In the law of averages, Mableton best reps Atlanta

As any metro Atlantan knows, defining the essence of the region is near impossible; after all, Mableton is vastly different from Tucker, and Ormewood Park is worlds away from the Snellville-Grayson area.

The U.S. Census Bureau, however, begs to differ. According to its recently released American Community Survey, those four places have something in common: Each one closely resembles the 28-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, with Mableton narrowly edging out the others for the coveted title of most average.

Taken as a whole, here are some of metro Atlanta's statistical truths: 34 is the median age, 58.4 percent of the population is white and 31 percent is black, 9.3 percent of residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin, 49.2 percent of families are married couples and the median household income is $58,390.

No community mirrors that perfectly. For instance, Mableton, an unincorporated part of Cobb County best known as the birthplace of former Gov. Roy Barnes, is more racially and ethnically diverse: 50 percent of the people are white, while 38 percent are black.

Otherwise, though, Mableton fits the bill: The median age is 35.7 years, 50 percent of households are married couples and the median household income is $55,252. In other words, exceptionally average.

“That’s kind of weird and cool at the same time," said Dana Johnson, Cobb County Government's planning division manager. "Because Mableton is hard to define."

The same holds true for breaking down the character of a 28-county region.

Johnson said Mableton, which stretches from the City of Atlanta towards Austell and covers a large portion of South Cobb, is still finding its identity.

Indeed, the area is a mix of old Cobb County farming families, a working class that flooded in during the 1960s, and a recent influx of upper-middle-class families seeking a tranquil community with a short commute to downtown Atlanta.

Barnes, whose family's business, Barnes Hardware, is a Mableton landmark, said he wasn't surprised that his hometown resembles Atlanta at-large. His family has seen the area change from mostly white and rural to its current ethnic and professional mix, and he believes the community is as varied as metro Atlanta.

"It may be average for the region, but this region is a vibrant region, so it’s not a bad thing to be," Barnes said.

In recent years, Mableton saw a surge of new growth from the Vinings halo effect, with planned communities in Mableton's 30126 zip code claiming "Vinings" on their signage.

"When they developed all those subdivisions in Mableton and called them Vinings, I said that after they close that house, [the buyers would] wake up and say ‘Wait , I live in Mableton?'" Barnes joked.

Georgia State University demographer Harvey Newman, a professor of public management and policy, raised a scholarly eyebrow at the notion of boiling the metro area down to a place or two.

"From the standpoint of social science, it’s very difficult to find a town that is really representative of the whole, because you are dealing with 5.5 million people," he said. "Any time you start looking for a representative of a large, complex group of people, it does some violence to the representativeness."

Newman, who has studied Atlanta's changing populations for 40 years, said he hasn't visited Mableton in recent years, but he's well aware of the Vinings effect.

"For a long time I’d tease friends from Smyrna that they should change it to Upper Vinings. Then they did the next best thing -- they hired a really cool architect-planner and did a town center makeover, and, voila, Smyrna has reinvented itself," he said. "I don’t have the sense that Mableton has done that."

Not yet. But according to Johnson and Barnes, Mableton has been identified as a "Lifelong Community" by the Atlanta Regional Commission, meaning that it is a good place to live whether you're young or old. For its part, the county recently updated its five-year "Livable Center Initiative"  for Mableton, which aims to make the community a "highly desirable" address in its own right.

For Ikenia Williams, Mableton is already a place she's proud to call home. The Chicago-born woman moved to Mableton in the early 2000s seeking a safe, affordable community with close proximity to her job in Atlanta. And when she married her New York-born husband, the couple decided to stay in Mableton to raise their family.

Mableton, she said, is "close enough to the city, and far enough away."

A big plus is that it's ethnically diverse, she said.

"In certain areas of Atlanta, you get a very one-dimensional view. We didn't grow up like that," she said. "Here, you see people who look like you and people who don't. That's what we want for our son."