Governing Magazine offers finest account of Atlanta’s gentrifying face and politics
June 30, 2008 at 12:56 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsWow.
Governing Magazine may not have the newsstand pop of US Weekly, ya scandal-lovin’ misanthropes, but it churns out some of the best content when it comes to policy issues facing metropolitan areas. This month’s article by staff writer Rob Gurwitt about Atlanta’s shifting demographics and its impact on politics is no exception.
From the piece:
There is really only one way to put it: Atlanta is becoming whiter, and at a pace that outstrips the rest of the nation. The white share of the city’s population, says Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, grew faster between 2000 and 2006 than that of any other U.S. city. It increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2006, a numeric gain of 26,000, more than double the increase between 1990 and 2000. The trend seems to be gathering strength with each passing year. Only Washington, D.C., saw a comparable increase in white population share during those years, although several other big cities are starting to see it now.
This development is occurring at the same time that race and ethnicity are driving changes every bit as fundamental in Atlanta’s suburbs. For if the city itself is growing whiter, the Atlanta region is growing less white. The Atlanta Regional Commission reports that in 2000, the white, non-Hispanic population of the 20-county Atlanta metro region formed 60 percent of the total population; by 2006, that had shrunk to 54 percent, not so much because whites were leaving — although four counties did see absolute declines in white numbers — but because of the arrival in the suburbs of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Africans and Caribbeans. Of the 10 counties in the nation with the largest declines in white percentage of the population from 2000 to 2006, six are in the suburbs of Atlanta.
Gurwitt interviews a variety of voices and manages to encapsulate the realities of the situation. He also weighs in on the changing face of Atlanta’s suburbs and how minorities and low-income residents are flocking there for cheap housing. And in turn, changing the face of the once lily-white communities.
He also notes that the state Legislature failed to pass a transportation funding strategy that would’ve allowed regions to levy a sales tax for people-moving projects. Now that a gallon of gas costs as much as a Happy Meal, the state should reexamine the idea. It’s never too late to act, right? Eh? This thing on, lawmakers?
June 30th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Good article. Thanks for the link.
One thing that puzzled me about the article (and this is small stuff, I admit) was that the author seemed to be appalled that some (white) residents put up a fence around a pool. Here’s the quote:
“In the Old Fourth Ward, for instance, a group of white friends from the suburbs bought up a corner house and those next to it, built a swimming pool on their adjoining lots, and then fenced the whole thing off — making it clear to a neighborhood long accustomed to the casual intimacies of close-knit living that they wanted nothing to do with it.”
I am pretty sure a fence around a pool is a legal necessity, to prevent kids who can’t swim from wandering by and jumping in. And if it’s not a legal necessity, there’s no doubt that it’s an insurance necessity. Name me one pool anywhere in the USA that doesn’t have a fence around it.
And, Thomas, may I obnoxiously urge you to drop from your writing such dumb terms as “lily-white” when white would do just as well? Using such cliches is a coal-black mark on your work.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Good point, Whitey.
Re: “lily-white.” Not an obnoxious request at all, my good man/woman. I have a soft spot in my heart for the word. It makes me think of guys with sweaters draped over their shoulders holding wooden tennis racquets. I was never one of those guys.
I just looked up lily-white’s alternate definitions. One means “excluding black people,” which is not what I wanted to convey in that sentence.