Wow, only 32. I'm surprised. I knew that Charlotte is "bigger" than Atlanta -- it was a big story in the papers here -- but of course that's based on the arbitrary, artificial, and highly variable city limits lines. By any reasonable standard, Atlanta's 3 or 4 times the size of Charlotte.
With some of the high-crime, high minority cities excised from the 500,000+ category because of their inability to annex their burbs, maybe being 10th worst out of 32 isn't so bad.
Cleveland tops out at 490k I think but the metro area makes it twice the size of Columbus.