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If you really want to understand Atlanta, get to know its neighborhoods. Atlanta is a city of many different neighborhoods connected by a web of roads and rails. The various distinct communities, each with its own wealth of history and homes, are one of the features that make this city unique.

While the city neighborhoods have been the area’s strength for decades, more recent history has been made in Atlanta’s burgeoning suburbs. The building boom of the last 20 years has made what people once thought of as “Atlanta” an area that now spreads into several adjacent counties and beyond. The metro area has gotten so big that real estate experts have begun to make a distinction between “close-in” suburbs that border Atlanta’s Fulton County and “exurbs” – those area’s at the outer fringe where the one-way commute downtown may be 75 miles or more.

No matter where they live, Atlantans love to discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of life in various neighborhoods. You may hear diehard in-towners speak disparagingly of life beyond the I-285 Perimeter. You may also hear suburbanites discussing in-town Atlanta as if it were an outlaw zone or an exotic foreign land. And you’ll find many Atlantans playfully but unabashedly chauvinistic about where they live. Perhaps you’ll see a resident of laid-back Little Five Points sporting a T-shirt reading “30307: It’s not just a ZIP code-it’s a way of life.” Or you may hear someone reciting the motto, “Gwinnett is great.” On the other hand, just a few years ago, an amusing car dealer’s commercial featured potential buyers asking plaintively about his location, “Where’s Logonville?” That small city is now in the middle of fast growing Gwinnett County, and few have to wonder about the formerly small farming community.

Wherever they call home, residents will find their neighborhood more than just a place to hang their hats and pick up their mail. It provides a refined sense of focus, bringing a manageable, human scale to urban life. To be one person among more than four million in a 20-county area of 6,150 square miles is overwhelming; to be one among a few thousand in a friendly neighborhood is to feel a sense of community.

Because so much of Atlanta life is organized around communities, and neighborhood names are widely used to identify locations, it’s worthwhile for tourists as well as new residents to spend a few moments becoming familiar with the metro area’s many distinct districts.

The truth is that whether you prefer to live in a high-rise condominium or a gated country-club community, a downtown loft or a lofty mansion, you’ll find what you’re looking for in Atlanta if you’re willing to be persistent and flexible.

As you begin to look for an Atlanta address, the first question to answer is a basic one: Do you prefer to live inside or outside I-285? Your answer to this question will be determined as much by your lifestyle and goals as where you work and play. Do you want to make your home far from the noise and hustle of the city, or right in the thick of everything?