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Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

1,000 Trees Rooted in Data, Community and Sustainability.

Project Type:
Community Engagement, Environment, Health and Wellbeing, Infrastructure and Utilities, Technology

At a Glance

The City assessed tree distribution citywide to plant 700 new trees in areas that needed the most shade. 

Raleigh’s Digital Inclusion education program has trained more than 3,800 residents, provided more than 1,000 computers to residents, and delivered more than 10,000 volunteer hours.

A biannual community survey gathers input from residents on issues that impact quality of life, which guides services and policies.

A cost-share program reduces water pollution and has helped fund more than 200 stormwater infrastructure projects (such as green roofs, cisterns, and rain gardens) on private property. Up to 100% of costs are covered for non-profits and lower income property owners.

For over 200 years, Raleigh has been known as the “City of Oaks” for its towering oak trees that line streets and shade neighborhoods. Yet today, the city, which has long celebrated its natural canopy, confronts a stark reality: More than a quarter of people in the Raleigh metro area live in neighborhoods that become heat islands in the summer, where temperatures soar above the city’s average.

Those extra degrees have a high cost — heat islands make neighborhoods less livable and increase the risk of heat-related health complications. These heat islands are disproportionately located in low-income neighborhoods. One reason for the heat islands is a lack of trees, which results in heat being absorbed in materials like concrete and asphalt. This heat is then slowly released causing temperatures to stay high even after the sun sets, making it difficult for neighborhoods to cool down overnight. This prolonged heat exposure can exacerbate the effects of heat stress and lead to higher energy costs and poorer air quality.

Image courtesy of the City of Raleigh.

Today, the “City of Oaks” is working to combat heat islands through a data-backed street tree planting project.

At the start, the project wanted to learn how trees were distributed across the city. Then, the team wondered if planting more trees in certain locations could reduce the number of heat islands

The City analyzed U.S. Census data and an Urban Heat Island study. Then it conducted a walking survey of Raleigh’s current street trees. City staff mapped tree density and income levels, which showed that lower income neighborhoods had fewer trees than their wealthier counterparts. On average, there is one street tree every 1,000 feet in the chosen priority area, whereas other, newer parts of the city have street trees every 40 feet.

“Strong data practices have made us a better organization. We’re able to better connect with the community because there are decisions that are made based on what the data tells us. That data gives us a solid foundation to drive policy and resources.”

City Manager Marchell Adams-David

“I am proud but not surprised that Raleigh continues to achieve recognition for effectively using data and science to drive outcomes. I am also proud of our staff and their devotion to developing the data and using it to implement the solutions that improve the lives of our residents. This designation from Bloomberg Philanthropies is a result of their hard work.”

Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell
Image courtesy of the City of Raleigh.

The City’s solution is to plant 1,000 street trees by the end of 2025, not located randomly across the city, but in the neighborhoods that need it most to reduce urban heat islands. Urban trees and nature can cool cities by up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes heat-related illness less likely and reduces energy consumption, saving residents money. So far, 700 trees have been planted in low-income neighborhoods in southeast Raleigh, helping make the air cleaner, preventing flash floods during storms, absorbing carbon dioxide, and encouraging communities to gather and play outdoors.

Raleigh city staff know their numbers, but they aren’t missing the forest for the trees—community support and resident engagement are critical for long-term success. The project has connected with residents at community events for Earth Day and Arbor Day. Additionally, residents near potential tree planting spots receive paid-postage mailers from the City that allow them to select the tree species they want or say that they would not prefer a tree.

The Street Tree Project is just one piece of Raleigh’s climate efforts, and it represents more than a tree planting initiative — it’s a data-based strategy to ensure that all residents, no matter where they live, can share in the benefits of the City of Oaks.

Image courtesy of the City of Raleigh.

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Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Data-Rich Training and Development in Charlotte.

Project Type:
Community Engagement, Communications, Equity, Finance, High-Performing Government, Housing

2024 Gold Certification

Charlotte, North Carolina, used data to identify neighborhoods where residents are struggling to keep up with rising housing costs. This Displacement Risk Analysis builds on the City’s efforts to create a citywide standard of excellence in the collection, dissemination and use of disaggregated data in decision-making. This work forms the basis of Charlotte’s interventions to keep people in stable housing and a framework for equitable growth within the City’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan.

2020 Silver Certification

Created an interactive tool to provide residents with data around key indicators about where they live and work within the community – including housing, education, environment, health, and safety.

Introduced and maintained a variety of data-driven dashboards which offer user-friendly options for residents, city staff, and leaders to access vital information.

Launched a citywide collaboration offering trainings on how to use data collaboratively, helping staff make better-informed decisions when creating or updating city programs and policies.

Charlotte’s Long History with Data

Spend a day at the Government Center in Charlotte, NC, and three things become apparent: The staff has a deep affection for the city — its friendliness and welcoming vibe. They can’t get enough of the hush puppies at Midwood Smokehouse. And they are extraordinarily enthusiastic about tapping the power of data in city government to improve lives.

There is a distinctive joy that comes across when teams work together to support city-wide goals. Staff share their data super powers, and operate under the mantra “Making Heroes out of Others” — whether supporting Charlotte’s transportation team with the Vision Zero initiative, making information easier to find with the online Public Records Requests Tracker, or most recently, empowering Emergency Management as they respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Maybe it has to do with Charlotte’s long history of using data to achieve strategic goals and build resources the public can directly interact with. Case in point: Way back in 2000, the City launched what is now the Quality of Life Explorer, an online dashboard that details an incredible array of social, housing, economic, environmental and safety conditions in Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County. A study that began with nine indicators and just a handful of neighborhoods 20 years ago is now a robust, interactive online tool that incorporates over 80 variables and more than 460 neighborhood areas.

Image Courtesy of the City of Charlotte.

Fittingly, Charlotte itself has also grown significantly during the last two decades, in no small part due to its high quality of life. With a job growth rate far beyond the national average across the last decade, its population rose by nearly 25 percent since 2010 — faster than most cities in the country.

All that growth created opportunities and challenges. With more and more residents relying on city services and infrastructure, and development project proposals multiplying, the Charlotte City Council started voicing its need for detailed data on which to base decisions.

City leaders got the message: It was time to ramp up data know-how to help ensure rapid growth didn’t hurt the quality of life that attracted so many to Charlotte in the first place.

An In-House Academy

City leaders could have sent teams off to trainings with outside vendors to strengthen data reporting and analytics capabilities across all departments. But why use theoretical data sets in an external curriculum when staff could learn while troubleshooting real-world challenges with colleagues? To that end, the City’s data team decided to create their own solution — one that fills skill gaps by taking advantage of in-house expertise, builds relationships across departments, and fosters a culture of curiosity and innovation. It’s called OpEx Academy, and it underscores how passionate city staff is about data and putting it to work for the community.

Housed within the Center for Data and Analytics (CDA), the Academy has offered a total of 65 (free) courses to staff since launching in 2018. CDA initially focused on courses that addressed capacity needs; topics included data quality assurance and performance management tools. Within a year, courses had long waiting lists. As interest grew, CDA developed courses responding to specific staff interests. (Fall 2019 offerings included “SQL Junction — What’s Your Function?” and “Intro to City Shared Data Applications.”)

So far the OpEx Academy has more than 20 city staff trainers across departments as diverse as Charlotte Water, Human Resources, Charlotte Department of Transportation, and Innovation & Technology. “OpEx Academy is a great citywide collaboration,” says Rebecca Hefner, the City’s Data & Analytics Officer who is also a peer trainer and leads many of the city’s data-informed efforts.

“Using city staff to develop and deliver training builds a network of sharing and collaboration that extends beyond the training class, and using real city data with real city challenges makes the learning immediately applicable. Reaching out to one another for help, and sharing data to solve problems is now part of our culture.”

City’s Data & Analytics Officer Rebecca Hefner
Image Courtesy of the City of Charlotte.

More than 230 employees have received over 1,400 hours of free training and instruction designed and taught by peers. One collaborative course at a time, the City of Charlotte is deepening its capacity for data-driven governance and building a culture in which data powers solutions.

A New Approach to Housing

Charlotte’s approach also resulted in a creative solution for affordable housing. As Charlotte grew rapidly during the last decade, gentrification pushed long-time lower income residents out of historically affordable neighborhoods. By 2016, the City had a shortage of over 30,000 affordable housing units.

The city’s Housing Locational Policy (HLP) was created years earlier to serve as a guiding framework for building subsidized multifamily developments for lower-income households. As the housing shortage grew and opposition from neighbors with regard to many proposed projects remained intense, the City Council increasingly approved developments out of alignment with HLP values and goals — members just wanted to build new housing units quickly. Over time, Council members realized they were unwittingly reinforcing geographical socioeconomic stratification.

The status quo wasn’t working — so the City convened seven civic engagement sessions to solicit input from residents on better affordable housing approaches.

The way forward soon emerged. The City revised the HLP to more clearly offer guidance for preserving and creating affordable housing, while also supporting the City’s revitalization efforts and promoting diverse neighborhoods. But city leaders knew they needed more than just the right housing goals — it needed a data-driven tool to help City Council achieve those goals. As the National League of Cities has noted, data emerged as the linchpin allowing Charlotte to allocate affordable housing resources in a timely and equitable fashion.

Since launching in 2019, the Housing Locational Scoring Tool has helped City Council members compare and contrast the value and viability of proposed projects. Housing developers are required to submit applications with a scored proposal which incorporates four criteria: proximity [to transit assets and amenities], income diversity, access to jobs, and neighborhood change. The tool which generates the score, updated twice per year with the latest data, can be used and shared to help residents understand how and why City Council make decisions on housing projects, which are sometimes controversial.

The Housing Locational Scoring Tool allows city leaders to make better decisions and allows developers to select sites that better align with city goals. “The tool has changed the nature of the housing conversation,” says Housing Operations Manager Warren Wooten.

“When developers are looking at sites, they are really focused on coming to us with sites that provide the best possible score — and that means sites that best meet council’s housing objectives around accessibility, equity, diversity and preserving great neighborhoods.”

Charlotte Housing Operations Manager Warren Wooten

“And the conversations with developers, council and the public are no longer subjective; it’s conversations about the data that are in our tool, and what it means, and how it advances our housing goals.” says Wooten.

Keeping Close Tabs on Capital Projects

Housing wasn’t the only area the City Council called on the data and analytics team for help. After the budget suddenly doubled on a capital project in early 2019, the council realized it needed to be able to closely track the progress of projects across the city. City Manager Marcus D. Jones shared some unpleasant news: Many capital projects already in motion had been approved years earlier based on inaccurate budget estimates. Key work to establish reliable cost estimates, such as scoping, pre-planning, and design, had often happened after the council had approved projects.

Things needed to change as quickly as possible to prevent big budget risks. Part of the way forward was clear enough: The City Council would insist on more detailed planning documents and projections when considering any proposed capital projects, and the budget and finance teams would revamp their processes accordingly. But Council members also wanted a real-time window on projects underway to keep tabs on them — a window the public could ideally see as well, in the interests of transparency and accountability.

The council turned to CDA to create a big-picture solution that would bring together an array of different data sets on capital projects across all departments in one easy-to-navigate place. Tons of data existed, but it was available through various departments, and had to be manually collected, integrated and mapped each time there was a request for information. CDA’s data team got to work — the first step was to create a comprehensive dataset on the City’s capital projects.

In late 2019, with strong backing from the City Manager, CDA launched the city’s Capital Project Dashboard. Hannah Bromberger, Senior Strategy & Budget Analyst, shared, “The Capital Project Dashboard has centralized visualization for all city capital projects. The public can now explore information, including cost and completion dates in an easy to navigate dashboard. Internally, the entire organization now has a central repository of data and consistent language for tracking projects, making for seamless communication and reports to leadership and residents.”

Now no one — whether city officials or members of the public — is in the dark about active projects located across the entire city. A companion reporting tool was later added to make it easy for residents, staff, and Council members to quickly generate customized printable reports on the whole capital program or individual projects. Data is updated at least quarterly.

Today, with clear sight lines into both proposed and approved capital projects, the City Council is able to make decisions more effectively and wisely — and track project performance closely. These dashboards, helping city officials make more informed decisions, are engendering trust between city officials and the people they serve as residents can now more easily understand what’s happening, and where, when, and why.

“We are proud of our staff who diligently engage with and advance our city’s data practices in order to help our elected officials make more informed decisions for our communities, offering our residents the chance to engage with the city in a frank and honest way, through data,” said Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles.

“With good people, good data, and good processes, anything is doable, any challenge surmountable.”

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles

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Durham, North Carolina, USA, USA

An equity-driven push to restore driver’s licenses — and transform lives.

Project Type:
Equity, Community Engagement, Public Safety

WWC - Silver Certification Badge for year 2021

2021 Silver Certification

This narrative was written for Durham’s 2021 Silver What Works Cities Certification. Some content may be outdated. For the most current information, please visit durhamnc.gov.

At a Glance

60% of jobs in Durham required a driver’s license, but many residents had revoked licenses for minor moving violations or unpaid traffic tickets.

The Durham Expunction and Restoration (DEAR) program has dismissed over 100,000 traffic charges and offered $2.7 million in debt relief, helping tens of thousands of residents.

DEAR has become proof of concept for data-led innovation and the power of bringing together “financial justice and racial equity”.

Uncovering Challenges of the Formerly Incarcerated

When officials in Durham, North Carolina, began conducting listening sessions with formerly incarcerated residents about the challenges they faced years later, a surprising theme emerged. Many people talked about having lost their driver’s licenses for minor moving violations or unpaid traffic tickets — and having suffered for years, even decades, as a result.

Durham, NC City hall
Image Courtesy of the City of Durham.

The conversations prompted his team to dig into data. From the Department of Motor Vehicles, they learned that 80% of revoked licenses belonged to Black and Latinx residents. The average duration of suspension? Sixteen years. A review of City of Durham jobs revealed that 60% of positions required a driver’s license. The racial and economic inequities were clear.

“Their stories weren’t just about transportation challenges, People faced real barriers to employment.”

Ryan Smith

Finding a Solution

The innovation team’s data, paired with residents’ stories of stress and pain, ultimately led to the 2017 launch of the Durham Expunction and Restoration (DEAR) program. It brings city and court system staff together with community members to restore driver’s licenses and remove systemic barriers individuals face while trying to provide for themselves and their families. To date, the program has successfully dismissed over 100,000 traffic charges and offered $2.7 million in debt relief, helping tens of thousands of residents.

It’s a prime example of how a collaborative effort targeting a specific problem — and a commitment to foundational data-driven practices such as evaluations — can transform the lives of individual residents.

“The staggering size of the challenge and the significant impact the status quo was having on residents made it easy for our elected leaders to rally behind this.”

Ryan Smith

After the listening sessions and data analysis, the first thing Smith and his team did was meet with the local district attorney (DA) to share what they had learned. It turned out that the DA’s office had previously held an amnesty event to dismiss old charges related to driver’s license suspensions, but that turnout had been poor.

Once again, stakeholder outreach with formerly incarcerated residents proved valuable: During listening sessions, Smith and his colleagues learned that residents were distrustful of the courthouse and were not inclined to come spend a day in line without any guarantee of relief or assistance.

Simplified Process, Greater Impact

A simpler approach to dismissing old traffic charges and unpaid fines was clearly needed. After a review, Smith’s team determined that all the DA’s office needed for expunction and license restoration was an individual’s name and date of birth. For two weeks in October 2017, the team piloted a driver’s license amnesty program that only required individuals to text or email that information to Smith’s team. News about the program went viral among residents.

Within a few days, more than 2,500 people had reached out. Many of them were ineligible for relief, but over 500 individuals ended up getting over 2,000 old charges waived. One man was a single father with four children who had lost his license over two decades earlier. The situation persisted because he was unable to pay the $900 fee an attorney had requested to restore his license. For this resident, the daily commute to work was an exercise in constant stress, as he worried about being pulled over.

A simple text message ultimately solved the problem.

The amnesty program pilot was a clear success, but it also prompted the team to ask a basic question: Why should residents even have to apply at all? “Every step you put in a process, you’re going to lose people,” Smith says.

His team asked the administrative office of the courts to pull data on all individuals who had suspended licenses because they had failed to appear in court or pay a ticket. The team then worked closely with the DA’s office to review data and apply eligibility criteria. Within a month, the DA was able to dismiss over 50,000 charges for 35,000 people. For cases with fines, a judge had to waive the charges — an onerous task that the innovation team decided to spread out over 18 months, tackling a few hundred cases each week.

Today, in partnership with the court system, the DEAR program continues to assist eligible residents on an ongoing basis. Its impact goes beyond Durham: The program is being replicated across North Carolina. A website DEAR created in partnership with a few statewide nonprofit organizations allows any North Carolina resident to type in their name and find out if they are eligible for relief.

Building Momentum

As part of its commitment to innovation and data-driven decision-making, the City of Durham is evaluating the impact of policies and programs. For example, DEAR is working with Duke University to learn how expunction has changed the lives of residents. City staff are working with the state government to obtain DMV data showing whether residents who had charges dismissed were able to actually get their licenses back. The larger goal is to match that information with state earnings data, to understand the economic impact of expunction and license restoration.

In Durham’s government, DEAR has become proof of concept for data-led innovation and the power of bringing together “financial justice and racial equity,” says Erin Parish, a design strategist with the City. She has helped identify other areas of potential, including disparities in how parking tickets and related fees affect residents.

Last year, a City audit revealed that parking tickets were one of the top fines levied by the City that places a burden on residents. A subsequent data analysis of 60,000 parking ticket records revealed that, while tickets were distributed evenly across race and income, late fees and unpaid tickets were disproportionately concentrated among residents from the poorest census blocks and those of color.

As a result, the City tested a free-parking initiative for downtown workers from May to October this year. Parish says the pilot was primarily to see “how it looks when we take a different approach.”

To address racial and economic inequities, her team has proposed reform measures including waiving late fees for low-income residents and creating interest-free payment plans.
Other efforts are planned — more evidence that a culture of data-driven innovation, with a particular focus on equity issues, is taking root in Durham.

“We want to bring racial equity into other spaces, such as capital improvement work, which is big money, There’s a convergence of racial justice work that’s long overdue.”

Erin Parish

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