Location isn't everything.

• Position: Charlotte - Economy

For the eighth time in 10 years, Statesville-Mooresville in Iredell County was Site Selection magazine's top U.S. micropolitan area--urban cores of between 10,000 and 49,999 people for economic development, announcing 28 projects of at least $1 million in investment. It was joined in the top 10 by another Charlotte-region micro, Shelby in Cleveland County; which ranked fifth with 13. While it's accurate to say these counties benefited from proximity to the state's largest city--"in particular that a i r port," says Mike Smith, executive director of the Greater Statesville Development Corp.--it's also incomplete.

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For example, Providencia USA Inc., a subsidiary of Brazil-based Companhia Providencia, chose to expand its Statesville textile factory partly because of the county's low taxes. General manager Gene Konczal told Site Selection that Iredell's tax rate is among the state's five lowest and that the other four are in remote sections. "We are only 45 minutes from a major airport. That is an advantage for our business." It also helps that Interstate Highways 77 and 40 intersect there.

Cleveland, on the other hand, doesn't have a low tax rate, but it has the infrastructure power-hungry data centers need. In 2008, Atlanta-based T5 Data Centers LLC started looking for a site in North Carolina to build a large data-center park. It asked Charlotte-based...