Rob Christensen warns in today's News & Observer that recent changes in annexation laws in North Carolina could stifle the relative prosperity and economic engines of cities such as Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville and Wilmington:

If you follow the Interstate 40-85 corridor, you will find the greatest concentration of AAA-credit-rated cities in the country, according to one urban expert.

And you will find pleasant places: Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, High Point. And elsewhere in the state, Fayetteville, Wilmington and Asheville are cities that are nice places to live.

They are attractive cities, with modest urban crime rates and often livable, middle-class central neighborhoods.

The cities are growing. They are economic engines, helping generate jobs, rather than going hat in hand to the state legislature asking for subsidies as cities do in many other states.

North Carolina's cities are not places to escape; they are places to move to.

We take all of this for granted. But it is hardly true across the country.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/08/28/1441649/new-law-may-stifle-our-cities.html#ixzz1WKvQM4kf