From your response, I think you understand what I'm saying. I love Atlanta, but its not a first class city, but rather, a bunch of first class suburbs with first class people that are strung together in a ring around a second class city. Houston and Dallas are the same. In Atlanta, the burbs are the attraction; in NYC and Boston, as nice as the burbs are, the city is the main attraction.
I think it depends on whether you are a city mouse or a country mouse. My mother, being a professional dancer, is definitely a city mouse, and Manhattan is her preferred venue. I on the other hand am perfectly conversant with city life but prefer suburban or country life -- probably because I am a mother with teenage and preteen children, and there is nothing more pitiful than a city child. (Think of all those awful trendy kids raised in coop condos and hotels with room service - what you get is stuff like Al Gore. Ugh.) We live in the Cobb County suburbs and many of our activities are directed towards West Cobb which is still very much rural - horses, hiking, camping, etc. I haven't eaten out after midnight since my oldest was born.
Of course, we USED to have a first class city in my lifetime, until Andy Young, Maynard Jackson, and Bill Campbell messed it up well and truly for us. High taxes, bad services, and no crime control drove the residents and businesses out of the central city. That's not a function of it being in the South -- that's a function of the same incompetent corrupt management that brought us Newark, N.J. and NYC under Dinkins.