Why Is Atlanta's Traffic So Bad? (Future Charlotte Development Thread) (Raleigh: big house, universities)
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I only pointed out this is why the traffic is so bad there as the city of Atlanta is stagnant, and it's been losing population for decades. Again the statistics prove this.
Incorrect. Although Atlanta lost population from 1970-1980 and from 1980-1990, it gained population from 1990-2000 and from 2000-2010. The census also estimated Atlanta to grow by 3% from 2010 to 2011, faster than Charlotte (well I guess Mecklenburg), which puts them higher than where they were in 1980 (but still behind where they were in 1970).
This would certainly explain why Raleigh/Greensboro were easier to navigate.
It's simple really. We need to limit the amount of residential growth in areas that simply don't have the infrastructure in place to support it. The local real estate industry isn't about to go for that, so nothing will change.
Wait a minute! Am I reading this correct? Both Charlotte and Raleigh/ Greensboro are lager than Chicago in area?
You are talking my comments out of context again. I was comparing 40 year growth patterns. Based on that, Atlanta has lost population for decades. This will not change until their 40 year growth is + again.
If you think otherwise, them make a post about your discovery relative to the topic of Charlotte growth. However, I am guessing that you have no interest in this.
That's what surprised me when I moved here. Charlotte is a city, but most of it is not what people think of as a city.
Says the person who lives in Matthews. I agree that most of the city limits are suburban, but that is the case with 99.9% of Sunbelt cities. Ever been to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Memphis, Nashville etc? The ONLY "big city" Sunbelt exceptions to this rule are Richmond and New Orleans. Norfolk (in some ways) can be added to this list as well. IMO, anyone who is "surprised" by Charlotte's layout probably has very limited travel experience with US cities as a whole. FWIW, Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Austin, Oklahoma City and many others are all larger than Charlotte in land area. In the case of Jacksonville, Nashville, and Oklahoma City, we're talking almost 1.5 to 2 times larger than Charlotte's land area (if you can imagine that).
You are talking my comments out of context again. I was comparing 40 year growth patterns. Based on that, Atlanta has lost population for decades. This will not change until their 40 year growth is + again.
If you think otherwise, them make a post about your discovery relative to the topic of Charlotte growth. However, I am guessing that you have no interest in this.
How was I taking your comments out of context? In the first post I responded to you said Atlanta has been losing population for "decades," you weren't saying anything about 40 year intervals. Last I checked, a decade was 10 years, maybe 20-30 since you used the plural form. The fact is Atlanta has gained population over the last 20 years, 30 if we can believe the Census Bureau's estimates. If this trend continues, they will in fact have gained population in the 40 year period from 1980-2020.
Nonetheless, like you, I could care less about how Atlanta is growing now and your original comparison is irrelevant to this topic. Again, this topic is how in the future Charlotte can avoid the mistakes Atlanta made in the past. And again, I'm just wondering what exactly the city of Charlotte itself has done to prevent this. Yes, there is some nice development going on in some of the core neighborhoods, but there is also a lot of development going on in the suburbs, and by your own admission, the city is proposing several questionable uses of tax dollars that could potentially hurt the attractiveness of city residency.
I think one of the previous posts about Charlotte's sprawl being more balanced than Atlanta's is a good point, but I'm not sure if there was anything specific that caused this.
And there is the problem. None of them want to actually live in Atlanta. The population of the city has been stagnant for decades. Hence you have 3M people living in a sprawl that spreads over dozens of counties that jam highways trying to commute to work. Though it has a heavy rail transit line, ATL's answer to this is to pave over the state in response. It's an example of everything wrong with city development.
Despite the fact the Atlanta MSA is at least 2.5X larger than Charlotte's MSA it's core county and city are growing much slower. Mecklenburg county has already surpassed Fulton in population density. Charlotte should be commended for not following ATL's example.
In CLT the vast majority of the people moving to the area move into the core county. In ATL the vast majority of the people move to the 28 county sprawl around the core county.
This is why traffic is so bad in ATL.
WHAT are You talking about?
WOW.You are SO wrong.Yet you speak with such authority with no facts.
Quote:
The City of Atlanta saw its fastest population growth in 40 years, but overall
growth in metro Atlanta slowed to its lowest levels in five years
Quote:
The City of Atlanta added 13,100 people in the 12-month estimates, its single
largest annual gain in nearly 40 years, ARC said.
Fulton County saw the greatest population gains with 17,900 new residents. That
number is dramatically lower than last year’s increase of 33,000 people.
Residents within the Atlanta city limits though accounted for about 73 percent of
Fulton’s gain.
Not that it matters but Mecklenburg County is NOT Denser than Fulton:
Fulton Co.-1,033,756
1,741/sq mi
Mecklenburg-944,373
1,650/sq m
Since you brought up density:
City Density(core)
Charlotte-2,457.0/sq mi
Atlanta-3,188/sq m
Atlanta's traffic has gotten better actually.Atlanta is not just "paving roads".There is the Beltline which has contributed to more denser development for now and the future.Charlotte has NOTHING even close.
Traffic in Atlanta is bad because despite what the Op said earlier,it is NOT built like Charlotte.Atlanta has Interstates coming form every direction through its Downtown core.The busiest routes for people coming and going to Florida to the North and Texas to South Carolina
The interstates in Charlotte do not have as much traffic gong its way for people traveling farther and the city traffic mixed in like Atlanta,
Get your fact straight please.
^Get my facts straight? Well there is this one simple fact. Atlanta has 77,000 few people than it did in 1970. These results speak for themselves. Every thing else is just an opinion.
It's not an example that Charlotte wishes to follow.
I think one of the previous posts about Charlotte's sprawl being more balanced than Atlanta's is a good point, but I'm not sure if there was anything specific that caused this.
Though I only lived in Atlanta for a short time about ten years ago, the metro seemed more divided while Charlotte is a bit more integrated. There is not a nice way of saying this, so I'm just gonna put it out there. When I was working in metro Atl, there were a few freeway exits that warned white people not to exit there. The messages were spray-painted on and quickly removed, but it still certainly caught my attention. Also, MARTA which stands for "Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority" was often called (as a joke by racists) "Moving African-Americans Rapidly Through Atlanta". So yeah, racism in Atlanta is MUCH more open than it is in Charlotte. IMO, the economic/racial divide in metro Atlanta is the main cause of the slower growth rate of Fulton/Dekalb and all points southwest. As a result, much of metro Atlanta's population is extremely north-heavy.
In all honesty, I see a smaller (but similar) pattern starting to emerge with west and east Charlotte. West/east are MUCH more "ethnic" than the rest of the city; they also have much less in the way of suburban growth. Charlotte may seem to be more "balanced" due to heavy northern and southern growth, but the east and west are avoided BIG TIME by most newcomers (just look at the number of threads here on city-data telling folks to avoid the east and west).
Though I am NOT a huge fan of streetcars, I do agree with the mayor that removing the divide of north/south vs east/west is the key to Charlotte's future. However, there are a ton of folks from South Charlotte who would rather secede from Charlotte than see their tax dollars go towards helping out "ethnic" Charlotte. It is what it is folks; and it is the exact same recipe that created present-day Atlanta.
Well said. When you look at the growth of greater Atlanta since 1960 and the growth of Charlotte - the growth of both is remarkable, but surprisingly, the growth of greater Charlotte has been faster than Atlanta. It took great Atlanta to grow to 2 million from 1 million some 30 years. (1950, metro 997,666; 1980 - 2.223 million). It took Charlotte less than 20. Does this mean Charlotte will experience the same explosive leap from 2 to 5 million in 30 years that the Atlanta metro experienced? It's impossible to predict but the Census Bureau predicts that the population of greater Charlotte will be over 3 million in about 15 years.
Equally important to note is that unlike Atlanta which utterly dominates the state of Georgia, Charlotte does not dominate North Carolina and is competing with Durham, Raleigh, Greensboro, etc. for industry and population. This may be one reason NC is expected to again top Georgia in population by 2030.
With all this said, I agree with Frewood, compared to metro Atlanta at this point in her growth, Charlotte is realizing a more sustainable, more fiscally conservative, and more attractive pattern of development.
These are different times.Atlanta did not focus on sustainable growth until after the Olympics.Charlotte has that on Atlanta due that its more common to think about growth of a city in a sustainable way.Atlanta came of age with the automobile.Its only been since the late nineties did sustainability has been on the minds of cities in the South and West.They only started to focus because so many people had been fleeing other more established cities due to jobs and weather.They never really had to think about it until it was late in the game.
However Atlanta is has been in the game of sustainability since at least the late 1990's as it WAS at one time the poster boy for sprawl then.Even the suburbs are becoming and have become more concerned about development.Many cities within the metro have updated there Downtown's in several counties to have more centered development by setting the "live,work,and play" example on smaller levels like Atlantic Station.
My point is Atlanta today is NOT the Atlanta of pre-Olympics.I'd say based on just the type of projects going on in Atlanta over the last 10 years ,are FAR ahead of how Charlotte is developing.Although Charlotte is doing it earlier than Atlanta did at its early growth cycle.
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I agree that most of the city limits are suburban, but that is the case with 99.9% of Sunbelt cities. Ever been to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Memphis, Nashville etc? The ONLY "big city" Sunbelt exceptions to this rule are Richmond and New Orleans. Norfolk (in some ways) can be added to this list as well. IMO, anyone who is "surprised" by Charlotte's layout probably has very limited travel experience with US cities as a whole. FWIW, Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Kansas City, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Austin, Oklahoma City and many others are all larger than Charlotte in land area. In the case of Jacksonville, Nashville, and Oklahoma City, we're talking almost 1.5 to 2 times larger than Charlotte's land area (if you can imagine that).
Soo wrong!!
