When I was told that I had an assignment in Charlotte, North Carolina, I asked myself "What's in Charlotte?" Other than a quickly passing sports score, this city had never entered my field of awareness. After inquiring, several people informed me that "It's a banking center." OK.

Well, when I got there, Charlotte turned out to be pretty big, and very sophisticated. Quite the surprise. And I had a week to comb through it thoroughly. First off, Charlotte had some really neat architecture. Top-notch stuff. Downtown was just full of wonderful new buildings. And there was a lot of culture to be found, too.

Aside from the giant office buildings, Charlotte featured a variety of innovative housing complexes. One that specifically caught my eye was a planned community just north of town called Birkdale Village. One part of it had a section that was made up of shops, with apartments above them. The whole thing was arranged like a small town Main Street of sorts.