ATLANTA — A collective gasp rose here last week when the Atlanta Braves announced that they were moving to the suburbs. The franchise, after all, has been not only a sports team, but also a mirror of Atlanta’s aspirations.

The Braves became the first big-league team in the Deep South when they moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee in 1966. The team quickly became a national presence thanks to Ted Turner’s cable network and was an early symbol of the region’s evolution beyond the confines of its segregated past.

As demographics changed and development migrated to the largely white suburbs, the team remained a proud anchor of an increasingly black city.

But now, as the team makes plans to head a dozen miles northwest to a new $672 million baseball stadium in Cobb County, a regional civic conversation has begun: Is the move a blow to a city beginning to enjoy a post-recession urban renaissance, or is it a signal of a new era in which traditional assumptions about the divide between city and suburb no long apply?