CoA Planning For Population To Double To Over 1 Million (Atlanta: crime rates, houses)

[jsvh]

Can Atlanta cram 1 million people — or more — inside the city limits? | CL

You have probably heard Planning Commissioner Tim Keane say Atlanta needs to start thinking about how the city will look if its population doubles in the coming decades. On Thursday at Downtown's Central Atlanta Library, residents will hear an expert say whether that figure is overstated, lower than what we should actually expect, or just about right.

Arthur C. Nelson, a University of Arizona planning professor who's an expert on urban growth and demographics, will join Keane and Ryan Gravel, the urban designer and Atlanta Beltline visionary who's leading the Atlanta City Studio at Ponce City Market with Keane, to ask "How Big Can Atlanta Be?"

"[T]he city's growth has been pretty static, growing slowly, compared to the region," Keane says. "What we're saying is over the next 25 or 30 years, that won't be the case. That's what we're finding. But we want someone else to come in... to tell us what he sees and whether we're being too optimistic or not aggressive enough."

Thursday's talk is part of a larger project called the City Design Project that's happening at PCM and will pack up and relocate in the coming months to a different location. Residents, businesses, and elected officials have been walking in and helping to decide how Atlanta should prepare for a growing population and how the city should look. This is supposed to happen while also protecting neighborhoods, the city's strongest asset, and making Atlanta open and available to everyone...

[skbl17]

"Can Atlanta cram 1 million people - or more - inside the city limits?"

Taking 1,000,000 people and dividing by the city's land area (133.2 sq. mi. if Wikipedia is to be believed) gives a population density of 7,507 people per square mile. That's certainly doable; in fact, that's still less dense than Seattle (8,161 ppsm).

Of course, will Atlanta ever be home to one million people?

Unless APS leapfrogs Forsyth County Schools in desirability and crime rates plummet to suburban (north of I-85) lows, I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. Oh, Atlanta is growing and will continue to grow, but I don't see 1 million happening for the foreseeable future, so I agree with Keane on that. It doesn't hurt to plan for a million people though - fixing traffic bottlenecks, improving transit availability, reach, and capacity, and bringing in more essential services (groceries, parks, schools, etc.).

- skbl17

[cqholt]

Prepare now for it, as it will only make the entire city better.

[primaltech]

Seattle's SFH districts feature tightly packed in houses, with basically no side yards, and small backyards. Whereas, besides a few in-town neighborhoods, most of Atlanta's SFH have large plots of land, especially by major city standards.

That, combined with the fact that a whole lot of Atlanta's land area is SFH, and that's why Atlanta will never be a dense city, and it will take a very long time to reach 1,000,000 population in the city, even with annexations.

Should be around 600,000 by the 2020 census, though.

[Gulch]

By 2060 maybe.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by skbl17

Unless APS leapfrogs Forsyth County Schools in desirability and crime rates plummet to suburban (north of I-85) lows, .

- skbl17

I don't disagree that schools and crime need to improve (though neither in my view are that bad as to be a lost cause in my eyes) in the City, I don't think we need to do it on suburban terms. For one, the model those ares you cite use to achieve is through an exclusionary frame of mind. One that limits certain types of undesirables to achieve an desirable outcome. Obviously, such a methodology wouldn't work in a urban environment. Something more progressive would have to be implemented.

As for crime, many studies show that it occurs in lower income areas because of lack of employment and educational opportunity. When you have a large amount of people concentrated in one place who think they have no legitimate way of breaking out of their poverty, one thing leads to another.

Hopefully the city will implement a plan that focuses on transitioning people in to lifestyles that would be conducive to them improving their life, rather than fostering an enviroment where gentrification just pushes "the poors" out by pricing them out.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by Gulch

By 2060 maybe.

That's a lot sooner than you think, as well as a smarter way to do things. Smart, measured, long term growth is preferable to a rapid push to add half a million new residents.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by Gulch

By 2060 maybe.

Which isn't really that much time given the timeline for infrastructure construction.

[jsvh]

Considering CoA is already growing at ~2% (and that has been increasing rapidly each year) and it only needs to grow at ~3.5% a year to reach over 1 million in 25 years, getting to 1M is entirely possible and likely even conservative. Especially if the city keeps focusing on providing good urban quality of life.

Even the ARC forecasts have CoA growing by 50% (250,000) by 2040 and their projects are assuming we still keep seeing as much suburban sprawl growth as we have been.

[fieldm]

Hopefully our fellow counties will have MARTA by then