Melanie Kendrix sees evidence of the unstoppable growth of Atlanta's suburbs every day at Big Creek Elementary, poring over the attendance records of 1,100 students who spill into trailers for classes. Henry County, stretching 40 miles to the southeast of Atlanta, doubled its population and was the state's second-fastest growing county. Paulding County, on the western side of Atlanta's outer ring, ranked third. Gwinnett County came in sixth, yawning out to the east as developers gobbled up open land. The city's expansion has been so remarkable that it has, in some ways, detached itself from the city.
People are so busy.
They come home to sleep and to take the kids to soccer. Farther north, retirees filled up new communities in the Georgia mountains. People want to get back to the basics. People are looking for more than a postage-stamp lot crammed next to somebody else.'' Finding enough room to teach children is only one of the problems Georgia's boom counties faced in the 1990s. In southeast Georgia, one county's growth kept pace with the Atlanta suburbs.