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Perception of Charlotte Nationwide


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^ You beat me to it! I saw the pic and was like, "wait, that city skyline looks familiar"... and sure enough it's "Charlotte Named Best Place to Live."

Agreed though, I don't put a whole lot of stock in these things b/c they seem to be all over the place. However, you can't beat free advertisement either.

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^ You beat me to it! I saw the pic and was like, "wait, that city skyline looks familiar"... and sure enough it's "Charlotte Named Best Place to Live."

Exactly, I know that picture from UP, but when displayed at one inch by one inch, I did a similar double take. You can just see BoA's crown and of course One Wach, otherwise, this could be pretty much any city when you're squinting at it on a monitor...

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I feel a big city has 1millon + people in its city limits or like Atlanta & Miami that is part of a huge urban area. I think Charlotte is doing just fine. In North Carolina, Charlotte is viewed as a large city, but others in other large states may view Charlotte as a small to mid size city. When you compare Charlotte to other cities in the world, most are older than the USA and have been an important city for a long time.

Edited by RiverwoodCLT
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  • 1 month later...

Richard Florida was on NPR's Talk of The Nation today. Promoting his latest book : " What's Your City". I will have to podcast it later since I just heard the last half in the car. I did manage to hear the end of a call from Charlotte....Florida gave us props for "trying to change our image from a sprawly sunbelt city to something more progressive". He bookended that segment by saying that Portland, Austn, etc will always have an edge in lifestyle and attracting talent because they instituted responsible growth plans early on. A few traffic lights later....a bored lady called in from Hilton Head, my hometown. She does not like in her words " White Bread Capital of the World, Self-Satisfied Hilton Head Island" :lol: Florida has turned his "Creative Class" theory into a lucrative business empire but I do think there is some credence to it.

On NPR today he said that people spend more time researching the car they are going to buy than where they want to live. And whether the personality of the new city may fit them. He encourages people to "test drive" the town before rushing into a decision after it's too late to back out. This is wise advice. I have grown to like Charlotte but en masse it does not fit my personality. I jumped at a job offer here and did not spend enough time scoping it out, if I had done so I might have taken a pass in hindsight. To compensate for my disconnect with Charlotte as a whole I live in an older walkable neighborhood. Ideally in the future though I want to be in a city that I can totally connect with not in small parts like Charlotte is to me.

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I just had a meeting with investors from outside Charlotte that are starting to work here -- one of them dubbed Charlotte "The city that sucks the least". I actually thought that was hilarious and sadly in some ways very true!

HAHA. Just think, the City of Charlotte could have saved the $50,000 it spent on a new motto for the city and gone with your clients suggestion....

Charlotte, the city that sucks the least!

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Charlotte recently ranked high (15th) among 69 cities for building wealth in a survey by Salary.com. I believe the survey took cities with populations of 250,000 or more. Our friends in Raleigh ranked 17th. Notables at the bottom were Atlanta (52) and New York (69).

Charlotte Ranks High for Building Wealth.

Cost of living would be a main factor, that's why NYC is always near the bottom of these surveys.

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London's Lord Mayor yesterday stated that Charlotte was not a world-class city. No surprise there. Hopefully his remarks about Charlotte though reached some ears, and city leaders will realize being world-class is less about having "things" and more about the way a city presents itself on the global stage.

Atlanta is a great case of a place with lots of "things", but still doesn't truly offer international appeal.

Article in the Observer.

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London's Lord Mayor yesterday stated that Charlotte was not a world-class city. No surprise there. Hopefully his remarks about Charlotte though reached some ears, and city leaders will realize being world-class is less about having "things" and more about the way a city presents itself on the global stage.

Atlanta is a great case of a place with lots of "things", but still doesn't truly offer international appeal.

Article in the Observer.

What the hell are you talking about? Atlanta is one of the handful of truly international cities in these United States. Sure, it may be a shipping/communications hub, as opposed to a financial center (something Charlotte is clearly not), but it is most certainly an international city.

Charlotte will not become "world class" until it manages to at least:

1) Diversify its local economy beyond banking. And no, incredibly fragmented and/or nearly bankrupt industries such as OEM and commodities don't count. Energy beyond DUK is out given the fragmentation of utilities and the lack of natural commodity resources in the area, Technology and Healthcare are a tall order due to RTP/the Triangle, and communications and transportation are out simply because of ATL's lead/geographic location. However, attracting large multinational consumer staple/consumer discretionary is still a viable strategy. As well as;

2) Realize that banks are not the end-all be-all. Yay, BofA and Wachovia are in Charlotte. SoEffingWhat. There are hardly any hedge funds, no noteworthy mutual funds (Columbia runs Small Cap 2 out of BoA1), and no private equity or IB activity beyond former local executives. And, although I've poo-pooed the idea before, WB is now vulnerable enough due to its market cap vis-a-vis the devastating incompetence of its executives that it could well be bought by a smaller rival for much less than the value of its assets.

Beyond these, building light rail as quickly as possible, encouraging density by not approving building any-damn-where there's a place to build, creating street-level retail (I know, all of these are covered in other topics, so we're on the same page there), etc.

The Lord Mayor is correct: there's more pedestrian/consumer/business activity around the Gherkin at 3PM on a Saturday than there is on S Tryon at 8:30 on Monday morning.

Charlotte can get there, but not without a different vision that its current leadership possesses

/Native North Carolinian

//Moving back to the state in the next twelve months

///Albeit probably to Raleigh

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London's Lord Mayor yesterday stated that Charlotte was not a world-class city. No surprise there. Hopefully his remarks about Charlotte though reached some ears, and city leaders will realize being world-class is less about having "things" and more about the way a city presents itself on the global stage.

Atlanta is a great case of a place with lots of "things", but still doesn't truly offer international appeal.

Article in the Observer.

*pulling my spectacles off*

Okay, I just finished reading the article. Interesting read...but what does Atlanta have to do with what London's Lord Mayor had to say about Charlotte? I'm trying to understand the connection. Maybe I need to put my glasses back on and reread the article because I don't understand why Atlanta had to be diminished because some Brit said something about Charlotte.

That's an interesting mentality.

BTW, I don't really wear glasses...but I probably need to because after the second read I still didn't see Atlanta referenced.

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I think what atlrvr is saying is that just because Atlanta has museums, good shopping, and tall buildings, doesn't make it a world city. World cities (or "global") as referenced by the GaWC at (part of the Geography Department of Loughborough University in England) are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo are Alpha cities; Atlanta falls in the sub category of primarily non-economic global contributions of world cities, which is below that of Frankfurt, Miami, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Munich, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Zurich, Moscow, Brussels, etc. By their calculations, Atlanta is in line with Denver, New Dehi, Mumbai, and Shanghai (among others).

More to the point, it takes a lot to be world class.

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I think Atlanta was brought up to somehow diminish the criticism of Charlotte. Charlotte is a long long way from Atlanta's league so I don't agree with the analogy either.

I think the fact they had to ask the Lord Mayor a question such as this pretty much speaks for itself. My guess is that if he went to Atlanta this would not be a topic of discussion.

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Perhaps I stated it poorly....it wasn't meant to be a knock on Atlanta and I don't want to take away from the city. It is certainly a much better/more cosmopolitan place than when I lived there about a decade or so ago (post Olympics).

If Atlanta is considered world class, and many do, it's in spite of the shiny "things" that have been city backed investments. The truly world class iniatives are much more subtle...Georgia Tech, CDC, CNN, Coke (and yes, it's museum). These have all been iniatives outside the "flashy" projects.

My comment though was it doesn't have international appeal, and I maintain more international visitors go to Miami or Seattle or if we want to go much smaller, Amsterdam, because they are more globally oriented. Atlanta (as a politcal body), is like Charlotte (yes, on a much grander scale), going for the flash, while missing some of the cultural subtleties.

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I think Atlanta was brought up to somehow diminish the criticism of Charlotte. Charlotte is a long long way from Atlanta's league so I don't agree with the analogy either.

I think the fact they had to ask the Lord Mayor a question such as this pretty much speaks for itself. My guess is that if he went to Atlanta this would not be a topic of discussion.

This is exactly what I got from that post. Perhaps I gave a knee jerk response. I will say this however, I live in Atlanta and rarely do I hear someone say something negative towards Charlotte. It's like anytime something is said that diminishes Charlotte, Atlanta is mentioned. I can say with authority that noone in Atlanta says anything against Charlotte. Many view it quite affectionately and with interest. Regardless of our own personal preferences/opinions...and we have every right to them...Atlanta is a minor gamma city on the international scene. Noone here is of authority to take that away. In the process, I would fight tooth and nail for Charlotte to be there as well.

Then again, I have always been under the idea that I don't have to tear anyone else down to build myself up. I can talk all day about how great I am and never mention or compare myself to another person. The city of Charlotte...as accomplished as it is...is capable of the same thing.

*disclaimer* I do understand that forumers do not speak for the city of Charlotte or it's elected officials.

Edited by Lady Celeste
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I think the article was written poorly, but the Lord Mayor's points were extemely valid. I think the reporter highlighted a very small sliver of his overall commentary that was likely provoked by a loaded question.

What the city should be drawing from this is that is needs to think globally as opposed to regionally. While Charlotte is improving in this regard, it is still too preoccupied by shiny things rather than a wholesale cultural shift.

Perhaps another way of saying this is, you don't need to be a metro of 10 million, to be globally relavent.

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.......

Perhaps another way of saying this is, you don't need to be a metro of 10 million, to be globally relavent.

Maybe but I have read a number of long articles that suggest the majority of the world's affairs, economy, decisions, etc. take place in interactions between the planet's global cities. These would be London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Moscow, Hong Kong and Washington DC. The DC metro is certainly not 10 million people but it is on this list because it is the seat of political power of the largest military and economic power on the planet. One could possibly add a couple of more cities in Europe but the creation of the Euro really has made many of them irrelevant to the list. Beijing could also go on there but the communists still have too many Stalinistic concepts on how to run things.

The remaining cities on the planet exist mainly to serve their own needs or the closest city on the list above so they will never be globally relevant in the same sense. Of course there are exceptions like Jerusalem, the site of many religious fables or Hiroshima the first city destroyed by an atomic weapon of mass destruction, but I am not aware of anything in Charlotte that matters on this scale. Certainly the hundreds of millions they spent on getting a 2nd NBA team did nothing in this regard,

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I certainly agree with the last statement, even though I support the arena. In a city of finite budget for infrastructure improvements, allocations towards transit and other basic infrastructure would have the greatest benefit. The rest of it is pretty cheap, but much harder to obtain. It's charismatic leaders with vision that sell the city on the global stage, and enlightened politicians that are willing to embrace and foster programs for workers from different cultures.

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Perhaps another way of saying this is, you don't need to be a metro of 10 million, to be globally relavent.

Nor does everyone in every city want to live in a place that is 'globally relevant'. If that is something I wanted I'd move to it instead of bemoaning whether my city was or wasn't. This thought process and argument regarding Charlotte has always been annoying to me. Who cares really? I want a fun, vibrant, and diverse place to live. FOR ME I've found that here. Other than adding amenities that truly affect my personal life, I could care less if we become globally important.

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Nor does everyone in every city want to live in a place that is 'globally relevant'. ...
But that really isn't the point of this topic. (notice Nationwide Perception) Charlotte seems obsessed with having national and global prominence as demonstrated by the afore mentioned Bobcats and of course the Observer made a point of the question being asked of the Lord Mayor.
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