According to Rem Koolhaas (S,M,L,KL, 1995), Atlanta is the birthplace of the revolutionary big-box architecture and the test case for an American renaissance, for the rebirth of the American downtown. In creating a new kind of downtown, she also gave birth to a new kind of professional in the person of John Portman, the architect/developer. Atlanta can never erase the legacy of Portman's architecture and devlopment, unless it decides to demolish more than half of its downtown. Portman is one of the few architects in the history of architecture who has transformed the functioning of a major city through the designs of his buildings. In 1967, he built the Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hotel in downtown with a huge 130'X130' central hall, 22 stories high. The atrium-hotel with a circular light opening in the ceiling was a completely new concept for a hotel, replacing the long double-loaded corridors with balconies all around a central space. It revolutionized the planning and construction of hotels and made Portman and Atlanta architecture famous around the world.

Hyatt's world-wide success inspired Portman to proceed with similar design concepts that created multi-tower groupings, such as the Peachtree Center. He envisioned connecting each of his buildings and their internal atriums with pedestrian bridges elevated above the streets of downtown. These bridges formed a network of skywalks. The result is that once you entered any of his buildings, you can not escape Portman's downtown. In his mind, Portman was trying to solve the problems that have plagued great American cities for the last half decade: "A city has become congested...not very desirable...we are trying to deal with all variables - weather, perception, reality, and convenience." According to Portman, his main idea for the development of Atlanta's downtown is inspired by the satellite cities in Sweden. His designs aim at "breaking the metropolitan area into coordinate units that are designed to bring everything together." This conviction raises a fundamental question: can designers of the built environment impose a pre-conceived idea of a city on its inhabitants? At first his innovative atriums seemed to help rehabilitate and stabilize Atlanta's downtown, but that did not last too long. By the 1980's, and in a characteristic Atlanta way, Portman's downtown disintegrated into several different multiple and quasi-downtowns that collectively destroyed the fixed notion of a traditional downtown. But it did give birth to a new kind of a city, a city that learnt how to re-invented herself at any given opportunity.