Photo Credit: Mike on Flickr, CC BY 2.0
My latest piece is now online over at City Journal. It’s a look at Atlanta, now bouncing back from a very rough 10-12 year period, but looking increasingly like a city that is maturing rather than a go-go boomtown in its hypergrowth phase. Here’s an excerpt:
Though still growing rapidly, Atlanta’s fortunes have taken a hit in the new century. From 1980 to 2000, metro Atlanta grew in population by an astonishing 82.3 percent, outdistancing Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston. But in the 18 years since 2000, its population growth rate was only 39.6 percent, which trails its Texas peers. Since 2000, the population gap between Houston and Atlanta more than doubled, rising from less than 500,000 to more than 1 million. And growth has continued to slow. From 2000 to 2010, Atlanta’s average annual population growth reached only 2.13 percent, and that has fallen to 1.45 percent since 2010.
Any boomtown, as it reaches maturity, will eventually see a decline in population growth. But in Atlanta, this slowdown has come with troubling economic indicators. The city’s per-capita income as a percentage of the U.S. average declined from 110.5 percent in 2000 to 96.2 percent in 2017. Regional income levels have diverged across America, but what’s more troubling for Atlanta is that its real per-capita GDP started declining in the 2000s, especially during the Great Recession, which hit the city hard. It ranked 42nd out of 52 major metro areas in jobs performance during that era, and per-capita employment in the region fell from 51.2 percent to 40.6 percent from 2000 to 2013. Atlanta added 1 million people but lost jobs in that decade.
The economy turned around in 2013. GDP per capita started growing again, and per-capita incomes relative to the U.S. average started improving as well. Jobs are up 22.4 percent since 2010. Atlanta got great press for its Beltline, a greenway encircling the city along an abandoned rail corridor. Its urban center began growing and gentrifying, in the familiar pattern. The Census Bureau estimates that the city’s population has grown by 16 percent since 2010. Atlanta’s tech industry has blossomed, too, and the city has become an unlikely center for financial technology.
Click through to read the whole thing.
Aaron, thanks for finally doing an article about Atlanta.
However, I have to take issue with your characterization the cityhood movement as being a zero sum game, as if that and racism was the only reason for it.
The cities you mentioned: Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Brookhaven, and Stonecrest; are located in either of the 2 core metro counties: Fulton and Dekalb. Fulton is a geographic monstrousity that came about via the bankruptucies of other counties during the Depression. Dekalb is somewhat more coherent. But both counties are epically corrupt.
Those cities came about in order have more control over their development and prevent annexation, by yet another corrupt entitie, the City of Atlanta.
That’s not simply a zero sum game play or rabid racism.
Jim, thanks. I agree that the origin of the cityhood movement was in local frustrations with county governance, but reading the quotes today, it seems to me that there’s a sense that the train has left the station, that most territory will seek to incorporate, and better to do it on your own terms rather than risk letting events overtake your community.
Sounds like Game of Thrones – Atlanta!
Cities are like people. They go through stages of development mirroring the development stages of human psychology. Atlanta is entering middle-age where the aggressive gambles and hard work of the 20s and 30s give way to a new sophistication and maturity in taking advantages of the accomplishments of young adulthood. This might make Atlanta more formidable competition for really high end activities like fortune 500 headquarters and complex tech-based operations. Atlanta grew as a place to outsource established operations from the Northeast and Midwest. Now it may create more of it’s own such companies and industries internally. That might actually make it more competitive with Chicago, Dallas, and coastal metros.
I’ve lived in Atlanta for over 20 years now and I would move when possible.
It’s growth is a big negative on quality of life. It’s very hard to get around a lot of the metro.
The city itself (near adjacent north) northern third is a mess.
Buckhead is terrible on a couple fronts:
-A suburban business district in the city, and while many towers have been built, it’s still a suburban infrastructure. That will change. Ever.
-People, especially outsiders don’t see that Buckhead extends well beyond Peachtree, Piedmont and Lenox Roads.
There are miles of not even suburban level residential forest of the super wealthy. Windy two lane roads are the only way around. This significantly limits arteries/secondary roads to get into the city and you’ll never see MARTA tracks run through it.
Just north of this area is the booming Perimeter Edge, which again, is a terrible mess, because the area can’t handle the traffic. It’s not remotely walkable and the presence of 285 and GA 400 make it worse because it’s at the intersection. One cannot leave Perimeter without being stuck with people already on 285 trying to get to the far out burbs on GA 400.
Yes, a few can take MARTA into the city, but that’s it.
Here’s what I will say that’s good:
-Midtown has grown up well
– The Beltine is a nice amenity, and there are other trails that get a lot less attention that are nice in the metro
-West Midtown is developing nicely too for its scale.
– The city does have several nice neighborhoods and several more with good bones
-There are also inner ring burbs that blossomed in the early post war years that have good bones too
Not sure that it can make up for the 5.5 million people who don’t live in these areas though and have to commute…
Referring to Buckhead, I meant to say that will never change.I also meant to say Perimeter Edge city.
Typing too fast and didn’t read what I wrote…
Albert: Heresy. Eternal rapid growth is the only goal of all cities!!!