Given my experience in ATL, you’ll be delayed landing or getting to the gate, so you’ll spend that “hour” *sprinting *to make your connection.
One does not simply walk through the Atlanta Airport.
One sprints. It’s huge, and chances are very good that you’ll be late arriving and have approximately ten minutes to cover a mile of concourse to your next gate. Personally, if I had to fly through there, I’d make sure it was at least a two hour layover. I much prefer Chicago/O’Hare or Minneapolis/St.Paul.
Philadelphia International is quite close to the city’s waste water treatment facility… it’s about the first thing travelers see (and smell) after leaving the airport, if they’re heading towards the city.
Me too. Or possibly get a cocktail (only $2 more to make it a double!)
Agreeing with many other posts – unless you wind up being fortunate enough that your arriving and departing flights are located in the same concourse (and Hartsfield-Jackson has six concourses), odds are that the “spare time” in your layover will be minimal.
The ones I can think of all have a train directly downtown from the airport that takes less than a half hour such that a three hour layover would give you at least an hour downtown:
(In addition to your suggestions)
Amsterdam
Lisbon
Seattle
Vancouver
Venice
*We did go into Manhattan on a 3.5 hour layover at JFK once, but I’d lived in NYC previously and knew the timings, trains, etc.
D and liked to have died laughing at this one.:D:D:D
Thanks
Q
I think Philadelphia International is part of the dump. I used to go there all the time - hated it.
Portland is on light rail, so that would be good.
And while I disparaged SFO, the BART does run there.
I’ve taken that tour - my only concern is if they’d let you go in time.
My wife and I did this years ago when we had a 4 hour layover there. Very nice, very polite folks. But we ditched our official tour guide, and cruised through the complex on our own. It was definitely surreal. The heart of whitenessdom on earth.
When you leave the ‘Detroit’ airport (Wayne County Airport, located in Romulus and a 20 minute ride from Detroit) and head West there’s a landfill within 4 freeway exits.
The upside is if you have 3 or more hours layover at DTW you can make it into Dearborn and have an amazing and leisurely Middle Eastern meal.
The Red Line in Cleveland will also get you downtown in less than a half-hour.
There is a large landfill less than a mile northwest of Denver International Airport. I don’t think it is Denver’s, though. I think it is run by a neighboring county.
I agree as well. God! Don’t leave the airport! You’d never make it back in time. They want you at the gate at least 30 minutes before the flight (correct if I’m wrong), so where would you go that takes 15 minutes there and back (not counting your previous flight being late and slow disembarking?)
Q
The Mall of America is accessible on a three hour layover in Minneapolis St. Paul. However, by the time you get to the train, take the train to the MoA, and allocate enough time to get through security and to your gate (at least one hour before boarding, the security lines can run 45 minutes), you’d be able to walk in, turn around, and walk out. The MoA is across the street.
The issue is “ignoring security” You simply can’t, and at most modern airports, security will add between ten minutes and 45 minutes to your time.
If you go over the Platt Bridge to I-76, within 2-3 miles of the airport is a HUGE auto recycling plant; the kind where car pancakes are stacked 15-20 high & then once they go thru the shredder are the size of pieces that will fit in your pocket. Across the road is a refinery; usually smells of sulfur.
Sadly, the plant is moving back to Camden & the refinery is up for sale/going to close as it always amazed me the tourism folks would let your first/last impressions be foul odors & destruction.
EWR (Newark, & likely Terminal 3) Coffee & people watch.
Lets be honest: Even if you had an insanely fast driver who could get you & your camera out to 78E, red-line it through the tolls & take the Turnpike Extension like a Pole Position ‘S’ curve… take 13B and blow out their shocks red-lining it across the cobblestone…
you’d be lucky to get 1 pic of the GWB, 1 pic of the skyline, & 1 pic of the Statue of Liberty before having to sprint back to the car. Then you’d blow out the rest of your suspension & have to side-swipe 2-3 cars just to get back to EWR in time to…
…miss your flight out. 
But the spinning red ‘A’ on the Anheuser-Busch brewery will be fun to look at while you try to catch the next flight out.
Though, in this case, “the street” in question is Interstate 494. 
Perhaps this was a rhetorical question. robert_columbia was able to post the OP before he had to log off and board the plane.