Atlanta's size compared to Houston (Dallas, Lenox: hotel, young professionals, floors)

[sour cream]

Houston is way bigger than Atlanta-------Houston 2.2 million and Atlanta 400,000.

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by sour cream

Houston is way bigger than Atlanta-------Houston 2.2 million and Atlanta 400,000.

How many times do we have to have the irrelevant statistic of city limit population regurgitated? It means nothing.

[Newsboy]

This thread is STILL going?

[urbanmyth]

...and Dallas is bigger than both and the cities of Jacksonville, Memphis, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Charlotte have more people than the city of Atlanta. So what?

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by sour cream

Houston is way bigger than Atlanta-------Houston 2.2 million and Atlanta 400,000.

Houston's city limits are like 5 times as large as Atlanta's...

[bigstick]

Houston is honestly one of the fugliest cities on Earth.

[atler8]

Yes Newsboy, this thread is still with us. LOL! I just saw your post & that of bryant in reply to what I have written here.
I wrote twice about the "tie-ins" & "interconnectivity" between metro Atlanta & the "nearby areas of Alabama". Let me repeat & emphasize that I wrote "nearby areas of Alabama." Those posts were a response to the claim that we were not in the Deep South & that we had more in common with the coastal Atlantic states of S.C., N.C., Va. & Tn. than to any areas of the Deep South, as in terms of culture, food, accents & racial discrimination as bryant put it.
Don't make the error of focusing too much on the "megalopolis" aspects of the metro, which I would call a "core-centric focus", while failing to note that the combined statistical definition of our metro area includes 39 & that the very heart of the urban core is a very small area of the region.
Heading out & away from the perimeter, other than to the north but especially to the east, south & west, the look & culture of metro Atlanta begins a rather rapid transition. The majority of the metro counties include huge swaths of rural looking areas, with suburban style encroachment that descreases as you head further out. Hence my statement that our metro tie-ins with the "nearby areas of Alabama" & our "interconnectivity" with that area of Alabama are greater than anything we have with S.C., N.C. & Va. We certainly have little interconnectivity at all with Va.
Witness the large number of Alabama license plates, Auburn & Alabama bumper stickers & personalized plates on our metro roads to know how inter-related we are with that state & particularly with the "nearby" area of it as I wrote. I never said anything about Montgomery, which is not at all in a nearby area of Alabama.
Additionally, we have a huge population of Alabama transplants living here who are natives of that state & the cross-border cultural & economic tie-ins with our western metro counties are enormous. That's why the Atlanta toll free calling area includes a small swath of Alabama area code 256!
As Mutiny noted in response to you, there is no sharp change at the border but a gradual one. West metro looks way more like east central Alabama than it does the core of Atlanta metro area. To claim that there is a sudden shift of all things "DRAMATICALLY" as it it was put emphatically & in caps, is a total fallacy. When you cross the state line on our western metro frontier into Alabama, nothing changes except the name of the state.
Like it or not, metro Atlanta is geographically in the Deep South.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by atler8

Yes Newsboy, this thread is still with us. LOL! I just saw your post & that of bryant in reply to what I have written here.
I wrote twice about the "tie-ins" & "interconnectivity" between metro Atlanta & the "nearby areas of Alabama". Let me repeat & emphasize that I wrote "nearby areas of Alabama." Those posts were a response to the claim that we were not in the Deep South & that we had more in common with the coastal Atlantic states of S.C., N.C., Va. & Tn. than to any areas of the Deep South, as in terms of culture, food, accents & racial discrimination as bryant put it.
Don't make the error of focusing too much on the "megalopolis" aspects of the metro, which I would call a "core-centric focus", while failing to note that the combined statistical definition of our metro area includes 39 & that the very heart of the urban core is a very small area of the region.
Heading out & away from the perimeter, other than to the north but especially to the east, south & west, the look & culture of metro Atlanta begins a rather rapid transition. The majority of the metro counties include huge swaths of rural looking areas, with suburban style encroachment that descreases as you head further out. Hence my statement that our metro tie-ins with the "nearby areas of Alabama" & our "interconnectivity" with that area of Alabama are greater than anything we have with S.C., N.C. & Va. We certainly have little interconnectivity at all with Va.
Witness the large number of Alabama license plates, Auburn & Alabama bumper stickers & personalized plates on our metro roads to know how inter-related we are with that state & particularly with the "nearby" area of it as I wrote. I never said anything about Montgomery, which is not at all in a nearby area of Alabama.
Additionally, we have a huge population of Alabama transplants living here who are natives of that state & the cross-border cultural & economic tie-ins with our western metro counties are enormous. That's why the Atlanta toll free calling area includes a small swath of Alabama area code 256!
As Mutiny noted in response to you, there is no sharp change at the border but a gradual one. West metro looks way more like east central Alabama than it does the core of Atlanta metro area. To claim that there is a sudden shift of all things "DRAMATICALLY" as it it was put emphatically & in caps, is a total fallacy. When you cross the state line on our western metro frontier into Alabama, nothing changes except the name of the state.
Like it or not, metro Atlanta is geographically in the Deep South.

Growing up near the state line of the two states mentioned here, I can attest that there is a difference. That you go back an hour in time when you cross into AL is not only due to time zones, it is metaphorical as well (if that is a word).

First thing you notice is the actual change in the roads. I have crossed probably evey crossing between the two states between Columbus and Rome, state roads, US highways, county roads.... the upkeep and construction is better on the Georgia side at least 90% of the time. The other 10% it is a tie.

The eastern counties of Alabama are depressed. Anniston feels down at the heels and has suffered with the loss of a lot of military jobs. Anniston, Gadsden, Talladega... all depressed. Nothing like similar cities across the border... Carrollton, Rome, LaGrange.. all feel much more alive and thriving. The fortunes do seem to reverse however further south. Cities like Auburn, Opelika and Dothan seem to be thriving more than southwest Georgia cities... of which Albany is a poster child of a city that has seen better days.

I think your post comparing eastern Alabama might have been in reference to a comment I made earlier. There are similarities in the south due to the geographic regions that do cross state lines. To me, the Piedmont areas of Georgia and the Carolinas are more alike than the peidmont area of Georgia is to the Coastal Plain areas of Georgia. The Piedmont extends slightly into Alabama, but the southern trailings of the Appalachians which cross the northwest corner of Georgia extend deep into Alabama, all the way to Birmingham. The northern half of Alabama is filled with much more rugged terrain than what you find in Georgia. This topography has led to a completely different feel in the ways the areas have developed as well as the way the economies of these regions developed. The piedmont of GA and the Carolinas is historically more agricultural and depended much more heavily on the textile industry. Central and northern AL has a history in the steel industry and in mining that you don't have in GA or the Carolinas. That fact alone gave these regions a totally different feel which has bled over into the culture of the two areas.

Of course all of these are traditional southern areas. But within that broader commonality, there are distinct differences. Go further south, however and southern Alabama is much more like southern Georgia as the topography is much more similar. Agriculture, not industry has always been king in this region.

[atler8]

SaintmarksNo, what I wrote about three times earlier was not in response to what you had written earlier but, what you did write just now, is interesting nevertheless.But despite all of that, I still believe that the "interconnectivity", which involves a myriad of aspects of life & culture, between the Atlanta metro (especially the west metro) & nearby eastern Alabama is stronger than our metro Atlanta connectivity to areas east & northeast of us in S.C., N.C. & Va. Another writer made that short list of states (above) in which he included Va. as being more culturally identified with us. By any stretch of the imagination I can not see any tie in between us and Va, whether it be with their mountain regions, their old capital of the Confederacy, their Tidewater or their suburban D.C. area.One thing to consider that I wrote about earlier is the tie in that involves the great population-oriented relationship between our metro area & eastern Alabama as signified by the very large number of Alabama natives who live in our midst. Economics & social policy have played the largest roles in bringing Alabamians across the border into our metro area. But whatever the reason, we have had a significant decades long cross-pollination (in Georgia's favor numerically speaking) across that frontier that is unrivaled by the cross border population movement into our midst from S.C., N.C. & Va.Looking at our eastern/northeastern neighbor, the contrasts between Ga. & S.C. are readily evident in so many ways simply by traveling up the I-85 corridor. Once away from the population concentration of metro Atlanta, there is virtually nothing along I-85 for miles in Ga. other than tiny towns. Once the border is crossed into S.C., there is the immediate beginning of a continuous succession of small to medium-sized towns & cities that does not let up all the way through to the line that state has with N.C.That different pattern of settlement & economic development in S.C., & it's concomitant cultural differences from Ga., are further amplified once you engage the S.C. natives along that corridor in conversation. Not only does the state look different the way it developed, but it's people sound & talk quite differently from the patterns of metro Atlanta. In other words, it is obvious that you are in a place distant from Atlanta in more than just the geographic sense.

[atler8]

Please excuse the mess above at 5:28 pm that dropped all of my breaks between sentences & paragraphs when it posted.
Our software is on the fritz again! O: