Atlanta serves as the state capital for Georgia and is America’s 10th-most highly populated state capital city.

Nicknames for Atlanta include Hollywood of the South for its established film industry, Silicon Peach for its growing information technology sector, Running City USA for its nation-leading races including marathons, and the abbreviations ATL and The A. Monikers for Georgia are the Peach State and Empire State of the South.

Research website numbeo ranks Atlanta in the top 29% compared to the 250 cities evaluated on its overall quality of life index at June 2020. Atlanta scored well on index factors such as purchasing power (strongest 3%), property price to income ratio (lowest 11%), climate (best 25%) and pollution (cleanest 43%). On the negative side, Atlanta rates relatively poorly for safety (bottom 13%), traffic commute time (slowest 23%) and health care (lagging 47%).

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the world’s biggest and busiest airline hub both in terms of passenger traffic and aircraft operations.

One of Atlanta’s popular tourist attractions is the Georgia Aquarium, the biggest indoor aquarium anywhere. Another tourist magnet is Zoo Atlanta which houses more than 1,300 animals representing over 220 species, including America’s largest collections of gorillas and orangutans.

The Varsity is a famous eatery in Atlanta, both a well-established fast-food chain and the world’s largest drive-in restaurant.

Guinness World Records documents Atlanta for hosting the Centennial Olympics in 1996, for which a record 8.3 million tickets were sold over the two-week competition. Those sales gives Atlanta a world record for the largest ticketed attendance for an Olympic Games, far ahead of Beijing’s 2008 Olympic Games at 6.8 million tickets.

Atlanta serves as headquarters for 13 massive corporations recognized as belonging to the Forbes Global 2000 world’s biggest companies. Examples of these leading Atlanta-based businesses are well-known brands led by Coco-Cola, Home Depot, United Parcel Services and Delta Airlines.

From an international trade perspective, Georgia exported US$41.252 billion worth of goods around the globe in 2019. Its most valuable exports include civilian aircraft and parts (21.2% of Georgia’s global total), passenger motor vehicles (3.6%), gas turbine parts (3.4%), chemical woodpulp, soda or sulfate (2.9%), unbleached kraft-liner paper (2%), chicken cuts and edible offal (also 2%), medical needles and catheters (1.7%), modems (1.2%), and kaolinic clays (1.1%) according to United States Census Bureau data.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Fulton County in Georgia (where Atlanta is located) was 10.3% in July 2020, up from 3.8% one year earlier.

Capital Facts for Atlanta, United States: Quick Reference

 
Atlantans celebrate Independence Day as a national holiday each July 4.

Atlanta’s land area occupies 135.73 square miles (351.53 square kilometers). The state capital’s population was 523,738 Atlantans at September 25, 2020.

At the state level, Georgia has a land area measuring 57,906 square miles (149,976 square kilometers) home to a population of 10.7 million people.

Atlanta’s population density is more concentrated averaging 3,859 residents per square mile (1,490 per square kilometer).

Zooming out to Georgia state’s land boundaries, population density dilutes to an average 185 inhabitants per square mile (72 per square kilometer).