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What does that have to do with anything? A lot actually. Boston doesn't have a grid system, but it has a strong mass transit system to make up for that. And Boston is really you're only good example. Boston has one of the worst road layouts in America.
Nope. You're giving MARTA too much credit. Atlanta has the upper hand in the rail department (for now), since heavy rail has higher capacities than light rail. Houston has a better bus and HOV system than Atlanta. Dallas' HOV system is pathetic, but it does have a great light rail system, that just doubled in size.
I did that already. I'm giving the upper hand to Houston and Dallas because their own are already under construction (Houston) or nearing completion (Dallas). But why are you getting so hostile? I can "go to the website and shut up about it"? How do you know I didn't already look?
Boston is 50 square miles.Savannah Georgia has a grid and its 78 sq mi.Boston has a "strong mass transit system" due to the same reason Atlanta will have a much better one soon:Population density.The smaller the area that must be covered the more convenient a transit system becomes.Houston Light Rail is what...8miles on 1 line?Atlanta's is 48 miles of track on 4 lines.
I also find it amazing how Atlanta back in 1971 decided to build rail,after expanding its airport and building highway connection through its downtown is somehow slower or behind TODAY when it leads the South in all these categories?
ATLANTA ,(if you ask me or not),is A major reason those progressive attitudes may exist in other Southern cities TODAY.They looked and saw how one of their neighbors became more overnight it seems.Now they all want what we got.
Atlanta has what every city and the South wants.Fact is Atlanta has never looked much at the South the same way for its future.Its always been the "traditional "big boys.Philadelphia,Boston,D.C.Baltimore,and YES even NYC.
Now some will think this just arrogant but its just what i see.Im not saying Atlanta cant or will not have some struggles or even that it does not have any competition.It clearly will and has.
The Census actually has yearly estimates. Nothing is concrete until the 2010 Census, but the yearly estimates are only a few thousand off (usually). The Census also revises previous yearly estimates during the decade when the annual estimates come out. What the author posted is straight from the Census. Actually, Houston and Dallas' growth increased during the recession (Houston's especially).
Population Estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/CBSA-est2009-pop-chg.html - broken link)
(http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/metro.html - broken link)
Thanks. I actually used to follow this stuff pretty closely. Not so much in the last 2-3 years.
The collapse of the construction industry in Atlanta clearly seems to account for some of the drop, plus the fact that there has been a cascading of unemployment associated in part with the effects of the crisis with the bank foreclosures here as well, I would suspect. However, other than that I'm not aware of what will keep the trade-off between the metros for tops in growth that we've seen over the last decade from continuing into the future. Unless it could also perhaps involve infrastructural advantages for the Texas metros associated with their size, as I mentioned above.
I think Scarface makes some very astute comments. It's unfortunate that there are some very insecure posters in the Atlanta forum who cherrypick his points and ignore the heart of his argument. He's not bashing Atlanta at all, just presenting facts to clear up many of the distorted myths that muddy this particular C-D forum.
Some of you are just so inexplicably gung-ho about Atlanta that you fail to see (or at least fail to admit that you see) many of its fatal flaws.
Here's what I (and many, many others) have gathered from this thread:
1) Dallas, Atlanta and Houston all are typical Sunbelt cities that tend to sprawl.
2) Dallas, Atlanta and Houston have made significant improvements in their urban core in the past decade.
3) Dallas, Houston and North Carolina's cities have better relationships with their state gov't than Georgia does.
4) Dallas and Houston are built on grid street patterns which allow for better densification than Atlanta's winding streets. Why? Because grid patterns funnel traffic off of main arteries allowing for walkable communities with a more balanced flow of traffic.
5) It is not stated whether Dallas and Houston have sidewalks on their side streets -- many (but not all) of Atlanta's streets have no sidewalks. No sidewalks = a city that is less walkable and more dangerous to pedestrians and less able to densify.
6) Boston has winding streets similar to Atlanta. However, its extensive mass transit and subway system has helped to make it a more walkable and much denser city (among many other reasons, which include a healthier city/state relationship).
7) We're just getting out of a recession that for various reasons stopped Atlanta's growth, but did not slow Dallas' and Houston's growth. Unemployment in Charlotte is higher than Atlanta -- is it possible that Charlotte's growth came to a standstill during the recession?
8) To the comment above that Atlanta is fascinating. Absolutely not. Atlanta is not any more fascinating than any other mid-tier city in America. The reason that the Atlanta C-D forum is fascinating and thoroughly entertaining, is that the thread topics and the hyper-defensive comebacks, are so over the top that like a bad car accident you can't help but look.
No their not hyper defensive as to more accurate and balanced toi what you have put out in the past.
Especially when you constantly "exaggerate" that Atlanta "has no sidewalks".
Survey after survey has shown how much Atlanta has moved in making Atlanta more walkable and biker friendly in just 10 short years.So YOU hold little credibility when you state things without more than your own disdain for Atlanta.
Atlanta is the leader in the South according to walk-score rankings of big cities.
Atlanta ranks ahead of Dallas and Houston in that category. Walk Score City Rankings
in fact if you look deeper into the rankings you will see that Atlanta had 10 neighborhoods classified as a "walkers paradise" or very walk-able where Dallas had 1walkers paradise and 4 very walk-able and Houston had 6(none were considered a walkers paradise)very walk-able.
So because the state of Texas is doing among the best by far in these economic largely due to its energy sectors,then Atlanta must be doing something wrong?LOL..What about Miami,LA,Chicago ,Philadelphia,Tampa,San Francisco,etc....
So every one knows of these flaws.Are they FATAL?Apparently not.Sorry you have to hear that.
No I think its folks like you that are over the top because you could not make something happen the way you wanted when you lived in Atlanta so you basically need to blame the place for your own move BACK2DC.
I also find it amazing how Atlanta back in 1971 decided to build rail,after expanding its airport and building highway connection through its downtown is somehow slower or behind TODAY when it leads the South in all these categories?
ATLANTA ,(if you ask me or not),is A major reason those progressive attitudes may exist in other Southern cities TODAY.They looked and saw how one of their neighbors became more overnight it seems.Now they all want what we got.
I hear what you're saying afonega1, but I'm not so sure Atlanta's presence would have made any difference to these other Southern metros. I think the same rising tide of growth that we've seen across most of the so-called SunBelt would have eventually benefited these towns like Nashville, Charlotte, whether Atlanta was there or not. However, the fact that Atlanta is there, does make for a convenient point of reference for these cities, either as object of admiration or whipping boy, depending on who is talking and to whom.
By the way, regarding your point about Atlanta's building MARTA and other infrastructural elements in previous eras -- which is perfectly correct in my view -- don't forget the paradoxical effect of these gains, too. Which lies in the fact that in a matter of 2-3 decades Atlanta's bold growth strategy catapulted it into the ranks of much larger and older cities, cities that in many cases had already had the "sophisticated urban living" the author speaks of for generations. So the fact that almost overnight Atlanta found that its peers were no longer cities like Nashville, Birmingham, etc., but were much larger cities, accounts in large part for the fact that Atlanta continues to appear in an unfavorable light when compared to the Torontos, Vancouvers, Bostons, etc. We too easily forget that the real story is how quickly Atlanta rose to the ranks of those cities in the first place. It was not a given.
This type of brainless stupidity is why this journaliist wrote this, and why many people from around the country do not respect Atlanta. It's also one of a myriad of reasons why I'm getting the hell outta here real soon... Just need a few thousand dollars more in my bank account because I'm not able to get a job before I move in my career industry....
Boston is 50 square miles.Savannah Georgia has a grid and its 78 sq mi.Boston has a "strong mass transit system" due to the same reason Atlanta will have a much better one soon:Population density.The smaller the area that must be covered the more convenient a transit system becomes.Houston Light Rail is what...8miles on 1 line?Atlanta's is 48 miles of track on 4 lines.
I'm not sure what Savannah has to do with this, but I think you need to go look at Boston's transit system. It's doesn't cover a small area. The cores of the Texas cities are still getting denser (like Atlanta). Houston's Inner Loop, for example, is smaller than Atlanta in overall square miles (131 for Atlanta and 96 for Houston's Inner Loop), but has more people living in it. Houston's light rail is going through an expansion, too, where it will have the same amount of track once complete in 2013/14. Dallas already has more miles of track than both.
Quote:
The smaller the area that must be covered the more convenient a transit system becomes.
This part of your post though is not making much sense to me. Care to elaborate?
While the future Beltline and MARTA give Atlanta an edge over it's southern competition, those other southern cities have the power the build their own BETTER "martas" and their own "beltlines" ahead of time. They have the ability to learn from the mistakes/stupidity of the political leaders of Atlanta. They also aren't all blinded by race, so unlike Atlanta, they (the political leaders) have a strong desire to attract outside demographics which Atlanta doesn't.
Nashville, for example, attracts a lot of New Yorkers over Atlanta because of quality of life issues and the problems they see in Atlanta. Nashville also has the opportunity to do things right. It's going to be very difficult for Atlanta to dig itself out of its incompetence/stupidity.
Atlanta may be ahead of the game today as far as numbers and statistics, but that truly is ignorant/stupid to assume that nobody else will catch up with SMARTER growth policies and better political leadership.
Let the water issue in Georgia be a good example of the stupidity of the people here, and their lack of planning or care about the future. They are so stuck in their pride that they just assume that water would not run out!!!! They claim in Georgia that they are a sovereign state yet they relied ALLLLL upon the Federal Gov't for their water supply for the past 50 years.. A federally built reserve from a trickling little mountain stream coming from the N. GA mountains. And THEN when the drought hits they just assume that the rest of the region will just have to suffer because Atlanta is somehow more deserving of the water because they GREW MORE in the past 20 years than the rest!!
This type of brainless stupidity is why this journaliist wrote this, and why many people from around the country do not respect Atlanta. It's also one of a myriad of reasons why I'm getting the hell outta here real soon... Just need a few thousand dollars more in my bank account because I'm not able to get a job before I move in my career industry....
I think Scarface makes some very astute comments. It's unfortunate that there are some very insecure posters in the Atlanta forum who cherrypick his points and ignore the heart of his argument. He's not bashing Atlanta at all, just presenting facts to clear up many of the distorted myths that muddy this particular C-D forum.
Some of you are just so inexplicably gung-ho about Atlanta that you fail to see (or at least fail to admit that you see) many of its fatal flaws.
Here's what I (and many, many others) have gathered from this thread:
1) Dallas, Atlanta and Houston all are typical Sunbelt cities that tend to sprawl.
2) Dallas, Atlanta and Houston have made significant improvements in their urban core in the past decade.
3) Dallas, Houston and North Carolina's cities have better relationships with their state gov't than Georgia does.
4) Dallas and Houston are built on grid street patterns which allow for better densification than Atlanta's winding streets. Why? Because grid patterns funnel traffic off of main arteries allowing for walkable communities with a more balanced flow of traffic.
5) It is not stated whether Dallas and Houston have sidewalks on their side streets -- many (but not all) of Atlanta's streets have no sidewalks. No sidewalks = a city that is less walkable and more dangerous to pedestrians and less able to densify.
6) Boston has winding streets similar to Atlanta. However, its extensive mass transit and subway system has helped to make it a more walkable and much denser city (among many other reasons, which include a healthier city/state relationship).
7) We're just getting out of a recession that for various reasons stopped Atlanta's growth, but did not slow Dallas' and Houston's growth. Unemployment in Charlotte is higher than Atlanta -- is it possible that Charlotte's growth came to a standstill during the recession?
8) To the comment above that Atlanta is fascinating. Absolutely not. Atlanta is not any more fascinating than any other mid-tier city in America. The reason that the Atlanta C-D forum is fascinating and thoroughly entertaining, is that the thread topics and the hyper-defensive comebacks, are so over the top that like a bad car accident you can't help but look.
...and here's another one. Atlanta is just TOO fascinating to some folks!
It's very typical of people who are over-the-top OFFENSIVE to accuse others in the room of being DEfensive. Don't sit there and think this type of high school psychology is working on anyone - it isn't.
...and here's another one. Atlanta is just TOO fascinating to some folks!
It's very typical of people who are over-the-top OFFENSIVE to accuse others in the room of being DEfensive. Don't sit there and think this type of high school psychology is working on anyone - it isn't.
How am I offensive by stating my opinions, both negative and positive?
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