Pursuing common goals

Enhancing the appeal

Building on quality of life

Planning for balance

Planning for better times

An emphasis on construction

A community finds clever ways to capitalize on tourism

Adding new industry, upgrading infrastructure

A community explores new avenues to success

Tourism, healthcare and a thriving cultural scene

Attracting new industry while honoring rural roots

Focus on tourists, entrepreneurs

Preserving rural areas, planning for growth

A Mega Boat Ramp And 1-85 Access

A well-planned lake generates development

Vision 2030 Helps Leaders Plan For Growth

Changing The Face Of Georgia’s Classic City

Perfecting Plans For Land Use And Development

A New Identity

Rabun County: At-A-Glance

An increasingly popular area of the state wrestles with controlling growth.

A talent show helps United Community Bank builds rapport with patrons.

Economic development figures for Blairsville/Union County.

Athens is truly a city born of — and sustained by — education. As home to the University of Georgia, Athens-Clarke County's unified government, its economic developers and the city's merchants count on students — now numbering more than 31,000 — as a steady stream of commerce and tax revenues.

The next chapter in the story of downtown Gainesville — a city about an hour's drive north of Atlanta in Hall County — may be told in a report due to be released in November.

When Piedmont College opened for business in Athens a decade ago, only 64 students were enrolled, causing some to wonder what gold the 110-year-old private school expected to find in the shadows of the University of Georgia.

Fast facts about Athens/Clarke County: population, unemployment rate, median income, top employers.

For nearly a year, Gainesville-Hall County, through its Vision 2030 project, engaged hundreds of citizens in describing the community in which they would like to live, work and raise their families.

Fast facts about Gainesville/Hall County: population, unemployment rate, median income, top employers.

Danny Otter calls the whole thing a fortunate accident. After all, he wanted to buy only a small strip of land to give him better access to property he owned next to the recently abandoned Clarkesville Mill, just off the square in Clarkesville.

When it's hurricane season in Florida, it's moving time in Habersham County. Andrea Harper will tell you that.

Fast facts about Habersham County: population, municipalities, unemployment rate, top employers.

Louis Schubert says Atlanta traffic was driving him nuts. "If you weren't home by quarter to five, you were in serious trouble," says Schubert, who lived with his wife Sandy off Chamblee-Dunwoody Road near I-285. "We'd get home and hibernate while the traffic happened."

Thirty years ago they hung children's art on clothesline strung between trees in Blue Ridge's city park and called it Arts in the Park.

Fast facts about Fannin County: population, unemployment rate, top employers.

Internal combustion has been the definitive way of life in Dawson County for more than half a century.

To Ernie Elliott, when ThunderRoad USA closed in 2004, it was like winning the pole position but not finishing the race. "Mistakes were made, there were high hopes but not high support," he says. "But there's no point in calling names. We can't go back and fix it, so we might as well move on down the road."

Fast facts about Dawson County: population, unemployment rate, top employers.

Ruth and John Skelton, innkeepers at the historic Skelton House Bed and Breakfast, have watched the changing face of Hartwell and Hart County over the past decade.

If local leaders have their way, those popular television fishing shows will soon be broadcasting from the waters of Lake Hartwell.