Michelle Knapp and Suzanne Taylor are the Ambassadors of Suburbia, the self-labeled “blonde and brunette” boosters of OTP. Their passion for all things north of I-285 was on full display one recent afternoon as the 40-something moms marched across downtown Woodstock in T-shirts emblazoned with the letters OTP.
OTP, as in Outside The Perimeter, as in there’s nowhere else they’d rather live, work or play. It’s not that they’re opposed to venturing ITP, or Inside the Perimeter. They just don’t see much need to.
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“Fifteen years ago, you had to go ITP,” said Knapp, whose Scoop OTP website lists the retail and restaurant offerings of Cobb, Cherokee, Forsyth and north Fulton counties. “Roswell, Canton and Woodstock all rebuilt their downtowns and now have these cool vibes. You don’t really need to go anywhere else.”
The OTP-ITP identity split highlights a divided metro Atlanta. There are signs the region wants to work together to solve its problems. Yet a slew of serious economic, government, business, political and environmental divisions threaten to strangle the region’s growth, which lags that of several peer metro areas since the recession.
Metro Atlanta, an amalgam of 150 cities spread across 29 counties, is something of a poster child for regional disharmony. Fulton County alone includes 14 cities. The city of Atlanta, with only 8 percent of the region’s 5.5 million people, doesn’t have the clout to unify the region.
“We have water, environmental, infrastructure and K-12 education issues — the same issues we’ve been dealing with for 30 years with no significant progress. None,” said A.D. Frazier, who has long straddled metro Atlanta’s business and political worlds. “The problems we have require visionary and long-range solutions. But we have atomized the metropolitan area, balkanized it.”
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Plus, a closer look at other cities where regionalism has — and hasn’t — worked.
Next week: How Denver strengthened its core with a regional approach.
For previous stories in the Atlanta Forward 2015 series, click here.
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