“There’s a pall that’s over this town that is unacceptable…We need a second act.”  That’s Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed at last week’s Atlanta Press Club meeting, as reported by the AJC.

With Dallas’ recent hosting of the Super Bowl and Charlotte’s announcement that they had snagged the 2012 Democratic Convention, it’s easy to see how Atlanta could be sorta down on itself right now.

According to Reed, Atlanta’s 2000 decade boom spurred by the 1996 Olympics made the city complacent.  With unemployment above the national average and a nearly 9 percent drop in available jobs since 2007, it’s easy to see why Atlanta would be sort of sensitive to the recent, high-profile achievements of its unofficial rivals right now.

And it’s not just Democratic mayors that want Atlanta to produce a “second act”.

Rusty Paul, a former legislator who headed the state GOP, laughed when told of Reed’s comments about Atlanta’s potential decline. “It sounds like the speech I’ve been giving,” he said. “I’m glad the mayor is talking this way. If you’re going to fail, fail big.”

“Atlanta was the regional hub of the South because it did things first; Atlanta was on the cutting edge of transportation,” Paul said. “But, after the Olympics, we sat back and coasted. We expected growth to keep coming like it would never end. We got lulled into complacency.”

No longer on the cutting edge of transportation (Dallas has apparently installed 72 miles of light-rail since 1996) and no Olympic-scale event on the books, the city of transplants needs to start acting like it believes in itself again.  Because while its great fun to fight amongst ourselves over Atlanta’s direction, eventually we gotta move forward and DO something demonstrates faith in our future.

Otherwise, cities like Dallas and Charlotte will happily step in and fill the gap.