Sprawled Out in Atlanta (Clayton, Boston: real estate, 2013, construction)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

Writers love attacking the sprawl of Atlanta because to them Atlanta's sprawl is one of the most highly-visible representatives of the automobile-dependent lifestyle that they so abhor and want to eradicate.

Atlanta's sprawl is worse than Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Los Angeles because Atlanta has a much more limited metropolitan road network than the other 3 automobile-dependent Sunbelt cities.

Both Atlanta's surface road and previously-impressive freeway networks are vastly-underbuilt when compared to Dallas, Houston and L.A. making Atlanta's traffic congestion even worse than it already was going to be anyway.

Atlanta's vastly-underbuilt (and politically-restricted) road network means that Atlanta is basically trying to live the automobile-overdependent lifestyle of road-heavy Sunbelt cities like Houston or L.A. but with a road network that is not much better than a transit-heavy Northeastern city/metro like Boston.



The use of the word "sprawl" in that article is surprising considering that use of the word "sprawl" in articles was banned for many years at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The AJC did not want to offend the auto-dependent suburbanites that the fast-shrinking newspaper was trying to appeal to to stay afloat by using a word that those suburbanites might find very-offensive.

LA is the densest metro in the US. Texas has managed to keep up with the sprawl by building toll roads, something that is very toxic in Georgia.

[Listennow32]

Fantastic article and good post. Yeah the article is about sprawl, but they focus more on the rise of suburban poverty. The world is changing my friends.. the world is changing. They said that 88% of Atlanta's poor live in the suburbs 0__0

[AnsleyPark]

Originally Posted by Listennow32

Fantastic article and good post. Yeah the article is about sprawl, but they focus more on the rise of suburban poverty. The world is changing my friends.. the world is changing. They said that 88% of Atlanta's poor live in the suburbs 0__0

I would imagine that about 88% of all Atlantans live in the burbs (well, outside of the city limits anyway).

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by bhammaster

Boston number 2? Above Houston and Dallas?

That should tell you that whatever metrics are being used don't mean anything but looking good on paper. On the ground level no one is going to consider car centric and sprawled cities like Houston and Dallas dense.

Because Boston has a compact core, but has very low density suburbs like Atlanta does while Houston/Dallas follow the western model of more consistent suburban density. Small lots and yards and more houses in a smaller area.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by cqholt

LA is the densest metro in the US. Texas has managed to keep up with the sprawl by building toll roads, something that is very toxic in Georgia.

Except for the hundreds of millions of dollars GDOT/SRTA is about to spend on the I-75 HOT lanes.

[bhammaster]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Because Boston has a compact core, but has very low density suburbs like Atlanta does while Houston/Dallas follow the western model of more consistent suburban density. Small lots and yards and more houses in a smaller area.

I can understand how those technicalities work out on paper, but as far as lifestyle is anyone sane going to claim it's easier to have a car free walkable lifestyle in Houston vs Boston? Hardly any city has dense suburbs as far as walkability goes but at least if you live in the burbs of Boston you have more access to public transit.

Some of these lists are just number's games that don't reflect on the lifestyle of the area. They would have you thin Dallas is more walkable and car free than Atlanta or Boston.

[Ant131531]

Except that if you don't live in the city of Boston, than you're most likely driving due to the nature of the low density suburbs there.

[DJDeadParrot]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Except that if you don't live in the city of Boston, than you're most likely driving due to the nature of the low density suburbs there.

Can we see this article that lists Boston as second most highly sprawled [or how ever it was worded] metro area? I'm interested in seeing how they define their parameters.

[2Easy]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

Atlanta's sprawl is worse than Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Los Angeles because Atlanta has a much more limited metropolitan road network than the other 3 automobile-dependent Sunbelt cities.

Both Atlanta's surface road and previously-impressive freeway networks are vastly-underbuilt when compared to Dallas, Houston and L.A. making Atlanta's traffic congestion even worse than it already was going to be anyway.

Atlanta's vastly-underbuilt (and politically-restricted) road network means that Atlanta is basically trying to live the automobile-overdependent lifestyle of road-heavy Sunbelt cities like Houston or L.A. but with a road network that is not much better than a transit-heavy Northeastern city/metro like Boston.

It's the way that the roads have been built, not the number of them. You have many more miles of surface streets and freeways per resident than we do in LA. Don't build more roads, build roads and developments smarter.

[arjay57]

From the title I thought this was going to be another knock on Atlanta but the article is really pretty good.