Best Neighborhoods in Charlotte, NC

Looking at a map of Charlotte, NC neighborhoods doesn’t tell you enough about the variety available. How does someone determine the difference between Plaza Midwood or Myers Park? South Park or South End? This article provides an overview of great resources to help identify the best neighborhoods in Charlotte for you.

There are quite literally hundreds of neighborhoods within the city of Charlotte, and it seems as if new boundaries are always being drawn.

Deciding where to live in Charlotte requires research. For instance:

• FreeMoreWest (FMW) is among the most recent neighborhoods carved out on the Charlotte map. Adjacent to vibrant Uptown, FMW offers suburban living in an urban setting with an eclectic mix of locally owned businesses.
• Myers Park is a tony, historic neighborhood in south Charlotte with large single family homes flanking curving streets with mature oaks.
• NoDa, which abbreviates North Davidson Street, is home to trendy art galleries and eclectic entertainment. Alongside condos and new builds are renovated homes from when this area was a mill village.
• Oakhurst features mostly brick, cottage-inspired homes and small bungalows on lots of land that used to be farmland and a hunting camp.
• South Park, about six miles south of Uptown, is named for the SouthPark Mall. The homes around it are often ranch-style homes on larger properties with established trees.

But this is only a beginning of a very long list. To help you find your best places to live in Charlotte, we’ve pulled together some useful resources to do your research.

Narrowing Down the Best Neighborhoods in Charlotte

An obvious starting point for your research is the City of Charlotte’s tourism site. Of course, the site itself is branded charlottesgotalot.com, so you have to recognize every neighborhood is going to get a full-on positive spin. Each neighborhood, though, gets a peppy description and there are suggestions of things to do that can help you imagine what it would be like living there.

For an extensive, more objective, overview of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, check out the Quality of Life Explorer Dashboard. This online resource offers detailed information on 462 neighborhood areas. And, when we say detailed, we mean it. You can explore factors including:

• Character
• Economy
• Environment
• Education
• Engagement
• Health
• Housing
• Safety
• Transportation

And that’s only the top tier of the over 80 variables you can find maps, trend information, and data tables examining on this UNCC-maintained site.

You can also search city data for each Charlotte neighborhood at city-data.com. Aggregating publicly available information, the site offers insights into details such as:

• Most common occupations
• Most common industries
• Language spoken at home
• Means of transportation to works
• Family size
• School enrollment
• Median household income

If schools are a top priority for you and your family, you’ll want to look at the North Carolina School Report Cards. The site has scores for all Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). You get a quick glance of the overall score for elementary, middle, and high schools. To learn more, click on the individual school’s name and you can see performance grade scores, academic growth, student characteristics and participation, and learn about teachers and their qualifications as well as the school environment.

You might also look at Niche’s research of top places to live nationwide. The Pittsburgh-based research site ranked more than 11,500 cities, towns, neighborhoods, and suburbs in 2019 and put three Charlotte neighborhoods among the top 100. Charlotte’s “city center,” Dilworth, and Sharon Woods came in at No. 30, No. 35, and No. 91 respectively.

Charlotte overall earned an A from Niche and was ranked #35 among the best cities to live in America. That reflects an A+ for Diversity, A for Nightlife, and A- for Family Life calculated alongside other scores considering factors such as schools, crime and safety, housing, and jobs in the area.

Selecting the Right Charlotte Neighborhood for You

When you’ve narrowed down your options, finding the websites for the neighborhood associations will prove useful. These sites will give you neighborhood information at a granular level. Are they concerned with Tree Care? What do they consider to be Important Information for their homeowners? What kinds of events appear on the association’s calendar? You might also find neighborhood association newsletters this way, which can be a great indicator of the top priorities for members of that community.

Then, there’s no substitute for actually getting out and exploring the neighborhoods that interest you. Check them out by day and at night. Drive through. Walk around. Talk to people! What you see and hear with your own eyes is likely to make the biggest impression yet.

Of course, when you talk to residents of any neighborhood, they’ll debate that theirs is actually the very best place to live in Charlotte. Saussy Burbank currently offers new homes in NoDa, Myers Park, South Park, and Oakhurst. Find out more!