I spent the weekend in North Carolina with my college girlfriends. We get together every 6 months or so to drink wine and stuff our faces in what my brother-in-law refers to as “Girls Gone Mild.” I drove up to Charlotte to spend Thursday night with one of the girls who lives there, and then she, another friend, and I headed over to near Asheville.
Whenever I spend time in another city, I find myself comparing that city to Atlanta, and this was no different, except that I was really bothered by the comparison. I have been to Charlotte quite a few times, since my friend works there, and since a software company that I worked for was bought out by a Charlotte outfit. I am always struck by how similar Charlotte and Atlanta are in so many ways; both of them seem to be very cosmopolitan, to have a young, affluent, well-educated workforce, and to thrive on dining and shopping and driving SUVs.
There were differences, too, in my superficial gaze at the Queen City: Charlotte’s business crowd seems a little more clean-cut than Atlanta’s. I suppose that might be due to the banking influence there versus our Turner creative types. There may be one there, but I didn’t see any Piedmont Park-like greenspace in Charlotte. The most obvious difference between the two, though, was that Charlotte seemed so much cleaner than Atlanta. Sure, there were some rougher, more industrial areas on the way into the city, but for the most part, Charlotte was almost antiseptic. Much of Charlotte’s skyline seems made up of new architecture, while Atlanta’s seems a little time-worn. I often think that Atlanta is almost soul-less – that it hasn’t quite found itself. Charlotte seemed even more without a particular “feel” to it. I guess part of that is the nature of both cities – both seem to have been built up most recently with the transfers of so many people who are not from the city. Rarely in Atlanta does one find an Atlanta native; My friend said the same of Charlotte.
I am curious, though, what accounts for the comparative cleanliness of Charlotte when compared to Atlanta? I can sit at any intersection in intown Atlanta, look out of my window, and see an appalling amount of litter on the roadside. I didn’t see this kind of trash anywhere that I drove in downtown Charlotte, or in the “gentrifying” area in which my friend lives.
How does Charlotte seem so clean, while Atlanta seems to me to be so dirty? What can we do to improve Atlanta’s curb appeal? Is it the city and county governments at fault for not cleaning up the trash? Is it the citizens themselves that are so different? Or maybe it is just the sheer size difference between the two. Is it just easier to keep a Charlotte-sized city clean than it is to keep Atlanta clean?
