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I think it's an issue of timing. Atlanta has only started seriously sprawling in recent memory--the past 25 years or so. Those other cities sprawled a long time ago, long before we started thinking about the impact of unchecked growth. Water usage, concrete and poor drainage, global warming from fuel exhaust, etc... I haven't lived in any of those other cities so for me there's no comparison, but I did know Atlanta prior to the explosion and yeah, it's pretty bad.
It seems even urban planners believe intown Atlanta is too spread out although i think in recent years areas like Midtown have changed that perception.
Yeah, I'm definitely one of those people who thinks that the medium-to-high-density areas intown are too spread out. Glenwood Park, for instance, is a great example of well-built density in itself, but it's not in walkable distance to anything useful like a grocery store or a MARTA station. There are little oasis of density like this all over intown that are too disconnected. I wanna just smoosh 'em all together and create one vibrant, walkable, urban core.
My hope is that central Midtown, around the Peachtree corridor, will continue to fill in with density and provide a good walkable, urban option in Atlanta for people who are looking for that.
RE: suburban sprawl, there's no need for creating non-stop urban density throughout the metro area. If there was smart development of medium density in transit-connected smaller cities in the metro, there would be plenty of room for both a less-expansive sprawl of detached houses and some preserved green space.
Many suburbs are designed with sidewalks and close to amentities that people want, some in Atlanta are too but there are some that have no sidewalks where walking anywhere is not very feasible. It was just done more often and on a bigger scare in Atlanta because of how fast we grew without a comprehensive plan in place and the weird trend that everything has to be new construction.
Regarding intown: People are moving intown at a record pace. Living in Midtown I constantly see the changes and even if the condos aren't full day one trust me there is density in midtown and lots of people living there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bizchick86
But which suburbs are? You look at the suburban areas of any major city and they're all like that. Again the biggest cities in the world all have this. And again, how is Atlanta different?
The city of Atlanta is not a high-density megapolis, no doubt, but what it is certainly ain't sprawl. Atlanta's city planners and developers are working double time trying to bring density to the city with mixed use neighborhoods, high-rise developments, mid-rise condo buildings, and guess what, many sit half empty and depreciating.
I think the city can only move so far as the people want it to move. If people in metro Atlanta are not moving into the city, can we really fault Atlanta for that? That's veering off topic, but it is something to consider.
The point still remains, how is Atlanta's sprawl different from anyone else's sprawl. All major cities have suburbs just like Atlanta's with high traffic getting into the city, land pollution, parking lots, and strip malls. You can drive 20 minutse outside Manhattan and San Fran (I mention them so much because I have actual experience living in NYC and visited family friends outside San Fran) and see strip malls, cookie-cutter homes and the like, so it confounds me how those cities aren't nearly as villified.
Forgive me for just dropping in. I was scrolling down to Massachusetts when I saw this topic and it piqued my interest. I'm hoping I can lend some outside perspective. For the record, I'm an urban planning post-grad student living in Boston.
I think every post that I've seen so far has good deal of truth to it. Bizchick86, you are right to notice that suburban San Francisco is similar in many ways to suburban Atlanta. In fact, the suburbs of most major American cities have a resemblance to Atlanta's suburbs. In that regard there is very little difference.
However, The issue pertains more to the core of Atlanta's metro rather than the suburbs (sprawling 'burbs are a problem everywhere). When you were in San Francisco, I'm sure you noticed how densely settled the core of the peninsula is there. I'm not just talking about Union Square, Market Street and the central business district, but the peninsula as a whole. The residential neighborhoods near the commercial center of San Francisco are incredibly dense as well. The bulk of the population of San Francisco lives in a high-density urban environment while the bulk of Atlanta's population does not. To put it in better perspective, Atlanta has a population of 540,000 living over 131 square miles of land (pop density of 4,000 per sq. mi); while San Francisco has 300,000 MORE people than Atlanta (800,000) living on 2/3 LESS less land than Atlanta (about 45 square miles) to provide a population density of over 17,000 people per square mile. The suburbs may be similar, but the core of the metro is apples and oranges.
The reality is that many people from outside Atlanta give it a worse rap than it deserves. Many people think of Atlanta as one big sprawling suburb. It isn't. There are areas like Marietta Street (East of CNN) that look like the Central Business Districts in any major city (including Boston or New York's Financial District or Downtown San Francisco). The problem is that once you get outside these small, dense, pockets, you're in low-density residential areas and gaps filled with lengthy sprawling parking lots that do resemble suburban areas.
I have family in Atlanta and know full-well how hard the city is working to overcome this stereotype, but there is some reality to the legend. For example, if you're in Midtown on Peachtree, you feel as if you're in the center of a big urban area. Sure, there are some parking lots here and there, but for the most part it's pretty urban just like any major city. However, if you walk three blocks east (you're south of 10th street/ the park) to Myrtle street, you're in a low density residential neighborhood chalk full of single-family detached homes. THIS is what sets Atlanta apart and provides the negative stereotype. If you walk three block (or 15 blocks) off of Union Square in San Francisco, you're going to still be in a dense urban area. If you walk a few blocks out of the Financial District in Boston you're going to be in a dense, residential neighborhood (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, North End, etc).
The "dense" cities have their dense central business districts (as does Atlanta) and then lots of high density residential and mixed-use neighborhoods spiraling outward from that district as the city's density slowly decreases until you transition into suburbs that form a ways outside the core of the city. I won't say Atlanta has NONE of that gradual transition, but it happens much more quickly (i.e. 3 blocks off of Peachtree in Midtown) in Atlanta and stays a consistent low density for a long ways outside the city.
The problem with that low-density sprawl is that it takes up a lot of space to house very few people. This, in turn, leads to MORE low density sprawl (and eats up more land) to house more people. This problem is unfairly designated upon Atlanta. People praise Boston for it's density and walkability (it deserves this praise). However, few know that Boston has one of the worst sprawl problems in the country. Because the Boston area has so many older towns (i.e. Braintree, Lexington, Concord, etc) close to it that have a lot of history and character, sprawl around Boston is highly regulated as low-density. Boston has few high-density suburbs outside of the urban core (i.e. Somerville, Cambridge, Quincy, Chelsea, Everett, etc). It gets very low density quickly because most of the surrounding cities and towns have lot size restrictions (it's not uncommon for a town to require 1/2 acre or more to build a home) and even style restrictions (many places demand colonial homes only). What this means is that Boston's suburbs can't field the demand for people because they are so low density. This causes housing prices to skyrocket and exurban and rural communities to turn into low-density suburbs in order to meet demand. In order to try and "protect" the integrity of their historic towns, people are causing a major sprawl problem around Boston. Just about all of Eastern Massachusetts can be classified as suburban Boston nowadays which is not a good thing.
Just because Atlanta gets the "stigma" doesn't mean it's the only one with the problem.
Thanks for the perspective, Irfox. I know I may be in the minority, but I've never lived anywhere other than metro ATL, so I don't know much about the sprawl issues other cities deal with. This was very interesting to read.
I agree about the problem with the limited size of Atlanta's urban core. There was far too much land area in the core of the city designated for low-density development in the early 20th century. A badly-placed highrise building only fouls up one block -- but badly-placed detached housing (and strip malls, and parking lots, etc) stretches across a much larger area and creates a bigger problem in the long run for a growing city.
Just because Atlanta gets the "stigma" doesn't mean it's the only one with the problem.[/
encapsulates my main point, as many major cities aren't associated with it at all (who knew Boston had that problem?) while Atlanta is among those that get the worst of it.
A few things to consider are Atlanta's unique history and its particular characteristics compared to other metropolises.
One, Atlanta's intown residential neighborhoods are actually some of the few historical features left of the city. Really, I think this feature (residential communities within the city) is something that makes Atlanta unique and keeps it from being a carbon copy New York or Chicago. If you look into the intown residential neighborhoods that you are describing--Virginia Highlands, Little 5, Grant Park, East Atlanta, Candler Park, Edgewood, Inman Park, and the West End, among many others -- these are in fact the heart and soul of Atlanta's character and rich in history. Why have density if it lacks the city's soul?
Secondly, the low-density housing intown did not lead to lower-density housing in the suburbs (sprawl). These intown residential communities were fled in the Post-Civil Rights Era due to white flight. The sprawl in the exurbs was a consequence of demand from these families who wanted to move away from the city and who continue to move further and further out. Some African-American families who then saw their intown neighborhoods depreciating in value consequently went to those outer suburbs as well.
Thirdly, virtually all of those intown neighborhoods unlike sprawl neighborhoods are in close proximity to mass transit, are bikeable, walkable, are centered around a public community park, are near their own "villages" with locally owned street level retail and nightlife, are unique in character, and are not "cookie cutter." There's a difference between residential and "sprawl." Those neighborhoods, while residential, in fact constitute virtually the opposite of the depictions of sprawl. The only similarity is that they have yards.
The people moving intown are largely moving to these historical neighborhoods and not planned, inorganic, new mixed use developments like Atlantic Station. If I moved intown, my preference would be those residential communities primarily because of their character and history. Places like Philly and New York can be both historical and urban because their density was borne along with the cities themselves. If Atlanta were to try and become urban to the degree at which those places are, it would be have little of its characer and history left which is the complaint presently being lodged against it when associating it to a sprawl city.
It's really a conundrum. Building over these neighborhoods would give the neighborhoods the "newness" that hyper-density outsiders seem to deplore, while keeping the neighborhoods prevents the density those hyper-density folks also fault Atlanta for lacking.
I think folks should just appreciate Atlanta for what it is. A new city that developed in a Post-Industrial era that had rapid intown growth. When folks fled for the suburbs, instead of developing over the intown neighborhoods that had depreciated in value, people restored them and developed rich, soulful, active communities from them.
With more comprehensive and extensive mass transit that can bring the intown neighborhoods together, light rail to help out those commuters out in the suburbs, and the development of more street-level retail, the city would be A-okay. There are plenty of options for dense residences in the city as it is...we just have to wait for people to actually take advantage of them. From there, demand for more urban conveniences would come naturally.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lrfox
Forgive me for just dropping in. I was scrolling down to Massachusetts when I saw this topic and it piqued my interest. I'm hoping I can lend some outside perspective. For the record, I'm an urban planning post-grad student living in Boston.
I think every post that I've seen so far has good deal of truth to it. Bizchick86, you are right to notice that suburban San Francisco is similar in many ways to suburban Atlanta. In fact, the suburbs of most major American cities have a resemblance to Atlanta's suburbs. In that regard there is very little difference.
However, The issue pertains more to the core of Atlanta's metro rather than the suburbs (sprawling 'burbs are a problem everywhere). When you were in San Francisco, I'm sure you noticed how densely settled the core of the peninsula is there. I'm not just talking about Union Square, Market Street and the central business district, but the peninsula as a whole. The residential neighborhoods near the commercial center of San Francisco are incredibly dense as well. The bulk of the population of San Francisco lives in a high-density urban environment while the bulk of Atlanta's population does not.
The reality is that many people from outside Atlanta give it a worse rap than it deserves. Many people think of Atlanta as one big sprawling suburb. It isn't. There are areas like Marietta Street (East of CNN) that look like the Central Business Districts in any major city (including Boston or New York's Financial District or Downtown San Francisco). The problem is that once you get outside these small, dense, pockets, you're in low-density residential areas and gaps filled with lengthy sprawling parking lots that do resemble suburban areas.
I have family in Atlanta and know full-well how hard the city is working to overcome this stereotype, but there is some reality to the legend. For example, if you're in Midtown on Peachtree, you feel as if you're in the center of a big urban area. Sure, there are some parking lots here and there, but for the most part it's pretty urban just like any major city. However, if you walk three blocks east (you're south of 10th street/ the park) to Myrtle street, you're in a low density residential neighborhood chalk full of single-family detached homes. THIS is what sets Atlanta apart and provides the negative stereotype. If you walk three block (or 15 blocks) off of Union Square in San Francisco, you're going to still be in a dense urban area. If you walk a few blocks out of the Financial District in Boston you're going to be in a dense, residential neighborhood (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, North End, etc).
The "dense" cities have their dense central business districts (as does Atlanta) and then lots of high density residential and mixed-use neighborhoods spiraling outward from that district as the city's density slowly decreases until you transition into suburbs that form a ways outside the core of the city. I won't say Atlanta has NONE of that gradual transition, but it happens much more quickly (i.e. 3 blocks off of Peachtree in Midtown) in Atlanta and stays a consistent low density for a long ways outside the city.
The problem with that low-density sprawl is that it takes up a lot of space to house very few people. This, in turn, leads to MORE low density sprawl (and eats up more land) to house more people. This problem is unfairly designated upon Atlanta. People praise Boston for it's density and walkability (it deserves this praise). However, few know that Boston has one of the worst sprawl problems in the country. Because the Boston area has so many older towns (i.e. Braintree, Lexington, Concord, etc) close to it that have a lot of history and character, sprawl around Boston is highly regulated as low-density. Boston has few high-density suburbs outside of the urban core (i.e. Somerville, Cambridge, Quincy, Chelsea, Everett, etc). It gets very low density quickly because most of the surrounding cities and towns have lot size restrictions (it's not uncommon for a town to require 1/2 acre or more to build a home) and even style restrictions (many places demand colonial homes only). What this means is that Boston's suburbs can't field the demand for people because they are so low density. This causes housing prices to skyrocket and exurban and rural communities to turn into low-density suburbs in order to meet demand. In order to try and "protect" the integrity of their historic towns, people are causing a major sprawl problem around Boston. Just about all of Eastern Massachusetts can be classified as suburban Boston nowadays which is not a good thing.
Just because Atlanta gets the "stigma" doesn't mean it's the only one with the problem.
Last edited by bizchick86; 10-01-2009 at 12:28 PM..
If you have to drive an hour or more each way to work in Atlanta traffic, you know why sprawl sucks. The solution to everything was, roads, roads, and more roads. Crappy public transportation system -- doesn't extend far enough out (it can't -- not the estimated $10 million per mile) and doesn't run often enough to truly reduce car usage. Not sure that Atlanta is different than many other cities, though. Just ****-poor planning; emphasis on building as many roads, houses, strip malls and shopping centers that can be supported, with no concern about environmental issues, transit, or quality of life.
Agree. But part of it was because there was demand for people to purchase bigger and bigger houses and lots and based on their budgets and what they wanted that meant further and further out and people were willing to make the commute to have what they wanted.
Things are changing now for many and now, if one wants an urban lifestyle, you can truely find it now intown whereas 10 years ago it was different. Plus the biggest generation is now becoming empty nesters and deciding location is more important.
Remember in general in this country our houses are 3 times larger then a generation ago and many people have thought bigger is better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeSpelvin
If you have to drive an hour or more each way to work in Atlanta traffic, you know why sprawl sucks. The solution to everything was, roads, roads, and more roads. Crappy public transportation system -- doesn't extend far enough out (it can't -- not the estimated $10 million per mile) and doesn't run often enough to truly reduce car usage. Not sure that Atlanta is different than many other cities, though. Just ****-poor planning; emphasis on building as many roads, houses, strip malls and shopping centers that can be supported, with no concern about environmental issues, transit, or quality of life.
Another thing to keep in mind with the density in Atlanta is 10-15 years ago Midtown was not what it is today. It has changed dramtically and become truely urban and is continuing. I bet in 2 years the midtown mile will be quite different then today.
Another thing to keep in mind with the density in Atlanta is 10-15 years ago Midtown was not what it is today. It has changed dramtically and become truely urban and is continuing. I bet in 2 years the midtown mile will be quite different then today.
Indeed. I love this city, its beautiful historic intown neighborhoods, its natural beauty, as well as the promise of the new, urban developments.
I think Atlanta should pride itself in NOT being like some urban centers where people are packed like sardines. I think Atlanta has the potential to be the best of both worlds by offering urban conveniences and residential comfort. I appreciate what it is now (love it, in fact) and look forward to its future!
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