Atlanta no longer 'Sprawl City'?

Larry Copeland | USA TODAY

ATLANTA — The end of sprawl? Here in Atlanta, known for decades as "the poster child for sprawl"?

Yes, according to a new report from George Washington University which sounds a death knell for the kind of traffic-clogging, suburban-dominated development patterns that have defined this city for nearly two generations.

"Atlanta has reached peak sprawl," said report author Christopher Leinberger, a professor of urban real estate and chair of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at George Washington University. "This is the end of that trend. The pendulum is now swinging in the other direction."

Walkable urban communities, which are preferred by young professionals who drive less than their parents and by high-tech businesses over automobile-dependent suburban neighborhoods, are experiencing strong growth in Atlanta.

These kind of communities, which comprise less than 1% of development in the Atlanta region, accounted for 60% of the growth in income-generating real estate – offices, retail spaces, rental apartments and hotels – over the past four years, Leinberger said.

"This came as a tremendous surprise to me," said Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute. "It shocked me."

His report found that real estate in these communities – places such as downtown, Castleberry Hill, the West End, downtown Decatur and Buckhead – fetched prices 112% higher per square foot than in traditional suburban areas.

Most of the growth in these communities is in Atlanta, he said, but as much as two-thirds of the boom in walkable communities could eventually occur in suburban areas.

Leinberger has documented a similar trend in Washington and plans to study development patterns in Boston.

Atlanta commuters gritting their teeth and cussing in rush-hour traffic would probably find the reports on the death of sprawl here premature. So does demographer Wendell Cox, who heads the St. Louis area firm Demographia. "My sense is the hype about walkable communities is overblown," he said. "In Atlanta, as well as the rest of the country, the bulk of the growth continues to be in suburban areas."

Joel Kotkin, a scholar in urban futures at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., said that from 2010-2012, eight of the 10 fastest growing counties with populations over 100,000 were in suburban or exurban areas. "I think the growth of metropolitan areas will continue and will continue particularly where there is strong economic growth, and that would apply to Atlanta," he said.