Is Atlanta still even Southern? Asking for a
related thread.
On the real, though: Houston, Dallas, and Miami have tantamount import to the importance of Atlanta. We can go all week long debating their relative merits, but there’s no clear stand out. It isn’t the northeast with New York, it isn’t the Midwest with Chicago, and it isn’t the west coast with Los Angeles.
That being said... if you want more fine grained regions not based upon just states, Dallas is the alpha city of the Great Plains, Houston of the Gulf Coast, Atlanta of the Deep South, and Miami of the Caribbean. But they’re all also “southern” in their own unique ways, whatever that means to you or any other poster.
I would ALSO think it would not be controversial to say that of those four, Atlanta is the most clearly “southern.”