Atlanta Top Example in "The steep costs of living so far apart from each other" -Washington Post (2015, mortgage)

[jsvh]

The steep costs of living so far apart from each other - The Washington Post

In strictly economic terms, sprawl is inefficient. Spread people out, and it takes them longer to drive where they need to go, and it costs them more in gas money to get there. Disperse a few people over a lot of land, and that land is used inefficiently, too. Then give those people roads and sewers — you’d need a lot more of both to serve 20 households living over a square mile than 20 on the same block. And that's to say nothing of the costs of fire and police service when people live far apart.
These costs add up, in both private budgets and public ones. It’s a messy thought exercise to contemplate tallying them, akin to trying to calculate the productivity America wastes by sitting in traffic every year. How do you measure, for instance, the saved health care costs in a community where many people walk for transportation every day? How do you quantify the pleasure gained from a big yard that offsets any of these costs?


So take this number as more of a starting point than a final answer: A new analysis authored by Todd Litman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute concludes that sprawl costs the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion every year.


More than half of that, Littman calculates as part of a New Climate Economy research project lead by the London School of Economics, is borne by people living in sprawling places who have to drive more, among other things. About $400 billion of it is borne by other people, in the form of air pollution or traffic congestion, or costlier public services — all of it created not necessarily by consumer demand for big homes and lots of driving, but also by policies in America that encourage and subsidize sprawl.


"An awful lot of auto travel and sprawl is the result of market distortions," Litman says. He's talking about policies like the home mortgage interest deduction that encourages large, suburban housing, as well as the fact that we don't charge people for the true costs of using roads. In a more efficient market, he says, "consumers would rationally choose to own fewer automobiles, to drive less, to rely more on walking, cycling and public transit, and they’d choose more compact home and work locations simply because that really optimizes everybody’s benefits."


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(more in the link)

[bu2]

AJC has a related article on this as well:

It's getting harder to find jobs in most US metros | www.ajc.com

[Mutiny77]

Yet Atlanta is closer to DC and NYC here than to cities like Tehran and Kabul, and I'm pretty sure Atlanta is better off than the last two cities.

[bu2]

From the article:

"Getting a job close to home is getting tougher in many parts of the country. A new report by the Brookings Institution found the number of jobs within a typical commuting range declined in more than two-thirds of the U.S.'s largest metro areas.
The report found the average number of nearby jobs per resident fell by 7 percent between 2000 and 2012, although the results varied widely by city. (Video via NASA)
The report primarily blames the flight of jobs to the suburbs, using Atlanta as a prime example. It found jobs usually moved from the center of the metro to the surrounding suburbs, effectively spreading them out. "

Not online-but in the paper copy:
"The city and near northeast suburbs...have the highest job densities in the metro area....Although the Atlanta region gained jobs overall during the 2000s, the number of nearby jobs fell for the typical resident as employment spread out within the metro area....The city of Atlanta shed jobs during the 2000s( minus 8 percent), while its suburbs experienced net employment gains (4 percent). At the same time, job density fell on average in both the city and suburbs."

There's a comment that average commute times are not rising. What that says is that we are creating sub-markets. That means the number of employees available for employers is dropping. That's a negative for attracting new employers.

[bu2]

Per the article, median commuter miles in Atlanta are 12.8. NYC is 7.7, LA is 8.8 and Chicago is 10.0.

[robertjhajek]

I didn't know Buenos Aires was in Europe.

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by robertjhajek

I didn't know Buenos Aires was in Europe.

Ha! Good catch.

[Saintmarks]

In a more efficient market, he says, "consumers would rationally choose to own fewer automobiles, to drive less, to rely more on walking, cycling and public transit, and they’d choose more compact home and work locations simply because that really optimizes everybody’s benefits.

This shows the leftist leanings of this study. Verbage like "optimizing everybody's benefits" is scary indeed. Karl Marx would be proud.

So, the polar opposites on this pole... Atlanta and Mumbai? Seriously? We need to be morel like Mumbai?

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

So, the polar opposites on this pole... Atlanta and Mumbai? Seriously? We need to be morel like Mumbai?

Oh yes, Atlanta really should be looking at the Mumbai model for housing and development.

I would like to see the number improve, but people stacked on people stacked on people is not desirable. I like my elbow room and I'm glad I have the option to have it in metro Atlanta.

[afdinatl]

Nice. We are getting more world class each day!