Missing mojo alert: Exactly 15 years after the 1996 Olympics, what remains of Atlanta’s Olympic spirit is a very nice park and a cauldron that looks even worse now than when it last contained fire. And the swaggering capital of the Sunbelt, a metro region that spilled and spread and sprawled so reliably for decades, now finds itself in unaccustomed territory; i.e., the skids.
Metro Atlanta traffic has merged into the ninth circle of hell. Unemployment is up. Real estate is in a persistent vegetative state. The city schools have been stained by scandal.
”All of a sudden the recipe that has worked beautifully in Atlanta for 40 years has stopped working,” said Tad Leithead, chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
It could get worse in 2012. But it could also get better.
In the coming year the Atlanta region has the opportunity to address traffic, one of its most intractable problems; win a satisfactory resolution in the longstanding water wars; and undertake real improvements in its schools.
Throughout this week, the AJC publishes an eight-part series on metro Atlanta's 2012 turning point . Get the in-depth story on how our region ranks with nine of its metro competitors around the country. Find out who's in the lead (it isn't us) and why. It's a story you'll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper's iPad app. Subscribe today.
And: tune in to WSB Channel 2 Action News at 7 p.m. Sunday to see the AJC/WSB regional roundtable, in which a panel of business and civic leaders take on the metro area’s biggest challenges.
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