Charlotte, North Carolina Is So 20th Century And That's Its Charm
By William O'Connor
“You have to love the 20th century.”
That was it.
For hours I’d been struggling to articulate what exactly it was that was so endearing about Charlotte, North Carolina. Sure, it was green, it was livable, it was determined to be seen as progressive. And it has great food. But it wasn’t the typical East Coast experience, and certainly not the typical Southern city: it has no centuries-old storefronts, no crumbling mansions shedding light on a bygone era. Heck, it lacks almost any historic neighborhoods at all!
Instead, as local historian Tom Hanchett so ably distilled into that one sentence, Charlotte is a city that has been racing to turn its 20th-century successes into something that lasts—which, as somebody who finds urbanism endlessly fascinating, I found totally charming.