"Finally this evening, on a very brief visit, we grant you, checking out Atlanta. A lot of people have said over the years that Atlanta is not such a great place to visit. The downtown is not unusually vibrant. And as many visitors notice, there is no dramatic urban focus. The people who come to live here, on the other hand, think it is a great place to live. There is just one thing. Success is not always good for living. This mega city -- that's what it is now -- is one of the great success stories of the 1990s. Not since right after the Civil War, when Atlanta grew from the ashes, has the city grown so fast. The population of Georgia grew 26% in the 1990s. And it    sometimes seems as if everyone has a car. This city projects itself to the rest of the world as prosperous, busy and united. 

[But there are] three indicators  [of challenges to Atlanta's quality of living]. 

Air pollution -- Atlanta has so much air pollution now that the ozone alert is commonplace. It is sometimes genuinely hard to breathe here. 

Traffic -- they just will not have anything to do with mass transit here, and only three other cities in the country have worse congestion. Which, of course, has something to do with the pollution. 

And if ever there was a brake on growth, it is a shortage of water. Atlanta can see it coming. There is simply not enough in the Georgia watershed to go on like this."