METROPOLITAN ATLANTA
SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND SMART GROWTH PROJECT
METROPOLITAN ATLANTA
SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND SMART GROWTH PROJECT
The Metropolitan Atlanta Suburban Sprawl Project is designed to raise the awareness and involvement level of low-income and people of color around the issues of suburban sprawl, public investments, and "Smart Growth." It also has the goal of bridging the information gap among central city and suburban residents, community activists, urban planners, practitioners, public officials, and college students who are interested in understanding suburban sprawl from a holistic perspective.
This project uses a multi-disciplinary approach to analyze and critique the emerging public health, air quality , transportation, and land-use crisis resulting from sprawl-driven development. The project commissioned a series of policy papers from an interdisciplinary team of local experts. The contributors to the commissioned paper series include sociologists, lawyers, urban planners, economists, educators, and health care professionals. All of the contributors examined institutional constraint issues that are imbedded in sprawl.
The project's reports, articles, and books are written in a non-technical readable style that should be useful to policy analysts, government officials, community leaders, and other individuals working on urban issues. both primary and secondary data are used in our analysis. An extensive use of geographic information system (GIS) analysis is used in mapping and graphically illustrating the social, economic, and environmental costs and consequences of sprawl on low-income and people of color communities in the Atlanta region.
Among the topics examined in our studies include environmental impacts, housing and residential patterns, racial polarization, insurance redlining, economic opportunity, community development, transportation, energy consumption, public health, and schools. Our analysis illuminates the rising class and racial divisions underlying the uneven growth and development in the Atlanta region. The project also outlines policy recommendations and an action agenda. We expect the study results will be of special interest to the environmental groups and the growing environmental justice movement.
Sprawl Atlanta: Executive Summary