Dennis Cirillo moved to Charlotte from Long Island in 2017. He thought he was leaving the traffic behind.
“I traded the Long Island Expressway for I-485,” he told Axios Charlotte in May 2026. “It is the same movie with different accents.”
He is not alone in his surprise. Between July 2024 and July 2025, Charlotte added 20,731 new residents — more than any other city in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 data released May 14, 2026. The city is approaching one million people. The boom shows no signs of slowing…