For a lot of people, Charlotte really is the “big city”, with all the lures that might entail: nightlife, culture, food, events. The city has it all. It certainly must have something, because the suburbs are losing out these days. Cities like Charlotte are growing faster than the ‘burbs, in a reversal of the urban sprawl idea. So why is Charlotte so much better than the surrounding areas?
US Census data proves it: Charlotte is the 8th fastest growing city in America, adding more than 18,000 people to the population last year. And across the board, big cities are growing faster than suburbs. Not by much, because there are only a few really big cities out there, and a whole lot of suburbs. But for nearly a hundred years, until the 2000s, suburbs were growing faster than cities. Now the tables have turned.
So what was the reason for the big turnaround? The census data doesn’t tell us that, which means we had to do a little digging of our own. So our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, hit the streets of our fine city to find out: why is Charlotte so much better than the surrounding suburbs?
