Corporate Headquarters in Metropolitan Atlanta, 1960-1997: A Region Comes of Age

A surge in urban economic development in the southern United States, unprecedented in scope and scale for this region, occurred during the four decades from 1960 through the 1990s. The location pattern and sectoral composition of corporate headquarters located in Atlanta, the Deep South's largest city, reflect the nature of this movement, transforming a region's economic landscape. A detailed corporate data set and survey of managers in selected companies in the top employment sectors enables analysis of firm type, size, and location for each decade. Explosive growth in a northern suburban wedge between major interstate highways follows the extension of transportation arteries outward from the urban core to formerly peripheral locations. Semple and Phipps' model of corporate headquarters distribution over time is amended in this demonstration of location variance by sector, by combination of firm size categories in the same general location, and with the emergence of an economy based on "white collar" occupations.