This definition includes central areas like Five Points, the Hotel District, and Fairlie-Poplar, and outer neighborhoods such as SoNo and Castleberry Hill.

[citation needed] The history of downtown began in 1826 with Wilson Lumpkin and Hamilton Fulton surveying a possible canal route between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Milledgeville, Georgia's capital at the time.

By 1836, the state-financed Western and Atlantic Railroad, linking the middle of Georgia to the other states north and west, was granted a charter by the legislature, which was signed into law by Lumpkin.

[5] By 1845, John Edgar Thomson, chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested that Marthasville's name be changed.

[6] In 1847, Atlanta was incorporated, with the town limits extending in a one-mile (1.6 km) radius from the mile marker at the railroad depot.

[7] By the outbreak of the Civil War, Atlanta was a major railroad hub and manufacturing center, making it a target for the Union Army.

[6] Business growth in the 1970s resulted in significant development in Downtown, most notably in Peachtree Center and the Hotel District.

[10] The closure of Underground Atlanta in 1979 due to an increase in crime contributed to perceptions that Downtown was dangerous, and the 1980s saw a significant decline in population.

By 1990, Five Points was a "vacant shell of its former self," while Downtown as a whole was largely an "archepelagic assemblage of fortified enclaves inhabited in the daylight hours by government office workers, conventioners, and college students, and in the night by a substantial population of homeless persons.

"[11] The 1996 Olympic Games, along with the transformation of Georgia State University from a commuter school to a traditional college, initiated a resurgence of Downtown that continues today.

They resulted in Centennial Olympic Park, which was built as a physical memorial to the games in the former industrial area west of Five Points.

Dubbed the Main Street Master Plan, Patton's vision has been executed through billions of dollars of urban construction, boosting Downtown's economy and population.

[12] On March 14, 2008, at approximately 9:40 pm Eastern Daylight Time, an EF2 tornado hit Downtown with winds up to 135 miles per hour (217 km/h).

[20] The Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building was built and "designed and constructed to accommodate the rapidly expanding volume of the Postal Service, which was then oriented around a single, central processing facility.

[22] It "houses 5,000 employees for dozens of federal agencies and combines four distinct structural elements in central downtown, equaling 2 million square feet (190,000 m2)."

In its vicinity is State Farm Arena, the home of the Atlanta Hawks, the city's NBA team.

Just south of Interstate 20 are the Georgia State University baseball, basketball, and football stadiums—the latter built from the legacy of the defunct Centennial Olympic Stadium and Turner Field.

[27] As the fourth largest convention center in the United States and with 1.4 million square feet (130,000 m2) of space, more than a million people attend conventions at the Georgia World Congress Center annually, and as many 125,000 people attend a single event.

Located near the MARTA Five Points Station, Underground Atlanta is Downtown's shopping and entertainment district.

The transformative 50-acre project will bring more restaurants, entertainment, housing, hotel rooms, and retail stores to downtown.

[41] Georgia State University, a four-year public research institution, has been a major force in Downtown's resurgence.

Downtown has benefited from the flurry of GSU-related construction and land acquisitions as the institution undergoes its transformation from a commuter school to a traditional university.

The resulting $1 billion master plan has led to 14 new or renovated university buildings, including academic structures, student dormitories, dining halls, and sporting facilities.