Articles

The State of the Atlanta Metropolis

(from "Moving Beyond Sprawl - The Challenge for Metropolitan Atlanta" by The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy)

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. In short:

1. The Atlanta region has experienced rapid and highly unbalanced growth. The majority of new residents, new jobs, and new wealth are on the north side of the Atlanta region - both within the City of Atlanta and its suburbs. At the same time, the most rapidly growing population centers are outer suburban areas up to thirty miles from Atlanta's central business district. Jobs, people, and prosperity have moved northwards and outwards, leaving a large arc of little or no population growth, economic decline, and poverty on the south side of the City of Atlanta and its close-in southern suburbs.

2. Unbalanced growth is at the root of both the economic woes of poorer neighborhoods and the "livability" problems of prosperous ones. The unbalanced nature of growth in the Atlanta metropolitan area exacerbates the negative consequences of hypergrowth and sprawl. Despite spectacular job and population growth and rising family incomes in the region, the Atlanta metropolitan area continues to have very high poverty rates, particularly within the City of Atlanta. And the northward and outward slant of growth has intensified traffic congestion, environmental degradation, and the "spatial mismatch" between people and jobs. The polarizing growth trends in the Atlanta region are hurting faster-growing counties, further isolating slower-growing communities, and will ultimately deepen the sprawling pattern of development in the region.

3. The solutions to sprawl must address the region's unbalanced growth and must be multidimensional, taking in a broad set of issues that public policies often address separately. The Atlanta region has already taken one bold step towards addressing its sprawl problem through the creation of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA). This state entity, run by a board of public and private regional leaders appointed by the Governor, is perhaps the most dramatic and promising effort to curb metropolitan sprawl in the nation. The existence of GRTA -- and the serious regional conversation it has spurred around regional transportation and development patterns -- has put the Atlanta region far ahead of most other U.S. metropolitan areas in combating sprawl. GRTA presents an incredible opportunity for the region to tackle the big questions facing the Atlanta metropolitan area. Its present mission centers around reducing traffic congestion and limiting new development. As this report shows, these are only two dimensions of Atlanta's growth problems. In order for anti-sprawl efforts in the Atlanta region to work, there must be a broader, multifaceted response that hones in on rectifying the unbalanced growth patterns between north and south.

I. THE TRENDS. Unbalanced growth has many dimensions and manifests itself in population and job growth patterns, race and class segregation, transportation trends, schools, and housing. The extensive scholarly literature and statistical information on the Atlanta region indicates clear divisions between areas of hypergrowth and areas of economic stagnation. The dividing line is roughly defined by Atlanta's interstate highway system. The north-south divide generally follows Interstate 20 as it moves through Fulton and DeKalb Counties; Atlanta's beltway, the Perimeter Highway, determines the inner suburb-outer suburb divide. The vast majority of the region's economically distressed areas are south of I-20 and within the Perimeter Highway. And the areas of the greatest growth, greatest suburban sprawl, and most critical traffic congestion are north of I-20. The trends documented in the report are:

* POPULATION AND JOBS. Over 78% of the region's population growth and about 75% of its job growth since 1980 has occurred north of I-20. Headquarters of fast-growing, high-paying industries like high tech and communications are in the northern parts of Atlanta and the northern suburbs. * INCOME. Poverty is concentrated within the City of Atlanta and is growing in the close-in southern suburbs. In 1990, over 27% of the city's population lived in poverty, and six of the nine sub-county "superdistricts" with the highest percentages of the region's poor were south of I-20. * RACE. The northside-southside economic divide follows well-entrenched lines of racial segregation, with the result that minority populations are disproportionately affected by unbalanced growth. North of I-20, the region's population is 82% white; in the outer suburbs, the population is usually over 90% white. But Southwest Atlanta is nearly 97% non-white, southeast Atlanta is over 82% non-white, and Fulton County south of Atlanta is nearly 66% non-white. * TRANSPORTATION. As jobs and people move to the northern suburbs, the region's commuting patterns have increasingly centered on a transit-inaccessible northern arc stretching across Cobb, north Fulton, and Gwinnett Counties. As a result, 90% of Atlanta-area commuters drive to work, and transit-dependent workers have access to a shrinking percentage of the region's jobs. * SCHOOLS. Racial segregation, poor public school performance, and high-poverty students are found in the city and close-in southern suburbs. In the City of Atlanta, 9 of the 14 high schools were at least 98% African American in the 1997-98 school year; in north-suburban Gwinnett County, every high school was at least 90% white. In the Atlanta school district, 86% of students were eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch in 1995. Students in south Atlanta and some southern suburban neighborhoods scored in the bottom quartile of curriculum-based science, math, and language tests. * HOUSING. Expensive housing stock in the near northern arc and depressed housing values in the close-in southern suburbs create a middle-class housing shortage in the center and help push development out into the urban fringe. In job-rich neighborhoods of north Atlanta and the northern suburbs, the median home value is $120,000 and up, among the highest in the region. Median rents in this area are also the highest in the region. This increases the demand for more affordable single-family homes on the suburban fringe.

II. THE CONSEQUENCES. Because of these trends, Atlanta is struggling with traffic problems, environmental problems, and a wide "opportunity gap" between low-income people and jobs. These are results not simply of Atlanta's accelerated growth rate but also of the way Atlanta has grown -- with an unbalanced and unequal distribution of people and jobs.

* TRAFFIC. Because the region's job growth has a decidedly northward slant, and its most lucrative and fast-growing job sectors are located almost entirely in the northern part of the region, more people commute to the northside and within the northside, clogging its highways and extending commuting times. As a result of traffic congestion, the average Atlanta-region driver spends 69 hours per year sitting in traffic, nearly nine workdays of lost productivity. As a result of decentralized and unbalanced growth, the average round-trip commute is now 34.9 miles per day -- a longer trip to work than in any other city on earth. * ENVIRONMENT. The fact that the region's housing and job markets have grown unevenly contributes to the region's miserable air pollution record. Low-density housing and low-density employment centers increase the hours spent in the car. The outward movement of population growth -- not just to suburbs, but to exurbs -- has meant the construction of thousands of houses, commercial developments, and roadways that replace forests and open farmland. * SPATIAL MISMATCH. As the regional job market moves further north into the suburbs, the "spatial mismatch" between jobs and people - workers living in one place, jobs in another place, and no feasible transportation options in between - affects an increasing portion of the workforce (primarily low-income workers) who may not have access to a car. The spatial mismatch between entry-level jobs and low-income people is not unique to Atlanta, but it is particularly intense for some residents of the region because of the patterns of residential segregation by race and class. This mismatch has a racial dimension, as non-whites make up a disproportionate percentage of Atlanta public transit riders as well as a disproportionate percentage of Atlanta residents without access to a car. The percentage of jobs that are transit-accessible is expected to decrease over time as the suburbs and exurbs gain a larger share of the regional job market. This will greatly affect low-income workers, who may see transit-accessible jobs shrink from 43% of the low-income job market to 31% by 2025 if transit is not expanded.

Unbalanced growth makes the Atlanta region's bad traffic congestion and environmental problems even worse by locating people and jobs far away from one another and by concentrating new development at the fringe of the region. Unbalanced growth also means that large parts of this prosperous region have been left behind in the tremendous success of the 1980s and 1990s. Poverty rates remain high and job opportunities remain low for many individuals and families. But it also means that even in areas that have reaped the greatest benefits from Atlanta's prosperity, overcrowding and suburban sprawl have created great economic, social, and environmental costs.

III. THE RESPONSE. The Atlanta region needs to adopt a broadened definition of "smart growth" that acknowledges the inter-connected consequences of unbalanced growth in the region. The region's policy response must go far beyond controls on traffic congestion and the rate of development. It must also address the environmental, economic, social, and racial inequities that have resulted from excessive and uneven growth patterns. All of these challenges have the same root cause -- unbalanced growth -- and they cannot be addressed in isolation from one another.

The region should expand its "to do" list to also consider:

1. Increasing the density and transit accessibility of jobs, and increasing the economic development of the southside, so that Atlantans of all incomes and races have better access to economic opportunity. 2. Balancing the local housing market through zoning changes, subsidies, and tax incentives so that middle-class families have more choice about where they live and so that all families have a better chance to be closer to jobs. 3. Bridging the racial divide between black and white neighborhoods through a more honest dialogue about race and through actions that better integrate the region both racially and economically. 4. Improving school quality in the city and in the southern suburbs to equalize educational opportunity and workforce preparedness throughout the area and bring middle-class families back to slow-growing areas. 5. Balancing new growth as well as limiting it, so that the region's natural environment is not taxed by excessive growth on one side of the region while the other side is underdeveloped.

The Atlanta region has the ability to make this list of policy priorities a reality. Its regional leadership is cohesive, proactive, and has agreed that Atlanta must grow smarter in order to continue to compete in the national and international economy. The Atlanta region cannot continue to be a competitive economic force if one side of the region continues to decline in income and education levels and the other side continues to become more crowded. The problems that result from this economic imbalance will only grow as the region's population grows in the future. The two parts of the region are interdependent, and Atlanta's public and private leaders must craft solutions to sprawl that bridge this regional divide.