Why Atlanta became the mega metro in the south?
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  Why Atlanta became the mega metro in the south?
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Author Topic: Why Atlanta became the mega metro in the south?  (Read 977 times)
David Hume
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« on: August 09, 2022, 05:57:23 AM »

Atlanta is the overwhelmingly largest metro south of DC and east of Huston. Yet it does not enjoy major geographic advantages like New Orleans and Miami, or historical importance like Richmond. While it's ATL, instead of, say, Charlotte, Savannah, Charleston, etc, that serve as the mega metro in the south?
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David Hume
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« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2022, 10:43:24 AM »

Because it's a key transportation hub.

Started as the 'Terminus' (right in the city's original name) of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and continued to expand due to Hartsfield-Jackson, which has historically been the world's largest airline hub.
Interesting. But I guess during the time when railroad was important, there should be many other cities serving as hubs? Why ATL was the most important one?

I know ATL is one of the largest airline hub since it was the base of Delta, but that should be after ATL became a mega metro?
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Oryxslayer
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« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2022, 11:10:20 AM »

Because it's a key transportation hub.

Started as the 'Terminus' (right in the city's original name) of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and continued to expand due to Hartsfield-Jackson, which has historically been the world's largest airline hub.
Interesting. But I guess during the time when railroad was important, there should be many other cities serving as hubs? Why ATL was the most important one?

I know ATL is one of the largest airline hub since it was the base of Delta, but that should be after ATL became a mega metro?

It had the geographic advantage. It was where the north-south railroads going from NY southwards terminated or 'turned' East-West around the Appalachians into the southern interior. Before the civil war it was a major rail hub, but this location ensured the city would rise from the ashes and become an even bigger rail hub after industry came southwards.
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David Hume
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« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2022, 04:43:13 PM »

Because it's a key transportation hub.

Started as the 'Terminus' (right in the city's original name) of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and continued to expand due to Hartsfield-Jackson, which has historically been the world's largest airline hub.
Interesting. But I guess during the time when railroad was important, there should be many other cities serving as hubs? Why ATL was the most important one?

I know ATL is one of the largest airline hub since it was the base of Delta, but that should be after ATL became a mega metro?

It had the geographic advantage. It was where the north-south railroads going from NY southwards terminated or 'turned' East-West around the Appalachians into the southern interior. Before the civil war it was a major rail hub, but this location ensured the city would rise from the ashes and become an even bigger rail hub after industry came southwards.
Thanks!

Were there any other railroad hubs in the south with similar geographic advantages to ATL? If so, why didn't they become mega metro? ATL was smaller than Savannah before 1880s, so I guess there should be some other important hubs back then.
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Torie
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« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2022, 04:59:56 PM »

Next to NYC, its location based on topography is as close to perfect as God can manage. And then it transcended and marginalized the "intolerant," allowing its wings to stretch and soar into an estimable world class city.
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Sol
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« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2022, 05:07:21 PM »
« Edited: August 09, 2022, 05:26:49 PM by Sol »

Because it's a key transportation hub.

Started as the 'Terminus' (right in the city's original name) of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and continued to expand due to Hartsfield-Jackson, which has historically been the world's largest airline hub.
Interesting. But I guess during the time when railroad was important, there should be many other cities serving as hubs? Why ATL was the most important one?

I know ATL is one of the largest airline hub since it was the base of Delta, but that should be after ATL became a mega metro?

It had the geographic advantage. It was where the north-south railroads going from NY southwards terminated or 'turned' East-West around the Appalachians into the southern interior. Before the civil war it was a major rail hub, but this location ensured the city would rise from the ashes and become an even bigger rail hub after industry came southwards.

This post implies though that Atlanta specifically is an obvious place for a city, as opposed to a historically lucky place at the junction and termini of rail lines. The Appalachians, although they made building railroads difficult, did not make them impossible.

In fact, the most obviously convenient link between the large NE port cities and the south is through the Cumberland Gap, and yet Knoxville never became a great American city.

Atlanta in fact has a somewhat crummy location; it's not along a major river (the Chattahoochee goes a good bit to the north and west) and unlike most major cities in the region it's not on the fall line either. It's only the magic of railroads and their erasure of distance that overcame that and made Atlanta a major city. It could just as easily have been Birmingham or Augusta or Athens or Macon, etc.

As late as 1950, the greater Atlanta area only has ~110,000 people on greater Birmingham.
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Torie
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« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2022, 05:54:23 PM »

Posts here are missing the importance of the fall line on the eastern seaboard. Cheap energy on a linear NE to SW line marked the economically productive belt. Atlanta did have set back when my great grandfather helped burn it to the ground.
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Sol
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« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2022, 06:00:49 PM »

Posts here are missing the importance of the fall line on the eastern seaboard. Cheap energy on a linear NE to SW line marked the economically productive belt. Atlanta did have set back when my great grandfather helped burn it to the ground.

Atlanta is a good bit north of the fall line though.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2022, 09:32:17 PM »

Sol is, as usual, correct here; among great American cities, the only one with a location as strange as Atlanta is Dallas. The cities on the fall line in Georgia are Augusta, Macon, and Columbus.

One disadvantage that the fall line cities that far south have is that the weather is presumably pestilential, which would explain why Piedmont cities like Atlanta and Birmingham would have become relatively more important once the railroads made them possible. That doesn't explain why Atlanta got so much bigger than Birmingham, though. Instinctively I'd expect the opposite.
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2022, 11:59:32 PM »

Sol is, as usual, correct here; among great American cities, the only one with a location as strange as Atlanta is Dallas. The cities on the fall line in Georgia are Augusta, Macon, and Columbus.

One disadvantage that the fall line cities that far south have is that the weather is presumably pestilential, which would explain why Piedmont cities like Atlanta and Birmingham would have become relatively more important once the railroads made them possible. That doesn't explain why Atlanta got so much bigger than Birmingham, though. Instinctively I'd expect the opposite.

I-35 seems to follow a natural "minimum precipitation to sustain a city without industrial irrigation" climate gradient.  I don't think Dallas (or Austin or San Antonio) is a coincidence.

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Del Tachi
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« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2022, 12:19:56 AM »

Railroads are a good answer for why Atlanta first became a big city back in the Reconstruction Era, but they don't explain why ATL grew so much bigger than other regional centers like Birmingham, Nashville or Raleigh in the second-half of the 20th century (as Sol mentioned.)

The founding mythology of Atlanta is that it's a post-war city that has always been uniquely progressive, enterprising, and open to outside (i.e., Yankee) influence.  Locals will proudly tell you the reason Atlanta's so successful is because they're "too busy to hate."  Take that as you may. 

I'd also mention the 1996 Olympics and the associated redevelopment of Downtown and Midtown Atlanta as very transformative.  The games and their associated development activity soundly established Atlanta as the most valuable commercial hub in the Southeast, and that activity continued to fuel a lot of redevelopment/gentrification throughout the 2000s and 2010s. 
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Torie
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« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2022, 07:43:03 AM »

Because it's a key transportation hub.

Started as the 'Terminus' (right in the city's original name) of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and continued to expand due to Hartsfield-Jackson, which has historically been the world's largest airline hub.
Interesting. But I guess during the time when railroad was important, there should be many other cities serving as hubs? Why ATL was the most important one?

I know ATL is one of the largest airline hub since it was the base of Delta, but that should be after ATL became a mega metro?

It had the geographic advantage. It was where the north-south railroads going from NY southwards terminated or 'turned' East-West around the Appalachians into the southern interior. Before the civil war it was a major rail hub, but this location ensured the city would rise from the ashes and become an even bigger rail hub after industry came southwards.

This post implies though that Atlanta specifically is an obvious place for a city, as opposed to a historically lucky place at the junction and termini of rail lines. The Appalachians, although they made building railroads difficult, did not make them impossible.

In fact, the most obviously convenient link between the large NE port cities and the south is through the Cumberland Gap, and yet Knoxville never became a great American city.

Atlanta in fact has a somewhat crummy location; it's not along a major river (the Chattahoochee goes a good bit to the north and west) and unlike most major cities in the region it's not on the fall line either. It's only the magic of railroads and their erasure of distance that overcame that and made Atlanta a major city. It could just as easily have been Birmingham or Augusta or Athens or Macon, etc.

As late as 1950, the greater Atlanta area only has ~110,000 people on greater Birmingham.

Apparently the issue was a rail line to the Midwest, not the NE.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Atlanta-where-it-is
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Beet
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« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2022, 08:45:35 AM »

Houston is in the South.
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2022, 10:23:43 PM »


This is true, but it basically didn't exist until after 1900 and wasn't a big deal nationally until the 1960's-70's oil boom.
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Adam Griffin
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« Reply #14 on: August 13, 2022, 02:46:15 AM »
« Edited: August 13, 2022, 03:26:03 AM by Adam Griffin »

Lots of already good answers here, which are probably more relevant than anything I'll offer.

However, even going back to the antebellum era, the average population center of the Confederacy would have found itself basically somewhere in western Georgia. Atlanta (aka Terminus) itself wasn't that influential given it was a small railroad city in the 19th century that basically got burned to the ground during the war.

In fact, plotting population by state/region across the Confederacy in 1860 more or less averages out a population center roughly in between modern-day Atlanta, Chattanooga, Birmingham and Huntsville (highly-approximate), as shown by the two converging red lines. Even today, a disproportionate share of population growth and development is fixated within a 150-mile radius of this historical center.



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Adam Griffin
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« Reply #15 on: August 13, 2022, 03:06:47 AM »
« Edited: August 13, 2022, 03:18:36 AM by Adam Griffin »

Sol is, as usual, correct here; among great American cities, the only one with a location as strange as Atlanta is Dallas. The cities on the fall line in Georgia are Augusta, Macon, and Columbus.

One disadvantage that the fall line cities that far south have is that the weather is presumably pestilential, which would explain why Piedmont cities like Atlanta and Birmingham would have become relatively more important once the railroads made them possible. That doesn't explain why Atlanta got so much bigger than Birmingham, though. Instinctively I'd expect the opposite.

This is a really good point that I never connected 2 and 2 on prior. Even in my region of the state (NW GA, which is clearly in Appalachia by any definition), a lot of non-mountainous areas are only 700-800 feet above sea level; most of the original Atlanta Piedmont area is at 1000-1200 feet. Macon, Columbus and Augusta are all at 250-400 feet by comparison. Even today, travelers visiting these 3 cities in the summer should be expected to be accosted by inch-sized bugs (along with all of the tinier varieties of pests) when outdoors - something that doesn't really exist anywhere in the northern half of the state.

A lot of people don't realize that much of the original parts of Atlanta are at the same elevation as places like Roanoke VA, Phoenix AZ & Cleveland OH. Just comparing to Macon (60-70 latitudinal miles south of Atlanta), the typical Atlanta temperature is 4-5 degrees cooler with humidity 5-10 points lower year-round; of course, depending on where you live in ATL and how much asphalt and development exists, this might be offset to a large degree.
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