I think of Atlanta as a poster child of urban sprawl and nightmarish traffic which I'm witnessing my own city (Nashville) gradually adopting. I don't think of much positive about that. Miami isn't even a southern city--they don't call it the "capital of Latin America" for nothing. Plus there's always the talk of splitting Florida into two states--that part of Florida is simply not southern in culture.
But I see your point--most all of those are cultural, aside from Martin Luther King who had to exist because of a very, very negative thing existing in the south which to this day lingers on. I suppose if you wanna turn the South into the North with associated immigration and industry you might be able to continue that. One thing I find very interesting about parts of New England (like Western Massachusetts/Springfield area) is you have a "Polish town", "Portuguese town", "Irish town", "Italian town", usually right next to each other. If you had that in the South, you'd no doubt see some very interesting cross-cultural fusions, interesting foods, interesting music, etc.
Wisconsin is like that too Pulaski is a Polish town, New Glarus Swiss, and we even have a city called Germantown. It has a lot to do with immigration patterns. These were mostly farm settlements that grew . New Glarus was settled by the Swiss fleeing a famine and was sponsored by the Canton of Glarus government.
