A very extreme version of the concept is in Larry Niven's Known Space series, on Mount Lookitthat (the name of the planet, the name of the mountain, and the name of the colony, and for good reasons...). Mount Lookitthat (the planet) is otherwise about as friendly as Venus, but the Olympus-Mons scale Mount Lookitthat (the mountain) protrudes out of the hellish atmosphere and has a reasonably flat top (several different plateaus, technically). Naturally, Mount Lookitthat (the colony) is on top, where the air is sane.
IIRC the habitable area is something like a quarter the area of Rhode Island. The first generation of planetary survey probes had a notorious software limitation [1] and
must have been procured from the lowest bidder :P
Spoilered for being somewhat irrelevant to the thread: