Reports: Atlanta is Still Teeming with Transplants

WABE recently set out to pick the brains of Atlanta transplants, and they had no trouble finding non-natives on the Beltline's Eastside Trail, which has long been squirming with a veritable transplant infestation. A recent New York Times analysis revealed that 45 percent of Georgians weren't born in the Peach State, and WABE's transplant safari bore that out; only about 15 percent of people they spoke with were from the Atlanta area, instead hailing from places like Arizona, Minnesota, Jamaica, Michigan, Illinois and New Orleans. The running theme seemed to be that none of the interviewees (except one woman from Phoenix) had dreamed of living in Atlanta but rather ended up here — "I never thought I'd live in the South. Never," said one former Californian — and yet they all plan to stick around. For more thoughts and heartfelt confessions from Atlanta transplants, check out our New Voices Atlanta series from earlier this year, in which newcomers from across the United States dished candidly on the city's allure, affordability, schools, crime, transit, traffic and future.