City of Charlotte Strategic Investment Areas(SIA)

Background

In 2024, City Council adopted, and the voters approved, a $55M capital bond investment program for piloting this strategic approach to transportation investment. These initial funds will implement coordinated transportation improvements through 2027 in the Far East - Harrisburg and Arrowood Strategic Investment Areas. These two SIAs were selected for the pilot to test new processes and find ways to deliver our projects faster and cheaper. The plan is to scale the program with larger and long-term investments across all 22 Strategic Investment Areas in Charlotte.

The City of Charlotte launched the Strategic Investment Areas (SIA) Project to identify and prioritize infrastructure investments that promote equitable growth and community resilience across key corridors and neighborhoods.To carry out this work, the City engaged Civility Localized to lead support content creation and community engagement event management (including ribbon cuttings, groundbreakings and community meetings) to promote the projects.

Challenges

The challenge was to rebuild community trust while gathering actionable data to guide equitable, neighborhood-level investments. Balancing technical feasibility, long-term capital planning, and social equity required a collaborative and transparent approach.

What We Did

Civility Localized partnered with Infrastructure Strategies LLC to support the City of Charlotte’s Strategic Investment Areas (SIA) Project, which focuses on identifying infrastructure priorities in key corridors across the city.

Key actions included:

Assisted in the creation of meeting summaries and engagement materials to keep community participants informed about project milestones and next steps.
Provided engagement notes and synthesized insights to inform the final deliverables developed by Infrastructure Strategies LLC for the City of Charlotte.
Provided content for community events such as talking points and project descriptions.