Atlanta slips in attracting newcomers as domestic migration slows

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Yep...all three. Lots of talk. Lots of studies. Lots of meetings. Lots of input. Lots of town halls. Very little progress.

[AnsleyPark]

Decent article in today’s AJC about this.

[aries4118]

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

Decent article in today’s AJC about this.

Brother Ansley...could you post it here?

[J2rescue]

Originally Posted by bu2

"...Yet the Great Recession has exposed some troubling cracks in the foundations of Atlanta's success. Though perhaps it is too early to declare “game over” for Atlanta, converging trends point to a possible plateauing of Atlanta remarkable rise, and the end of its great growth phase.

Growth Is Slowing

As with many other boomtowns, in Atlanta growth itself has been among the biggest industries. Construction particularly played a big role in its economy. The housing crisis cut the legs from under Atlanta's real estate machine. Though prices didn't collapse, new home building did. From 2005 to 2009 Atlanta's number of annual building permits fell by 66,352, the biggest decline of any metro area...."

<It was pretty obvious to me in early 2008 that Atlanta was due for a crash even before the rest of the country did. Too many cranes. The reason the recession hit Atlanta so hard was so much of the growth was "growth," i.e. real estate. And, of course, that is why this 2010 article says its "too early." Some notable comments later:>

"...But the biggest infrastructure issue for Atlanta is transportation. Atlanta is famous for its bad traffic and attendant pollution. Its freeways are among the world's widest, but this disguises the extent to which the roadway infrastructure is woefully insufficient. Atlanta has a simple beltway and spoke system similar akin to Indianapolis and Columbus, much smaller cities. Other big cities like Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Detroit have much more elaborate systems. In particular, rather than relying on a single ring road, these cities have webs of freeway with multiple “crosstown” routes.

But Atlanta's greatest road problem lies in the lack of arterial street capacity. Atlanta's suburban arterial network is mostly former winding country roads, many of which have never been upgraded to handle the traffic demands on them. Most upgraded streets are radial routes, not crosstown ones, which forces even more traffic onto the overloaded freeway network.

For those who prefer transit, Atlanta hasn't invested there either. It built the MARTA heavy rail system as an extremely forward looking transportation investment, mostly in the 1970s and early 80s. This was built before Portland's system and is far better than light rail to boot. But there has been almost no expansion of the network. The state of public transport has been largely frozen for some time. Meanwhile, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and others have invested billions...."

I think most of this accurate. The state government keeps doubling-down on a highly flawed system and seems content to add bits of freeway capacity whenever they have the opportunity to do so.

That being said, the doom and gloom concerning Atlanta just doesn't match reality. A period of prolonged economic difficulty might be the only thing that will inspire any real change at the state level but that has yet to happen.

The part about transit is incomplete. Those cities needed to invest billions in fixed guideway transit because they had none. And while Marta certainly needs to be expanded it is an advantage for Atlanta that the city had visionary leadership to pursue transit when the city was barely more than 1 million. Marta's ridership still dwarfs what any of those cities can muster.