SCaRP Professor Dan Immergluck says developers built new neighborhoods like crazy, until the market crashed. Now unfinished subdivisions like these are problems for cities around the country where the housing boom mostly meant more single-family homes. Construction is returning in some places, but not everywhere. "Well, Atlanta's a paradox because as a metro, the indicators are pretty positive," Immergluck says. "Job growth has returned. Housing demand has returned."

But, Immergluck says Atlanta is a dual market. "I think we have a bigger kind of race and space divide than lots of other cities."