The State of the Atlanta Metropolis
Executive Summary

The Atlanta region is one of the nation's great metropolitan success stories. Home to four of the ten fastest-growing counties in the nation, the area has added nearly 600,000 people and 350,000 jobs since 1990. Its diverse economic base includes rapidly growing, white-collar industries that are increasing per capita wealth and indicate continuing regional affluence in the future. It is increasingly a center for high-tech employment. Population and job growth show no signs of slowing in the Atlanta area; the region may see two million more residents in the next twenty-five years. The region is a place of economic opportunities for both whites and African Americans, and it is a magnet for new immigrants from Asia and Latin America.

But Atlanta is experiencing the downside of this incredible success. Low-density development has made its urbanized area grow rapidly, replacing farmland and forests with asphalt, subdivisions, and low-rise commercial buildings. Recent anxieties about sprawl, traffic congestion, and environmental degradation in the Atlanta region have resulted in increased public demand for information about the area's growth trends and for responses to some of the negative consequences of the region's growth.

This report brings together the findings of a large body of recent scholarly research about the Atlanta region. It seeks to make these scholarly findings more accessible to local, state, and national decision-makers, and it is intended to challenge these decision-makers to think more broadly about the solutions necessary to reduce sprawl and improve the quality of life in the Atlanta region. The report does not intend to simply reiterate what we already know about Atlanta's hypergrowth, traffic problems, and sprawl, but to synthesize a large body of local research and bring overlooked facts and findings to light. The result is a complicated picture of the Atlanta metropolis that raises some important issues for consideration in the policy debate.

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