Charlotte, NC is a city with so many recent entrants that a new term, the “Charlotte Unicorn,” has been coined to identify people who currently live in Charlotte but didn’t grow up there. Considering I now live in Ithaca, I may not technically be a Charlotte Unicorn right now, but I can still view my hometown from the perspective of one.
Growing up, I rode horses, which required a 45-minute drive from my house near Uptown Charlotte through the city and out to Waxhaw, a town just outside the Charlotte city limits. Over the ten years we made this daily trek to the barn, I remember watching the brownfield farmland that separated Charlotte from Waxhaw gradually develop into one continuous stretch of built land. I watched shopping centers and housing developments be built from the ground-up as proof of Charlotte’s population growth. Nowadays I can’t watch the gradual development of my city the way I used to, but I still see its effects. Every time I go home there are new stores, restaurants, hotels, houses, and even high-rises uptown. Many of the new storefronts opening are big-name, national brands (like Sweetgreen, coming Summer 2024!) proving that my city is scaling upwards to the likes of Atlanta, for example. Each time I visit, my hometown is slightly different from the state I left it in months before.
As the term “Charlotte Unicorn” implies, people who both grew up in Charlotte and still live there are rare, but we do exist, and we exist in our own underground version of Charlotte society at that. The “Charlotte Unicorn” social networks stretch back generations, but this fact isn’t an obvious one, it’s something you would only realize if you are a part of this network. This “unicorn” population is the group I grew up in and surrounded by, and I recognize the privilege that comes along with that. The “Charlotte Unicorn” community is supported by pillars like the Charlotte Country Day School, the Charlotte Country Club, and a few select churches, whose respective alumni and membership have an extremely high degree of overlap. The overlap and history of “Charlotte Unicorns” makes the community, for lack of a better word, somewhat incestual. The unicorns are always abuzz with new gossip that is significant to them but means nothing to those who haven’t been connected to Charlotte for generations.
Many “Charlotte Unicorns” follow an identical roadmap that leads them to UNC Chapel Hill and then right back to Charlotte post-grad where they birth a new generation of Charlotte lifers. When the time came for me to select an institution of higher education as a senior at the Charlotte Country Day School, my one goal was to avoid getting trapped in the seemingly never-ending pipeline of students from my high school to UNC Chapel Hill and back to Charlotte. When I lived in Charlotte permanently before starting at Cornell, I was incredibly frustrated by how ironically small my ever-expanding city felt. Now that I’ve left, I realize that these frustrations with my city and where I grew up played an integral role in both why I’m at Cornell and why I’m studying cities.
I think leaving Charlotte has now given me the perspective to find ways to enjoy the city that’s dynamics once frustrated me. Now that I’ve moved away, I understand the “Charlotte Unicorn” dynamics, but can also look at the city as an outsider. My high school self would be slightly disappointed, but I will be returning to Charlotte this upcoming summer for an internship. I never used to understand why the “unicorns” kept flocking back to Charlotte. I didn’t understand why they didn’t want to broaden their horizons, why they were complacent with living the same life they had always lived. My goal for this summer is to explore a new version of Charlotte, to move back as if I’ve never lived there before. Even though I’m returning to the same place, it doesn’t mean I have to live the same life I previously had.