Metro ATL falls short of peers
The dirty, nasty, sometimes boring things I do on your behalf ….
For example, I’ve been curious about how the metro Atlanta economy is faring compared to its regional competitors. So I spent time this week crunching data, comparing the 28-county Atlanta metropolitan region to Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Nashville and Denver.
How well have those five metro regions recovered since the recession? Pretty well, in most cases.
Through the end of 2013, which is the most recent data we have, Denver’s economy was 9.6 percent larger than it was at its peak before the recession. Charlotte’s economy is now 8.4 percent larger than its pre-recession peak. The economies of both Nashville and Dallas Fort-Worth have grown 12.9 percent above their pre-recession peaks.
The outlier was metro Atlanta. Through 2013, the output of the 28-county Atlanta metro region was still slightly below its pre-recession peak. Zero growth in the last seven years.
The jobs numbers, up to date through April 2015, are even more stark.
- By late 2010, Nashville had recovered all of the jobs it had lost in the recession. It has since added 77,000 jobs above its pre-recession peak, a 9.5 percent increase.
- Dallas-Fort Worth has added 429,000 jobs since its pre-recession peak, an increase of 14 percent.
- Charlotte recovered all of its lost jobs four years ago, and is now 135,000 ahead of its pre-recession job peak, an increase of 13 percent.
- By March of 2012, Denver had recovered all of the jobs lost in the recession, and has since added another 110,000.
- As of April, the Atlanta metro region was still 5,000 jobs short of its peak in April 2008.
There are a lot of possible explanations, but I do know this much. Each of those metro regions has found a mechanism to address regional challenges such as transportation, and do so on a regional scale. They’ve found a means to work together. In Nashville, it’s the Middle Tennessee Regional Transportation Authority. In Denver, it’s the Regional Transportation District, with an elected board of directors that provides services such as running buses from an eight-county area directly to the Colorado Rockies downtown stadium.
Metro Atlanta, in contrast, is a lot better at dividing itself than uniting itself. The metro region comprises 28 counties and almost 150 cities. The central city of Atlanta, with less than 8 percent of the region’s population, is too small to serve as a political center of gravity. MARTA is confined to the two innermost counties (Clayton County recently joined as well), and is pointedly excluded from serving the new home of the Braves. And of course, new cities pop up faster than Republican presidential candidates.
Metro Atlanta also lacks a state government energized to seriously address regional urban issues. That’s just not their mindset. To the contrary, much of state government appears to treat the metro region with suspicion bordering on animosity, which explains why MARTA is the only major transit system in the country without regular state financial support.
We can’t think as a region, plan as a region, build as a region or act as a region. So I guess it should not come as a surprise that we also can’t compete as a region.
