WSJ article “Suburbs Outstrip Cities in Population Growth” is based on a study with unreliable conclusions, as the data for Atlanta shows.

Do these look like walkable urban places? They do to me. But a new study touting suburban population growth in the US confusingly identifies each of these (all located in the Atlanta region) as being suburban, misleading people into thinking that traditional car-centric, low-density suburban forms are preferred.

I sometimes use “urban” as shorthand for a type of built environment that takes a walkable, city form (such as historic, pre-automobile streets and their compact blocks). And there’s another common way of using that word to define a place: sometimes urban is a geographic point on a map, where a center city is surrounded by suburbs and the rural areas beyond them.

Now, a report from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) has introduced a unique place-based definition of what’s urban and suburban, and it’s one that poses problems when applied to the landscape of the Atlanta region.

How urban is a mess of car-centric malls?

ULI’s Housing in the Evolving American Suburb report examines population growth with an interactive map of US cities, giving color-coded classifications to five different levels of suburban and urban zones.

Below is the center of the Atlanta region, from that map. If you’re familiar with the boundaries of the City of Atlanta, you’ll notice how theses designations transcend those boundaries. That’s one of the things that makes the title of the recent Wall Street Journal article about this study, “Suburbs Outstrip Cities in Population Growth, Study Finds,” very deceptive.

Let’s take a look at one of the “urban” areas in yellow — the stretch of Highway 41 that’s northwest of the City of Atlanta.

Though it’s classified as urban in this system, the built environment that the arrow above is pointing to is largely suburban-style shopping malls. The fact that there are a lot of them — along with apartments and offices mixed in — is possibly what makes this “urban” in the report.

But as you can see in the aerial shot below, it’s not a walkable place. The Walk Score website gives it a low score of 41. It’s a mess of parking lots and wide roads.

The so-called “urban” area of Highway 41 in Cobb County, northwest of the City of Atlanta. It looks like at least half of the land space is taken by car lanes and parking.

Obviously, ULI’s version of “urban” is troubling. This is not walkable city fabric. This is not a place where you’d be happy to step off of a bus and explore the sights on foot. This is meant for you to drive into, park your car, go to a single destination, then get back in your car for another trip. It’s suburban, car-dependent development on steroids.

The pedestrian & transit-friendly suburb of Decatur

Also from the map, here’s a shot of where the city of Decatur lies, immediately east of the City of Atlanta. The ULI report calls this suburban.

But Decatur is one of the more wonderfully walkable places in the region. A MARTA rail station sits in the middle of the historic downtown of the city (which has a very high Walk Score of 94) and there’s a great mix of uses, with buildings up against the sidewalk. Street connectivity is good as well.

Downtown Decatur, near its MARTA rail station

And it’s experienced a lot of development of new apartments in the past ten years. All of the people who’ve moved into those apartment homes in Decatur’s downtown have been included in the stats for the ULI report, listed as “suburban” population growth. Not exactly what many people picture when they think of suburban homes. These aren’t subdivisions filled with snout houses and grassy yards.

The map shows similar mismatches throughout the region. Great nodes of mixed-use urbanism like downtown Marietta and Woodstock (where retail and multifamily residential development have been big) are identified as suburbs.

By implying that the traditional notion of car-centric suburban forms are the preferred housing choice, the study and the WSJ article do a disservice to the good things happening with pockets of dense, pedestrian-oriented growth.

Why this matters: ULI data states that suburbs are leading growth

The ULI report claims that suburbs are getting over 90 percent of all new growth in US metros, which seems unbelievable, and for good reason.

A post at the Congress for New Urbanism blog points out that the report classifies Queens NYC — which has a population density over 4 times that of the City of Atlanta and a pedestrian-friendly street grid and good transit access — as suburban. It’s a no-brainer that gains in the “suburbs” as identified here are sometimes happening in walkable places that don’t fit into the model of low-density, car-centric ‘burbs.

City Observatory has also published a good criticism of the report, citing a Brookings study that found: “in each of the years since 2010, city population growth has exceeded suburban growth.”

It would certainly help us understand trends in the Atlanta region if we could have a more nuanced, fine-grained study of population growth. And a survey of housing preferences would be good to match with that, since what’s available to a person moving into the region is not always what’s preferred. But that survey would need to include language that goes beyond terms like “suburban” and “urban.” It would have to paint a clear picture of what a good urban place looks like, with its multiple mobility options enabled by a compact and truly walkable format.