Progress is chasing the South right out of Atlanta faster than you can say Wal-Mart Superstore. The city that Sherman burned is just too big, too new and too durned cosmopolitan to be Southern anymore. Metropolitan Atlanta is a sprawling 6,126 square miles encompassing some 20 counties and nearly 6 million residents. Size matters, but even a good-sized, historically diverse city like New Orleans stays true to its Southerness and all of the other components of its swampy loveliness because it really wants to. Some 3.4 million people attended 3,057 conventions there in 1998, according to figures from the Atlanta Convention and Tourism Bureau.
More people move to Atlanta than any other city in the country.
Most are from other cities in Georgia, as well as Florida and Alabama. But a lot of folks who move there are Yankees, and I mean that in the kindest sense. It nurtures and protects enclaves where you can go for a Southern fix. For starters, there are still plenty of places to see relics of the war of Northern Aggression, known to non-Southerners as the Civil War. Try Grant Park, built between 1895 and 1915, but spared from Sherman's fiery attack.