The Guardian is spending a week bringing you live reports from the fascinating unofficial capital of America’s ‘new south’, and we want to hear from you

As we’ve explored the stories of US cities, something about Atlanta has always fired our imagination. The great gateway city of the “new south” is poised on the cusp of great change, from culture to demographics to urban planning. Indeed, it often feels as if Atlanta has all the ingredients to be to the 21st century what Chicago was to the 20th – a quintessential American city of its era.

This week, Guardian Cities and Guardian US have partnered to report live from Atlanta, celebrating its triumphs and reckoning with its challenges.

Culturally, Atlanta punches above its weight. It has long boasted that it has the US’s most dynamic hip-hop scene, and in 2018 that’s hard to argue with. In our Sound of Atlanta interactive, local musicians and writers share their picks of the artists and tracks – hip-hop and beyond – currently defining the city’s musical soul.

We’ve also been astonished by how Georgia’s booming TV and film industry has turned Atlanta into the “Hollywood of the south”, with franchises including the Marvel movies and the Hunger Games filming in studios and on location around Atlanta – not to mention hit television series such as Stranger Things, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, the phenomenally popular local Real Housewives franchise and the reboot of Queer Eye. How these televisual versions stack up against the city’s reality will be a big theme for our reporting – particularly as our team of reporters and editors liveblog their way around Atlanta today.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The city’s booming film and television industry has produced hit series such as Donald Glover’s Atlanta. Photograph: 2016, FX Networks. All Rights Reserved.

Atlanta also has one of the most surprising US sports stories: tomorrow, we’ll be looking at how the residents of this “city of transplants” have enthusiastically embraced Atlanta United, the table-topping MLS team, in huge numbers that challenge the popularity of baseball, basketball … and even that other football.

We’ll also take you inside some of the city’s jaw-dropping architecture, much of which is hidden from street view – from the McMansions of Buckhead to the glitzy (if not gaudy) atria of celebrated architect John Portman, whose hotel lobbies were designed to make you look up in awe.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Table-topping Atlanta United soccer team are a surprise hit with the city’s residents, who turn out in huge numbers to watch the side play. Photograph: Ben Rollins/the Guardian

Central to Atlanta’s vision of the future, meanwhile, is one of the world’s more ambitious urban planning experiments – which just this month received a massive new funding deal. It is the BeltLine, a disused 22-mile railway loop being transformed into a paradise of high-density pedestrian liveability with cycling and transit and mixed retail … or so goes the marketing spiel. With a lack of affordable housing, and powerful developers who seem intent on derailing the transit plans, has the BeltLine become a byword for inequality?

Indeed, even as it racks up successes, Atlanta faces challenges on various fronts – not just gentrification and a high eviction rate, but nightmare traffic and hobbled public transport. We’ll interrogate whether Atlanta is as friendly to LGBT communities as many think, and eulogise the historic buildings it has lost in the rush to modernity. Added to all this is a post-Charlottesville uncertainty: how to handle the legacy of the Confederacy, manifested most strikingly in the huge Stone Mountain monument – just a few miles from where Martin Luther King was born.

We kick off today with author Maurice Hobson of Georgia State university reflecting on the city’s history, and scrutinizing its reputation as a “black mecca”, where African Americans thrive.

Black mecca or most unequal US city: will the real Atlanta please stand up? Read more

Meanwhile, Khushbu Shah reports that the great “reverse migration” of African Americans from the north of the US to metro Atlanta is on track to turn key historically Republican counties to the Democrats – perhaps as soon as next month’s midterms. That could help push Stacey Abrams of the Democrats to a victory that would make her the nation’s first female African American governor.

So, join us this week as we tell the remarkable story of this most fascinating, diverse and changing city.

Guardian Cities is live in Atlanta for a special series of in-depth reporting. Share your experiences of the city using the form below, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using #GuardianATL, or via email to cities@theguardian.com

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