West Charlotte

3 neighborhoods on the crescent side. Wesley Heights sits a mile west of uptown on the Gold Line, a historically Black neighborhood next to the Biddleville and Seversville blocks around Johnson C. Smith University. Wilmore is mill housing on the far side of South End, and the last address inside the inner belt that was cheap — until roughly 2015. Steele Creek is something else entirely: the whole southwest quarter of the city, holding the airport, the Catawba River, and farmland turning into subdivisions and distribution warehouses at the same time.

West Charlotte is where the city's history of displacement is least abstract. Brooklyn, the Black business district in Second Ward, was demolished entirely by urban renewal in the 1960s and its residents moved west; the neighborhoods they moved into are the ones now appreciating fastest in percentage terms. If you are buying here, the honest framing is that you are participating in that, and the local land trusts and the City's House Charlotte program exist because of it. Practically: check the flood map, because Irwin and Stewart Creeks flood and the west side has more property in the 100-year floodplain than any other part of the city; and in Steele Creek, check the airport noise contours and the industrial zoning next door before you fall in love with the lot.