The economic consequences and political context of the busing plan of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district (North Carolina) are explored. From an economic standpoint, busing did more to help Charlotte's business elite catch up with Atlanta's business elite than to help Charlotte's blacks catch up with Charlotte's whites. The developmental consequence of busing, in other words, were greater than the redistributive ones. The busing plan was intimately related to an urban regime, the origins of which data from the 1961 defeat of the last Charlotte mayoral candidate to carry both white working class and black precincts. In keeping with these origins, the regime was characterized by a coalition between Charlotte's business elite and an ascendant leadership within the black community that simultaneously pursued this coalition and minimized the importance of possible alliances between blacks and working class whites. The extent to which that strategy explains the busing plan's comparatively small redistributive consequences cannot, however, be ascertained with existing data. Research questions for obtaining such data are discussed, as is the applicability of Peterson's typology (P. E. Peterson, 1981) of urban policies to Charlotte-Mecklenburg's busing plan. (Contains 4 figures, 3 tables, and 64 references.) (Author/SLD)