ARC Executive Director Doug Hooker is pushing back against a new national ranking by Smart Growth America that shows metro Atlanta is one of the worst regions in the country when it comes to sprawl.

Hooker cites a 2013 report by Chris Leinberger, a land use strategist and developer, that announced metro Atlanta is, “experiencing the end of sprawl.” Leinberger’s study observed that walkable urban development now accounts for most of the development in metro Atlanta.

The report by Smart Growth America carries additional sting because it links a number of social maladies to sprawl. Social mobility is one striking measure.

Metro Atlanta ranks 50 out of 50 regions, and 99 out of 100 when compared to the nation’s top cities, rising above only Memphis, according to the report by Harvard University. This report was cited in the Smart Growth America report.

The new report provides a number of charts that shows where metro Atlanta fits into the national picture in terms of communities that enable people to walk to meet most of their daily needs and obligations.

The one sentence that references Atlanta states:

• “Among large metro areas (defined as having a population more than one million people), New York, the national leader is the most compact and connected [with a score of 203.4]. Atlanta, GA, is the most sprawling, with a score of 41.0.”

Hooker did not let the most recent report without rebuttal from the region’s planning and intergovernmental coordination agency.

Hooker cited three points to make his case that metro Atlanta has turned the corner on development practices that foster growth in rural areas far from job centers that have resulted in some of the longest job commutes in the country.

To put the commute times into perspective, Gov. Nathan Deal’s transportation strategy aims for no one in metro Atlanta to spend more than 90 minutes a day commuting to work.

Hooker makes three points in his rebuttal:

1. The ARC’s Livable Centers Initiative has enabled communities to redevelop such that, “LCI areas account for 5 percent of the region’s land area, but they contain 7 percent of the region’s housing, 24 percent of commercial space and 38 percent of office space.”
2. Leinberger’s report that shows development patterns in the region has shifted toward greater density;
3. ARC’s 2013 “Metro Atlanta Speaks” public opinion survey that showed, “almost 40 percent of those surveyed would consider moving into a mixed-use community if they had the opportunity to move within the region. More than 75 percent favored redeveloping older areas as the ‘best way for metro Atlanta to accommodate growth,’ and when asked, ‘What is the best long-term solution to traffic problems in metro Atlanta,’ more than 62 percent pointed to either ‘improvements to public transportation’ or ‘developing communities in which people live close to where they work.’”

Incidentally, Leinberger’s report characterized metro Atlanta as the “poster child of sprawl” and used the region to deliver a sweeping prognosis that placed his report in a historic context in the realm of urban development: