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Nashville / Charlotte or even Orlando are still much smaller than Atlanta, though.
My take is that everything is relative - it's a lot easier to grow from 1.5M to 2M-2.5M (Which is what Charlotte, Nashville, and even Austin did) compare to 4M to 6M and continue to grow (Which is what Atlanta did). For all the talk about Atlanta slowing down, have you seen Midtown of 2010 compare to 2020? The growth of places like North Fulton/NW Gwinnett/Forsyth County? Oh...and upcoming development like The Gulch, the forever gentrifying O4W/Beltline area...
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From a pure growth standpoint Nashville is not really in the same category as these other cities. Nashville's urban area population went from 518k in 1980 to 1.15M in 2020. Atlanta went from 1.6M to 5M. Austin went from 380k to 1.8M. Charlotte went from 351k to 1.4M.
From a pure growth standpoint Nashville is not really in the same category as these other cities. Nashville's urban area population went from 518k in 1980 to 1.15M in 2020. Atlanta went from 1.6M to 5M. Austin went from 380k to 1.8M. Charlotte went from 351k to 1.4M.
Good point. I’d say for Nashville in particular, it’s urban growth didn’t start until much later as mentioned in a previous post. Specifically around 2014 and 2015. Cities like Austin, Charlotte and Atlanta got a jump on their urban growth much earlier. Atlanta’s growth started in the 70’s and 80’s, Charlotte’s in the 90’s and early 2000’s and Austin in the early to mid 2000’s.
Agreed. Back in the 2000s, Atlanta was fresh off the Olympic hype. You had people saying Atlanta was going to pass Houston in population by 2010 and then pass DFW. The number one export you'd heard about from Atlantans back then was Coke but it isnt seen in the same light today in a more health conscious world. The entertainment industry Atlanta has developed helped keep its relevance higher with all the "made in Georgia" credits after each show filmed there. Without this rise Atlanta would certainly be behind DFW and probably Philly in my opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Heel82
I think Atlanta’s national standing is similar. What’s been hurt is its regional standing. The rise of Charlotte, Nashville, Orlando have all eaten away at its standing as the primary city for the Southeast. The TBS diplomacy which made Brave nation so large is not replicable today.
Atlanta's a tricky one.
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
Atlanta has the benefit of Emory and Georgia Tech.
Detroit didn’t have anything to draw the upper middle class once the jobs moved to the burbs.
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
I’m not sure about a “black metro”, but as a white person, I’ve always viewed Atlanta as a “black city” and most blacks I know for a long time (from the 90’s through early/mid 2000’s) seemed to view Atlanta as one of the premier “black cities.”
Since I’m not from there it’s hard for me to differentiate between “metro” and “city,” but I always think of Atlanta as a black city.
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
I've always seen Atlanta as a "Black city" (mainly because of Rap) but not really the metro. But it also seemed divided from the times I've been there. The Buckhead area felt relatively mixed, and northern Fulton County seemed pretty white overall.
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
In Atlanta the city the white percentage is increasing while the black is declining.
For the bolded - Made me think of Albert King "Cadillac Assembly Line."
I can't help (the paranoid in me) but consider other factors. Among the white population is Atlanta beginning to be considered "a black metro"? So that young white families that would move there in the 80s-00s maybe move to a Nashville or Austin or a Raleigh. I know other groups are growing in Atlanta and at a faster rate but I can't help but wonder if there is a backlash within the white community to "black atlanta", not malicious or anything, but...yeah.
To me one of the untold stories is this story of Detroit. In the 20-60s Detroit was a place all of black america wanted to live...the great jobs that would hire blacks, the large single family homes, Motown, the large black middle class, politically active population....and blacks gravitated to it because they couldn't get these things everywhere, so the black population exploded relative to every other population.....and the city couldn't handle the large influx economically or socially....and Detroit started to decline, whites started moving out of the city, and it started to go down hill really fast.
There are other factors at play that I suspect the same thing won't happen for Atlanta because of those factors, but it's something I think about.
This seems to be ignoring one of the biggest historic factors in the demographic change of Detroit vs current times with Atlanta..
Redlining and block-busting were the norm during that period for Detroit (and pretty much every city in the US at the time). That is...quite illegal now.
Obviously prejudices that invoke "white flight" still exist; but not nearly to the (intentional) scale as what took place in the mid 20th century.
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back then every city had tiny city limits. Even in Texas
