Wow. I'm glad to hear it is really a pleasant place.

I was reporting a personal experience, not making a blanket judgement of anything. Actually, not having or expecting a silver platter, I hired a taxi and went out to a very pleasant part of town where the Martin Luther King memorial is, and walked around. It's just that between point A and point B wasn't really walkable or bikeable, so far as I could see. But then, I didn't know what to expect, being a tourist from a small town in Oregon. I hoped for peach trees downtown, I suppose -- sort of like English peasants believed the streets of London were paved with gold. Silly me.

See this kind of superficial judgment makes me wonder about all of the other observations here and how many of them are similarly based on such shallow observations and guilt by association. Suburban Atlanta does have many terrible characteristics and the city isn't perfect but it certainly isn't the dehumanizing moonscape that many make it out to be.

I am quite hopeful that most people on this blog are less superficial in their immediate judgements. Sorry.