Shirlaine Clarke

City of Atlanta

The City of Atlanta remains a transportation hub, not just for the country but also for the world: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is one of the nations busiest in daily passenger flights. Direct flights to Europe, South America, and Asia have made metro Atlanta easily accessible to the more than 1,000 international businesses that operate here and the more than 50 countries that have representation in the city through consulates, trade offices, and chambers of commerce. The city has emerged as a banking center and is the world headquarters for 13 Fortune 500 companies. Atlanta is the Capital city of the southeast, a city of the future with strong ties to its past. The old in new Atlanta is the soul of the city, the heritage that enhances the quality of life in a contemporary city. In the turbulent 60's, Atlanta was "the city too busy to hate."​ And today, in the 21st Century, Atlanta is the "city not too busy to care"​. For more than four decades Atlanta has been linked to the civil rights movement. Civil Rights leaders moved forward, they were the visionaries who saw a new south, a new Atlanta. They believed in peace. They made monumental sacrifices for that peace. And because of them Atlanta became a fast-pace modern city which opened its doors to the 1996 Olympics. Die-hard Southerners view Atlanta as the heart of the Old Confederacy; Atlanta has become the best example of the New South, a fast-paced modern city proud of its heritage. In the past two decades Atlanta has experienced unprecedented growth -- the official city population remains steady, at about 420,000, but the metro population has grown in the past decade by nearly 40%, from 2.9 million to 4.1 million people. A good measure of this growth is the ever-changing downtown skyline, along with skyscrapers constructed in the Midtown, Buckhead, and outer perimeter (fringing I-285) business districts.