general public, and understanding where there is unmet need among subsets of the population. For more information on the project, visit the About page.
Most of the data presented here and in our accompanying report were obtained from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. This information is available to the public, and can be found through the Explore Census Data tool. In addition to the neighborhood surveys distributed in Huntington Green and Pottstown, data was also obtained from the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Quality of Life explorer, which was most recently updated in March of 2022. If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas while visiting the site, please give us feedback via the form on the left.
Data was collected in the three towns comprising the northern portion of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, known by area residents as North Mecklenburg: Cornelius, Davidson, and Huntersville. When using data from the US Census, there is some difficulty identifying the boundaries of each town clearly, but we aimed to have the tracts of each town fully included in what we labeled as North Mecklenburg. Although NPAs do not correlate exactly with our Focus Neighborhoods, NPA 452 roughly contains Pottstown and NPA 419 roughly represents Huntington Green. For more information on the data used, visit the About Data page.
Population
Race
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Income
Housing
Relationship between Percent of Home Ownership and Average Home Sale Price by NPA.
Read more about this graphPercent of Monthly Income Spent on Housing Costs for Renters and Homeowners.
Read more about this graphHealthcare
Percentage of Housing Units in North Mecklenburg Within Half a Mile of a Medicaid Provider or Free Clinic
Click on a NPA to see the exact percentage:
Read more about this mapHealth Insurance Coverage used by Survey Respondents
Barriers to Acquiring Healthcare for Survey Respondents
Early Childcare
Survey Respondents' Thoughts on Childcare in Huntersville.
Read more about this graphParents' Income as a Ratio to the Poverty Level.
Read more about this graphFood Access
Click on a NPA to see the exact percentage:
Grocery Store Proximity by NPA, 2016-2021.
Read more about this mapTransportation
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Public Transportation Proximity by NPA, 2017-2020.
Read more about this mapAbout the Community Research Fellows Program
Over the past 10 years, the Center for Civic Engagement at Davidson College has played a central role in several community needs assessments and facilitated community-based research projects through academic courses in partnership with faculty. In 2010, the Associate Dean served on the advisory board for the Lake Norman Area Community Needs Assessment and then the Center engaged students and faculty in ongoing updates to the 2010 structure in 2014 and 2018. In the summer of 2020, the Center for Civic Engagement and faculty in the Hurt Hub’s Data CATS program collaborated to launch the community research fellows program that engages students in place-based community research. This program was created and continues to be in close partnership with the North Mecklenburg Economic Mobility Collaborative. In the summer of 2021, 4 fellows engaged in place-based community research in the key focus areas identified in the 2020 North Mecklenburg Needs Assessment: housing, healthcare, and early childhood care and education. Using a data equity framework, the team analyzed existing foundational literature and data sources, held focus groups and developed a survey that was administered to 2 focus neighborhoods in North Mecklenburg county, Huntington Green and Pottstown. They began a report of their work that was completed the following summer. In 2022, Fellows analyzed the data collected from the previous year’s survey, focusing on the neighborhoods of Huntington Green and Pottstown. They examined the connections between the survey results and the qualitative and quantitative findings of the previous years, culminating in the creation of this dashboard and the finalizing of the previous year's report. The report began in Summer 2021 and the Needs Assessment created in Summer 2020 are both available in the sidebar for more information.
Meet the 2022 Team
Jane Berick ‘23 is from Cleveland, Ohio pursuing a major in Psychology and a minor in Communication Studies.
Brynn Jones ‘24 is from Albany, New York pursuing a Data Science major with a minor in Computer Science.
Dr. Stacey Riemer is Associate Dean of Students, Director of the Center for Civic Engagement and adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. She teaches courses on high impact experiential learning, community change, and place-based community research.
Dr. Laurie Heyer is the Kimbrough Professor of Mathematics at Davidson College where she teaches courses at the intersection of mathematics, biology, and computer science.
Dr. Andrew O’Geen is the Chair and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Davidson College where his research and teaching reflect his general interests in law and politics.
Dr. Jason Byers is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Data Science. His research and teaching interests broadly include American politics and data science, with specific interests in legislative and executive politics, congressional electoral politics, representation and quantitative methods.
About the Data
NPA: Many graphs use data from the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer dashboard. This dashboard divides the county into 475 Neighborhood Profile Areas (NPAs). This method breaks named neighborhoods into smaller units identified by a number. These were created combining data from the Census, neighborhood boundaries, and boundaries from the planning commission. For more information on NPAs, click here.
Census Data: The Census collects data at a variety of levels of varying size. In this dashboard, we examined data collected at the block, block group, and tract level. Census blocks are the smallest unit used for data collection. They can be divided by streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, property lines, or jurisdiction limits for a county, city, school district, or township. They can be as small as a single city block but may be larger in rural areas. Block groups are collections of Census blocks, that contain between 600 and 3,000 people. Block groups are usually made of neighboring blocks. Each census tract contains at least one block group, and block groups are uniquely numbered within the census tract. Census tracts vary in size due to population density and were created to be stable units for presenting statistics. For more information on Census geography levels, visit the Census Glossary.
Sample Size: The visualizations seen that are pulled from the Census data have the population as its sample size. However, there is margin of error included in the datasets from the Census, so the sample sizes may vary in either direction.