Tomorrow land: you don't have to look far to get a glimpse of what business in North Carolina might be like in 25 years.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

During the 1990s boom, envy in some sections of North Carolina morphed into a kind of arrogance. Charlotteans no longer conceded that theirs was the second city of the South, behind Atlanta, and residents of the region around Raleigh and Durham toned down their panting pursuit of Silicon Valley, contending that the Triangle beat the Bay Area in many ways--friendlier folks, less traffic and cheaper homes. Truth is, Atlanta tops Charlotte in just about everything--aside from bank assets and NASCAR teams. It has more people, corporate headquarters, big-league sports teams and pizazz. As for the Triangle, its touted virtues reveal its shortcomings: Less traffic points to less commerce; less-expensive housing, less wealth.

Still, aping bigger, more glamorous locales helped the state's largest metropolitan areas--and thus its economy--blaze a trail to the present. In 1981, when BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA began, they could have done worse than look to Atlanta and Silicon Valley for glimpses of what they might become. Charlotte may lack Atlanta's heft but has acquired more than a fraction of its flash. Though Raleigh-Durham can't rival greater San Jose, Calif., as a hothouse for startups, it has spawned some successes.

Squinting into the next 25 years, however, you need not look to the West Coast or a few hours down Interstate 85 for hints of North Carolina's future. You need peer only as far as the slopes leading to the Great Smoky Mountains. Asheville, Buncombe County and the surrounding area are grappling today with challenges that all of North Carolina will face soon enough, including an aging population and hard, practical limits on urban sprawl. Asheville and environs are growing gray, green and geeky--older than the rest of the state, more environmentally conscious and, in a homespun way, building an economy in which brains are every bit as important as brawn.

An influx of retirees has pushed the median age to 40 years in Buncombe and to 44 in nearby Henderson County, compared with 36 statewide, according to estimates by state demographers. "We're already where the nation and the rest of the state will be in 20 to 25 years," Asheville real-estate developer Jack Cecil says. The mountainous terrain--steep slopes unfriendly to construction and lots of land locked in public preserves--has encouraged the sort of environmentally sensitive development that crowding and global warming may soon bring to the Piedmont. The region's mash of hippie artists, rich retirees, X Games-inspired adrenaline junkies and old-time craftsmen is brewing the sort of creative-class economy that social scientist Richard Florida predicts will separate successful cities of the future from the laggards.

Asheville's development has long been shaped by its geography. Hemmed in by mountains and the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers, it didn't have room for acres of factories, warehouses and mills to sprawl, as they did in other urban parts of the state. Back when railroad-worthy grades and navigable rivers mattered most, it couldn't compete with Wilmington's port or even Raleigh's position between rich farmlands to the east and the factories of the Piedmont.

Instead, hemlocks and hillsides...