Quote Originally Posted by 313WX View Post
Agreed on all points.

I also live in Atlanta now. And for those who think Atlanta is too suburban, they obviously haven't been to / through the city in the past 10 years. An impressive amount of urban development and infill has taken place since then.

As far as the traffic, I will say, while coming from the northside can be rough, commutes from the SW side are a breeze [[better than Detroit's rush hour commutes even). For those who live in Douglasville or Newnan, it only takes 30 minutes to get in/out of the city. You don't encounter any real congestion until you get to the connector. Given all of the rural land along the I-20 and I-85 corridor, I suspect that's where the spinoff development would occur if Atlanta landed HQ2.

The only reason I can figure for people on this forum writing Atlanta off is ignorance or hate [[Atlanta is a sprawly black mecca that works, Detroit is a sprawly black mecca that doesn't).
If Amazon's priority is to establish a campus in an urban environment, I don't think that the poorly regarded, rural south suburbs of Atlanta would be that appealing. Supposedly downtown Atlanta is not all that vibrant, so I would think they would look into downtown.

Suburban Northern Virginia is a wealthy, growing area, but it is quite suburban. I don't see how it would fit the bill, unless they try to sell Arlington as an urban destination or sell its proximity to Washington, DC