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Atlanta Regional Issues Scan and Proposed Process
Partnership for Regional Livability
Draft of 3/24/99
1. What Are the Driving Trends and Issues?
Atlanta as a crossroads city in a networked economy: international commerce, communications and transportation drive it.
Population growth, a booming economy and lack of physical barriers have lead to highest land consumption rate in the country, 1.1 million acres over 10 years
Area is in severe non-attainment for ozone. There is substantial development-related pollution of the Chattahootchee River, the area’s main drinking water source. There are significant competitive multi-state demands on this water source and others. These issues and the location of brownfields have brought environmental justice issues to the fore.
The Atlanta area has failed to create transportation plans which conform to the Clean Air Act requirements, and a federal court recently found nationally that previously programmed highways which could further decentralize the region, cannot be "grandfathered in," i.e., approved for expenditure. This ruling, along with the planned legal intervention locally on identical grounds, has had the effect in Atlanta of holding up at least $700 million in public transportation investment.
2. Where are the Near Term Opportunities to Make a Difference?
Governor Barnes has led a successful effort in the legislature to address the opportunity created by the transportation situation to create a new Georgia Regional Transportation Authority with the power to direct resources in non-attainment portions of the state; this bill passed out of conference committee yesterday. It is widely believed that through this structure, formal authority to provide incentives for reinvestment and smarter growth will result, but this will require the creation of a new mechanism to adequately represent the interests of all the region’s communities.
The region is home to major employers and economic forces. BellSouth recently committed to build its new facilities adjacent to the Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transit Authority’s rail stops. There is no formal, areawide workforce development intermediary but several corporations and institutions have made voluntary commitments which when assembled, could form the nucleus of a business/community/government partnership (CNN, Georgia Pacific, UPS, Emory, Georgia Tech, George State).
Historic concerns about inequality and recent studies on environmental justice issues are helping focus civic attention on the needs of older communities. The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership is re-focusing to explicitly link city and suburban reinvestment to regional policy and investment initiatives. The city’s Empowerment Zone strategy includes a focus on homeownership and jobs access. Recent interventions with the Atlanta Regional Commission and various state planning processes could result in targeted reinvestment in and around transit corridors, and could be used to settle long-standing barriers to mass transit system expansion. Efforts have been pursued to perfect various "green industry" opportunities ranging from renewable energy and recycling to clean transportation sources.
There are additional efforts to explicitly recognize the benefits of environmental performance associated with "smart growth," including water quality improvements in tandem with new erosion, total pollutant load and stormwater rules; land use benefits associated with a proposed 160-mile parkway along the Chattahoochee River, and with a Cherokee County "transfer of development rights" initiative in conjunction with U. of Ga. Athens School of Law and Institute of Ecology; and air quality crediting associated with infill development at the 12 million square foot former Atlantic Steel site, which has been proposed through the EPA’s "XL for Communities" regulatory reinvention initiative.
On the super-regional scale, talks have started between interests in Chattanooga and Atlanta to explore a direct surface rail link between the two downtowns and the two airports, both to relieve surface traffic and to share inter-city air traffic loads in creative and beneficial ways.
3. Who are Some of the Key Players and Champions?
Atlanta has no area-wide civic infrastructure; it has significant players who appear poised to come together in an unprecedented degree of cooperation around the kinds of possibilities highlighted above. Leadership is coming from, without being limited to:
4. What Kind of Process Will be Used Over the Next Four Months to Help the Region Prioritize Opportunities and Come to Judgment?
The process will be driven during this period of time by the issues. The issues seemed to be clustered around smart growth and land use, water quality and watershed, and transportation and air quality—there’s a lot of overlap between these, the differentiation is mostly by point of entry and lead actors.
There may well be additional issue opportunities which are driven by more traditional and/or mainstream interests: e.g., around affordable housing, access, and economic development. There are individuals starting to get interested in incentive approaches as alternatives to new regulations, but no forum exists for these parties to come together around opportunities let alone design them.
The Partnership for Regional Livability process will be initiated by a small group of leaders who will convene stakeholder from throughout the region. Issue specific forums and task forces will be used to identify high priority opportunities.
To get started, an initial focus will be on the question,
"How can the region best take quick advantage of the nexus between the new Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and the transportation conformity issue to result dependably on new policies for, and investments in, smart growth and community reinvestment?"
Last updated March 24, 1999.