Good morning, all.

I know it doesn’t seem like this can be true sitting in your car on I-285, but the folks at Forbes magazine think they have the numbers to back it up. In a recent Forbes.com report, Atlanta was ranked as America’s third emptiest city. No joke.

The magazine’s rankings, a combination of rental and homeowner vacancy rates for the 75 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, are based on fourth-quarter data released earlier this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Each was ranked on rental vacancies and housing vacancies; the final ranking is an average of the two. (Sorry, the Athens MSA doesn’t make the Top 75.)

Las Vegas, the nation’s boom-or-bust capital, didn’t surprise anyone by topping the list. Atlanta ranked third – one spot ahead of Greensboro, N.C.; one spot behind Detroit. Allow me to repeat that. One spot behind Detroit, a city where right now a downtown building is burning and nobody cares. Seriously, have you driven through Detroit in recent years? It looks like Mickey Rourke’s ashtray.

Atlanta posted a Rental Vacancy Rate of 16.1 percent (eighth highest in the nation) and a Home Vacancy Rate of 4.3 percent (tied for sixth in the nation). In Georgia, those numbers are slightly lower – 14.3 percent for a Rental Vacancy Rate, 4.2 percent for Home Vacancy Rate.

No cities in the Northwest or Northeast appeared on the Top 15. Of course, there wasn’t much room to do so after The Midwest posted six cities and The South posted seven cities on the list – Charlotte (15), Tampa/St. Pete (13), Miami (11), Jacksonville (9), Orlando (7), Greensboro (4) and Atlanta (3). As you can see, Florida seems to be dragging the whole Southern class down. And isn’t that always the case.

Boston and New York are among the lone bright spots, while Honolulu is the nation’s best with a vacancy rate of 5.8 percent for homes and a scant 0.5 percent for rentals.

Still, empty neighborhoods are becoming an increasingly daunting problem across the country. The national rental vacancy rate now stands at 10.1 percent, up from 9.6 percent a year ago; homeowner vacancy has edged up from 2.8 percent to 2.9 percent. Richmond, Va.’s rental vacancy rate of 23.7 percent is the worst in America, while Orlando’s 7.4 percent rate is lousiest on the homeowner side.

The Atlanta MSA took another black eye from another Forbes article, “America’s Fastest-Dying Towns: Ten spots where jobs are vanishing, incomes are dropping and poverty levels are rising.” Of course, The Midwest counts eight of the 10 fastest-dying towns. As a Midwesterner who drives home at least once a year, I can tell you that’s absolutely true. However, one of the two non-Midwesterners on that list was Candler-McAfee, Ga. Here’s a chunk from the article:

Since 2000, Atlanta has been one of the nation’s growth capitals and has attracted new residents from all over the country. But out-of-towners and corporations have avoided Candler-McAfee, and as a result the city has fallen into poverty at an alarming rate. In 2000, 13.6 percent of residents were living below the poverty line, about the national average. By 2007 the poverty rate had exploded to 27.5 percent, one of the highest rates in the country.

On the magazines site, you find other bite-sized stat reads like America’s best middle-class housing markets (Augusta ranks No. 7) or America’s most and least family-friendly cities.

And while these stories offer more snapshots than solutions, it’s still interesting to see what is developing in our nation’s major cities. Especially in our region. Two metro areas where we occasionally use to bolster our draw for our economic development – Atlanta and Charlotte – seem to be struggling.

Might be a lesson in there somewhere.

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Take five minutes out of your day to join Executive Editor Jason Winders here each morning. Stand up and be counted.