Atlanta ranks as one of the world’s worst economic performers, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution of the world's largest metropolitan areas, down among the Euro laggards in Greece, Spain and Ireland.
Atlanta’s economy – primarily its employment and income gains over the last year – were so anemic that the city came in at No. 189 in the think tank’s list of top 200 global performers. Atlanta shares a particularly déclassé neighborhood filled with the likes of Richmond (No. 191), Madrid (195) and Athens (200).
Still, Brookings discovered that “the most rapidly growing metropolitan economies lie outside the U.S. and Western Europe” in its report released Wednesday. The 200 cities represent 14 percent of the world’s population, but half its economy.
“Large, mature metro economies like Tokyo, New York, and London still have a lot of firepower, but high-performance metros like Shanghai, Istanbul, and Santiago continued to close the gap last year,” said Emilia Istrate, a senior research analyst at Brookings. “To succeed, slower-growing metro areas must strengthen their relationships with these rising metro markets.”
Metropolitan areas specializing in commodities, manufacturing and financial services performed best between 2010 and 2011. Cities heavily reliant on construction, government, education and health care, like Atlanta, did poorly, according to the Washington nonprofit.
“A network of trading metros across the globe, particularly in developing Asian, Latin American, and Eastern European nations, is setting the pace in an uneven recovery,” said Brookings’ Alan Berube, an author of the Global MetroMonitor.
Atlanta’s regional competitors performed better, including Nashville (No. 89), Charlotte (145), Birmingham (175).
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