[Trae]

It's all in the county size. The farther west you go, to larger the counties are. You can't even say that Los Angeles sprawls out for over 30,000 sq. miles. Los Angeles and Riverside counties are so large. Both of those counties are mostly rural. Maricopa County in the Phoenix metro contains 3.5 out of the 4 million people in Phoenix's metro. Again, that county is huge. In Harris County (Houston), you can be on farms and still see Houston's skyline. Many parts of Harris County are still very rural. Again, 3.6 out of Houston 5.5 million people live there (metro wise, not CSA). If you could split up the counties and make them smaller (like Georgia's size), Houston sq. miles would be smaller. As you can see by the urban areas LMich posted, Atlants sprawls out more than Houston or Dallas. That should give you an indicator on how much more "sprawly" metro ATL is.