Why is the city of Charlotte obsessed with the color green?
Take a look at one of the Charlotte city flags. It’s simple: A white crown with a green background. The crown is obvious — this is the Queen City after all. But why green?
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Turns out that the color green is actually Charlotte’s main branding color, and you’ll see that color on everything from street signs to city vehicles.
“Green provides an association with the City’s environmental assets, reputation for prosperity, and good quality of life, including the City’s tree canopy, visitors’ ratings for cleanliness, national reputation as a banking/financial center (and) commitment to job creation,” according to a city communications representative.
So how is Charlotte living up to its green reputation?
The city is a partner with TreesCharlotte, a public/private nonprofit collaboration that seeks to grow and diversify our urban forest. The goal: To elevate Charlotte’s tree canopy coverage to 50 percent by planting 500,000 trees by 2050, and by teaching people how to plant and preserve trees.
In terms of cleanliness, a 2017 report by the American Lung Association listed Charlotte’s metro area “as one of the nation’s cleanest cities in short-term spikes of particle pollution.” Previously, Charlotte had been ranked among smoggiest cities.
As for our financial reputation, Charlotte was once the nation’s second-largest banking center, but recently dropped to third. The city has $2.26 trillion in assets.
And about that job creation: From 2006 to 2016, local tech businesses increased their job count by 62 percent. That includes 18 percent growth from 2014-16, which Forbes called “the fastest clip in the nation.”
So now that you know green is Charlotte’s main branding color, you’ll start to notice it everywhere, whether it was intentionally on brand or not.
In addition to the flag, you’ll find green bars on the City’s website, plus the email signatures of City employees.
It’s all over uptown signs.
If you happen to follow Charlotte’s Solid Waste services on Twitter, you’ll see it there. Green.
Join us for food, friends, and fun at the North End Smart District All-Community Meeting July 27, 6-8 p.m.! pic.twitter.com/01H6VqOc7H
— Solid Waste Services (@CLTSWS) July 14, 2017
Even the streetcar is green.
Now we just need to add a lyric about this to Charlotte’s unofficial hip-hop theme song.
Photos: David T. Foster III/Charlotte Observer, Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer
This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Why is the city of Charlotte obsessed with the color green?."