Charlotte,NC: 
People moving to Charlotte often ask me " Where is Downtown? and Where is Uptown Charlotte?" Fact is, in Charlotte there is just one "town". Back in the olden days everyone referred to the central business district as "The Square" and sometimes "downtown". "The Square" is the crossing of Trade and Tryon streets which are the were the two main streets in town. You may even hear that expression now.
Back in the 1980's the central business district of Charlotte was a very different place than it is today. Once it had truely been the center of the city with the best stores, restaurants and companies all located there. But that was before all the stores closed up and moved to the suburbs, the way they had in almost every city in America twenty years earlier. At the end of the work day everyone headed for the suburbs. They rolled up the sidewalks and turned off the lights.
Then came the days of urban restoration in the 1980's. It became a mantra with city fathers everywhere to restore viability to the inner cities; and so they encouraged people to move back into what little residential housing was left, restore the few turn of the century homes that had not been torn down and build condos and parks. Someone thought that calling downtown "Uptown" would be more, well..."up". And so they crammed it down ..I mean they encourage everyone they could to call Downtown, Uptown; thus a new paradigm was born.
Well, it worked. Today Uptown is indeed a very different place that it was just twenty years ago. There are beautiful condos and townhouses with awesome views of the center city. There are townhouses around central parks, art and science museums, fabulous restaurants and theatres. The Epi Center is the hottest hot spot in town and the streets are filled with young people long after the offices close for the day. I have had clients who never go out of Uptown. They work for the banks, live in the condos and shop at the Harris Teeter grocery store. They might take the car out once or twice a month. ( Yeah, you still need a car if you are going to live in Charlotte.)
So using an analogy of New York City were there is an Uptown, Midtown and Downtown...consider; Uptown Charlotte could be considered the financial district much like Wall Street only with a night life and people living nearby.
Southpark might be considered the "Upper East Side" so to speak. It is expensive, convenient to upscale shopping, housing and old money.
And then there is Ballantyne, 
a suburban mixed use area more like Westchester than the city with a range of middle to upper end housing, big box shopping like Target and even a mall.
Charlotte is a multifaceted, beautiful city. Sometimes when I travel away on vacation coming back to Charlotte is like "carrying coals to Newcastle". We already have it going on here in every direction...Uptown, downtown and all around the town.
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