The Leader - November/December 2008 - (Page 66)

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT S PEC IA L FE AT UR E The Georgia Report: A Thriving State Faces Changes in the National Economy BY BAILEY WEBB S PEC IA L tlanta is considered Georgia’s economic engine, and Atlanta is where the story starts and ends. Yet Atlanta is only half the story. Three decades of torrid growth leave Georgia the ninth largest state in the U.S. by population, with approximately 9.3 million, 3.8 million in the 10-county metro Atlanta area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 report. That torrid growth created an economic powerhouse as companies from across the U.S. and world ﬂocked to Atlanta and the state, creating a dynamic economy and one of the world’s busiest airports in Hartsﬁeld-Jackson. That growth also led to some of the worst trafﬁc congestion and sprawl and the longest average commute in the U.S. and a water crisis last year from which the state has yet to fully recover. Then there’s the current economic malaise A that has crushed residential construction and lending markets, especially once rapidly growing ones like metro Atlanta’s, and led to the highest unemployment rates since the early 1990s. Georgia’s second-quarter unemployment was 6.3 percent, compared with the national rate of 6.1 percent. When times seem dour, though, keep in mind the boundless ambition, will and optimism that created Georgia and Atlanta’s current state. You have the men who created a sugar-water concoction in an Atlanta pharmacy and built it into The Coca-Cola Co., perhaps the world’s most recognizable brand. You have a city and state that eclipsed its neighbors during the Civil Rights movement by branding itself as the City Too Busy to Hate and maintaining relative calm after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination while many cities across the nation were engulfed in ﬂames and riots. 2 0 0 8 TH E LE ADE R Today, metro Atlanta is home to one of the highest concentrations of African-American wealth in the U.S. and is a Mecca for a burgeoning black middle class and AfricanAmerican afﬂuence. From its origins in the 1920s, you have Hartsﬁeld-Jackson, which now handles nearly 1 million ﬂights and 89.4 million passengers annually. Finally, you have a city and region that lured the 1996 Summer Olympics, an inconceivable notion to prior generations and a catalyst for a decade where 100,000 new jobs per year seemed almost routine for metro Atlanta. Despite current challenges, which strain every city and region in the U.S., Georgia still receives high marks from publications such as Forbes, which ranks Georgia the ﬁfth best state for business, and organizations such as the Pew Center, which ranks Georgia the fourth best managed state in the country and the Kauffman Foundation, which ranks 66 NOVEMBER / DECEMBER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Leader - November/December 2008

The Leader - November/December 2008 Leadership Contents Message from the CEO Real Estate in the News Leveraging Business Geography My Work @ Bank of America Blending the Old with the New A Tool for Growth Creating Real Estate Value Nokia-Siemens Networks’ Peter Doran DTZ’s James Maddock Annual Economic Development Directory The Georgia Report Location Profile: Magdeburg, Germany Linking Corporate Real Estate to the Enterprise 3rd Quarter 2008 Adding Value in Challenging Times Australia and New York Shell’s Paul Huston Economic Development in the News A Look Ahead In our Next Issue Calendar of Seminars Index of Advertisers Chapter Learning: The Global Perspective

The Leader - November/December 2008

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