thanks for posting those stats. That's not new to me, and really wasn't the point I was making. Maybe I shouldn't have been using the word "sprawl", I should have been talking "land area". It's a well known fact that metro Atlanta is the least dense large metro in the nation. The point that I was making is that the land area of it's MSA and CSA is not grossly larger than many other comparatively sized metros, again, in particular, the sunbelt boomers. My point was that most people, I believe, incorrectly assume that the land area of metro Atlanta is way bigger than that of say, Dallas or Houston, when in fact, the stats LMich posted earlier show that it's actually smaller. People get the wrong idea when they hear "28 counties" because Georgia's counties are so tiny. That's really all I was trying to convey. Of course I'm not saying Atlanta is more dense. I couldn't say that. It's the least dense big metro in the country.