Qualla: Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion

Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Adams, CC BY-SA 4.0. Drive from Birmingham to Raleigh and you cross what planners now call a single thing - the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion, sometimes called Charlanta or the Southeast Megalopolis. The interstates I-85 and I-20 are its spine. The cities along them - Birmingham, Atlanta, Greenville, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh - are knitting themselves together as their suburbs reach for each other across the rolling Piedmont. Roughly 12 percent of the United States population lives here, on land that an earlier generation would have called the Old South and a newer one calls the Sun Belt.

Image: Michael Adams | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion: An Emergent Megalopolis

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Berniestew at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Regional Plan Association coined the term to describe one of eleven emerging American megaregions, and Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech studies confirmed the pattern. Half the nation's projected population growth and two-thirds of its economic growth are expected to occur withi...

Image: Berniestew at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion: On the Old Cotton Land

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Willamor - User: (WT-shared) Bz3rk at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Piedmont itself - the rolling hills running 200 to 1,000 feet above sea level between the Appalachian crest and the Atlantic coastal plain - was cotton country in the nineteenth century. That land grew the antebellum South's wealth and absorbed unimaginable human cost. After ...

Image: James Willamor - User: (WT-shared) Bz3rk at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 3.0

Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion: Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Triangle

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Polk540, Public domain. Three urban poles dominate. Atlanta is the largest metropolitan area, an Alpha-World City by the Globalization and World Cities ranking, anchored by Hartsfield-Jackson, the busiest airport on Earth. Charlotte is the largest single city in the megaregion and the nation's second-la...

Image: Polk540 | Public domain

Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion: Mountains, Coast, and the Strain Between Them

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Downtown_Huntsville,_Alabama.jpg: User:Anivron derivative work: Spyder_Monkey (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes the Piedmont Atlantic culturally distinct from the rest of the South is also what's straining it. The Appalachian Mountains form its western wall - the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Mount Mitchell as the highest peak in the eastern United Sta...

Image: Downtown_Huntsville,_Alabama.jpg: User:Anivron derivative work: Spyder_Monkey (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0