When Atlanta was little more than a backwoods settlement until the 1830s, when the Western and Atlanta Railroad company chose it as the Southern terminal for their line.

The city managed to avoid the worst of the Civil Rights riots of the 1960s by marketing itself as 'The city too busy to hate'.

In 1996 Atlanta hosted the Olympic games. Unfortunately, the image of the city was not helped by its poor infrastructure, but Atlanta is recovering, and growth in the CBD is still on the rise.