I grew up in Atlanta, moved to Los Angeles 11 years ago.
The Atlanta suburbs were awful for me. Bland, completely unplanned messes dominated by big box stores with massive parking lots and endless subdivisions of cookie-cutter houses.
But the city was pretty cool. The Midtown-Little 5 Points-Candler Park axis was quite livable, with plenty to recommend it day and night. If I ever moved back, it would be to that part of town. Most jobs, though, tend towards the suburbs. And most of the cheap housing.
Traffic is bad there, but nowhere near LA or DC bad. Maybe like Bay Area 101 bad.
There's some geeky culture there, particularly geeky pop culture. Dragoncon, big anime community. Science/Tech geekwise there's a fair amount. GaTech and Emory, of course, and the CDC draw their share of talent. Lots of my friends or spouses worked in places like that.
Art culturewise there's not a lot. A solid underground band scene, you could see good hardworking indie bar bands nightly if you wanted. A world-class but underappreciated symphony. So-so art museum. Great archaeology museum at Emory, better than anything LA has. Gallery scene is eh. Theater scene is eh. Some film culture, but spotty. Decent foodie culture, though not on the scale of a major foodie hub. A much, much, much more vibrant LGBT culture than you might expect.
A good number of outdoorsy people. Appalachian Mountains with tons of trails, rock climbing, kayaking, serious caving. Finding people to backpack with was never a problem. Hunting and fishing culture strong too, of course.
Crime wasn't all that bad. I spent a lot of time out and about in the city itself late at night. I never really felt unsafe, but then I knew the city intimately. Did some construction work in housing projects for a summer job, that was pretty sketchy at times. My brother saw a running shootout doing the same work. But that kind of thing was very limited to very specific areas.
For me it'd be the best place to live between DC and New Orleans, but there are a number of other places I prefer.
The Atlanta suburbs were awful for me. Bland, completely unplanned messes dominated by big box stores with massive parking lots and endless subdivisions of cookie-cutter houses.
But the city was pretty cool. The Midtown-Little 5 Points-Candler Park axis was quite livable, with plenty to recommend it day and night. If I ever moved back, it would be to that part of town. Most jobs, though, tend towards the suburbs. And most of the cheap housing.
Traffic is bad there, but nowhere near LA or DC bad. Maybe like Bay Area 101 bad.
There's some geeky culture there, particularly geeky pop culture. Dragoncon, big anime community. Science/Tech geekwise there's a fair amount. GaTech and Emory, of course, and the CDC draw their share of talent. Lots of my friends or spouses worked in places like that.
Art culturewise there's not a lot. A solid underground band scene, you could see good hardworking indie bar bands nightly if you wanted. A world-class but underappreciated symphony. So-so art museum. Great archaeology museum at Emory, better than anything LA has. Gallery scene is eh. Theater scene is eh. Some film culture, but spotty. Decent foodie culture, though not on the scale of a major foodie hub. A much, much, much more vibrant LGBT culture than you might expect.
A good number of outdoorsy people. Appalachian Mountains with tons of trails, rock climbing, kayaking, serious caving. Finding people to backpack with was never a problem. Hunting and fishing culture strong too, of course.
Crime wasn't all that bad. I spent a lot of time out and about in the city itself late at night. I never really felt unsafe, but then I knew the city intimately. Did some construction work in housing projects for a summer job, that was pretty sketchy at times. My brother saw a running shootout doing the same work. But that kind of thing was very limited to very specific areas.
For me it'd be the best place to live between DC and New Orleans, but there are a number of other places I prefer.