Piedmont Crescent

The Piedmont Crescent, also known as the Piedmont Urban Crescent, is a large, polycentric urbanized region in the U.S. state of North Carolina that forms the northern section of the rapidly developing Piedmont Atlantic megalopolis (or "megaregion"), a conurbation also known as the "I-85 Boombelt", which extends from the Raleigh area ) to Atlanta, Georgia in the southeastern United States.

Residents commonly attribute development of the Crescent communities to the Indian Trading Path and related settlements established by indigenous peoples long before European contact. The Trading Path was also used by European traders, and later by settlers entering the backcountry regions of the piedmont of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

Forming the shape of a crescent in North Carolina, the region is located in the central Piedmont area of the state. European-American settlement progressed generally from the east to the west, from what is now metropolitan Raleigh-Durham and the Research Triangle area at its eastern edge, through the Piedmont Triad cities of Greensboro and Winston-Salem at its center, and southwest to metropolitan Charlotte. This region has undergone sustained population and economic growth (acutely in the Charlotte and Raleigh areas) since the late 19th century, a trend that has accelerated since the late 20th century. It is notable as the fourth-largest manufacturing region in the country, as well as an international center of banking and finance, textiles, biotech and high technology.

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