Portland mayor: 'It'll take generations' to fix metro Atlanta's sprawl (Marietta: apartment, neighborhood)

[ATLJR]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

92% of Metro Atlanta does not live in the suburbs. There are plenty of places that considered "intown" that are not in the city of Atlanta.

Suburb: an outlying district of a city, esp. a residential one.

Exurb: a district outside a city, esp. a prosperous area beyond the suburbs.

The problem is that Atlanta is so messed up that people don't understand the difference between a suburb or exurb. Decatur? This "intown" place is a suburb of Atlanta. Cumming, Alpharetta, etc. are exurbs.

His statistics are 100% correct.

[tikigod311]

Ok, so Atlanta has a whole lot of URBAN SUBURBS.

Does that make it better?

[Mischief8]

So how do these stats account for the 4,975,300 (est. 2012) folks that live in what is classified as "Atlanta's Urban Core"?

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by ATLJR

@ SteelCityRising

I want to say I appreciate your points, all of them, and you're 100% spot on. Much like the city of Atlanta, the majority of this forum don't live in Atlanta, they live in a suburb / exurb, and they enjoy urban sprawl and "amenities" it provides. Those are their lifestyle choices so obviously they're going to take any criticism of their lifestyle poorly.

Thank you.

Let's get something straight, folks. I don't "hate" Atlanta. Sorry I'm coming off as being so crass. I love Atlanta, and, as such, if I feel as if some of my urban planning suggestions are going to benefit the city, then I'll share them. I'm not saying every city SHOULD be a carbon copy of Portland. What I'm saying is that Portland blows Atlanta out of the water in SOME AREAS (i.e. cycling infrastructure and transit, specficially).

Traffic is terrible for quality-of-life. When I was living in Northern Virginia I resided in an expensive part of unincorporated Fairfax County called "Reston". It had maybe 60,000 residents. Nearby was Arlington, VA, which has nearly four times that population. Guess what? If I ever chose to drive in and around the surface streets of Arlington to explore or to photograph architecture it was mostly smooth-sailing whereas traffic was always congested in Reston. Why? Arlington was built denser and in a more transit-oriented fashion whereas nearly all of those 60,000 Restonians (and those in adjacent autocentric 'burbs like Sterling, Great Falls, or Herndon) had to drive everywhere for everything (ironically on wider yet simultaneously busier roads than Arlington's).

Arlington's success is focused around a string of dense urban "villages" (i.e. Ballston, Rosslyn, Clarendon, Court House, Virginia Square, etc.) all linked together by commuter rail. Atlanta already largely has this via Downtown/Midtown/Buckhead/North Buckhead, although there's still a lot of vacant/underutilized land in this immediate corridor (big-box shopping centers, seas of surface parking lots, and low-rise garden-styled apartments from the 1960s right in Lindbergh, for example?!) I'd like to see more mixed-used/transit-friendly projects fill in the "gaps" between Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, and North Buckhead, along with this string of "villages" expanding elsewhere via an east/west line. Tens of thousands of people work in the urban core of Atlanta. I'm guessing the vast majority live in the 'burbs and drive in. Make this corridor more attractive, and watch as your traffic woes start to balance out as more of these workers move closer to work.

I have an aunt and uncle in Acworth, which I know is a poster child for sprawl. I have a friend who just moved to Downtown Decatur to attend graduate school at Emory. Downtown Decatur has some great mixed-use elements and is walkable to a MARTA station. My argument is that you need to demand MORE in the way of Downtown Decaturs in Metro Atlanta and LESS in the way of Acworths if you want to see the area remain viable and healthy in the long-term.

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Thank you.

My argument is that you need to demand MORE in the way of Downtown Decaturs in Metro Atlanta and LESS in the way of Acworths if you want to see the area remain viable and healthy in the long-term.

You don't need to make an argument, it is already very much a demand in large circles in Atlanta.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

Ok, so Atlanta has a whole lot of URBAN SUBURBS.

Does that make it better?

It does, and, it does.

The problem is that even if we were to factor in the "urban suburbs" (i.e. Downtown Decatur) vs. the "suburban suburbs" (i.e. Kennesaw) there's really no contest as to which houses a LION'S SHARE of the metro area's residents.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

I say sour grapes that his little northwest city will never be anything more than the largest town in Oregon.

Originally Posted by LovinDecatur

Hey, Portland mayor: Mind your own business, fugstick.

My thoughts exactly.

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

It does, and, it does.

The problem is that even if we were to factor in the "urban suburbs" (i.e. Downtown Decatur) vs. the "suburban suburbs" (i.e. Kennesaw) there's really no contest as to which houses a LION'S SHARE of the metro area's residents.

But to say 92% of metro Atlanta lives in suburbs projects a very skewed portrayal of life in Atlanta. Its technically correct, but essentially irrelevant due to political boundaries.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

FUN FACT.

87% of Metro Pittsburgh lives in the suburbs.

Population (2012 city, 2012 MSA/CSA) • City 306,211 (62nd) • Density 5,540/sq mi (2,140/km2) • Urban 1,733,853 (27th) • Metro 2,360,733 (22nd)

Now let me tell you how wrong your city is.....



BTW, I love the way Pittsburgh looks and have always wanted to visit. I always though the geography lends towards a interesting urban experience.

[Mischief8]

I live in the City of Atlanta (proper) and I understand the criticisms. It does appear that our elected officials have their heads in the wrong places when it comes to growth at times. It also does appear that our business leaders have less interest in the community and more interest in, well, collecting interest.

We can blue-sky plan until we're blue in the face and neighborhoods can protest and complain in efforts to grow their neighborhoods intelligently. However, there is no one person or entity with a huge piece of paper, an architects model of the city, and a compass with the power to dictate how private projects are executed. Sure, there are zoning laws, but folks with enough money to build big have enough money to end-around them. This isn't helped with the growing attitude of everyday folks who don't want government interfering in business growth.

Yes, we could say we want more transit-oriented smart development and yes we could say that we want a more dense and safer urban core and yes we could say we want more parks and trees and street-level shops. The reality is, unless developers want it too, we won't get it.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

But to say 92% of metro Atlanta lives in suburbs projects a very skewed portrayal of life in Atlanta. Its technically correct, but essentially irrelevant due to political boundaries.

Would the city annexing adjacent suburbs make those suburbs any more likely to become denser? Buckhead was only annexed around 1952, right? It's now much denser than it ever was at any other point in its history. Would you attribute this increasing density to being annexed into the city's boundaries, or would an independent suburb of Buckhead still be where it is today just due to its location alone?

Gobbling up more suburbs would help Atlanta to finally house at least 10% of the overall metro area population, which would be a good start I suppose, but the real thing that needs to happen is for more than 50% of incoming newcomers to start choosing the city proper over the 'burbs. Until that happens, the city will continue to remain a very small component of a gigantic metro area. Let's say in 2020 Atlanta will have 550,000 residents, and the metro area will have 6,000,000 residents. That's still only an increase of 8% of the metro population living in the city in 2012 to 9% of the metro population living in the city in 2020. Ideally that number should be nearer to 20%-25%.