Chamblee Economic & Housing Study: Community Profile

As a Graduate Research Assistant with Georgia Tech’s Center for Economic Development Research (CEDR), I independently developed the community-profile and comparative analysis components of an ongoing economic and housing study for the City of Chamblee. Working from the project scope and a set of peer communities selected by the project manager, I independently determined the indicators needed to tell Chamblee’s story, researched and validated data sources, pulled and organized the data, performed the analysis, created the charts and visualizations, and developed the written takeaways and presentation narrative. The analysis spans population and demographic change, income, housing tenure and affordability, commuting, workforce characteristics, education, housing supply, vacancy, and other community conditions. I used sources including Census/ACS data, Census OnTheMap, regional population forecasts, housing datasets, and other planning and economic-development resources to compare Chamblee with DeKalb County, the Atlanta region, Georgia, and selected peer cities. A major focus of my work was moving beyond individual statistics to identify the relationships between them, particularly Chamblee’s role as a major employment center, its substantial commuter inflow, its renter-oriented housing market, and the implications these patterns have for housing, transportation, workforce access, and redevelopment. I also supported the broader project team by validating workforce and economic-analysis data prepared by other analysts.