Fresh Loaf

The Atlanta Regional Commission yesterday said that metro Atlanta experienced its slowest year in growth since 1990. Between April 2008 and April 2009, only 24,700 people moved to the 10-county metro area. (That’s after years of averaging more than 77,000 new residents each year.)

Atlanta, which had seen an average of 7,400 residents flock to the city every year since 2000, added only 3,400 new residents.

“We’re definitely seeing the impact of the recession,” Mike Alexander, chief of ARC’s Research Division, said in a press release. “We experienced slower growth in all 10 counties and in the City of Atlanta. Even so, Atlanta continues to lead the region’s growth.”

There’s a little bit of good news, though, something that’ll at least put a smile on the faces of smart-growth aficionados and urban planners. The ARC last week voted to extend its award-winning Livable Centers Initiative program until 2012. Created in 1999, the program offers grants to local governments to plan and design walkable communities where once there had been just cars and congestion.

It was expected to run out of funds and go into limbo late last year, but the $3 million promise of cash means metro residents might have a better chance of seeing blasé suburbanscapes turned into enjoyable places once the economy recovers and development begins anew.

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A new AP report on census figures shows Atlanta is among the 25 fastest growing cities in the U.S.

The bureau found the population shifted from 520,368 persons in July 2007 to 537,958 in July 2008, about 3.4 percent.

We’re all so accustomed to gridlocked traffic and construction cranes that “Atlanta is growing” doesn’t seem like news.

It is.

Remember, despite the metro area’s half century of uninterrupted rapid growth, City of Atlanta lost population from the 1970s until the 1990s.

Also of noted: Last week the Atlanta Regional Commission released a report showing metro Atlanta is the second fastest-growing metro area in the country this decade after Dallas. By 2040, metro Atlanta is expected to be home to 8.3 million people.

Good thing local and state leaders are working so well together to meet our transportation and water needs.

(Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the 2000 U.S. Census showed a decline in Atlanta population from 1990. Here are the correct numbers.)

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The growth of the Atlanta metropolitan area is finally slowing. Not so for Atlanta proper, though. This is coming from the Atlanta Regional Commission.

First the bad news (or, depending on your opinion of sprawl, the good news):

The population of the 10-county region increased by 70,200 people between April 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008, the smallest increase since 2003 and 16 percent lower than the annual average increase of this decade.

Now, the part that really gets Gwinnett’s goat:

Despite the slowdown in the rest of the region, growth in the City of Atlanta remains robust with its largest single-year population gain in almost 40 years, up 13,100 people. The City’s annual growth also marks the first time in at least four decades that the City added more new residents than Gwinnett County.

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Georgia is on track to join an exclusive club, that of states with a majority population of racial minorities, according to the Afro-American Newspaper.

Only Hawaii, Texas, New Mexico, and California have majority-minority populations now. But, according to the paper, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2025, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Arizona, and Nevada are also expected to have less than 50 percent of their population as white.

Whereas growing Latino populations account for most of the nonwhite population in majority-minority states, blacks will be the primary minority in Georgia. Blacks currently make up 29.8% of the state’s population, according to the 2005 census.

Atlanta is already majority-minority, with 68.7% of its population as nonwhite or Hispanic, the Brookings Institute’s analysis of the 2000 census shows. The city attracts minorities because of its strong, diverse economy and reputation for international business, Brookings demographer William Frey reported.

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The metro area has now surpassed the 5 million mark in population, and Mayor Shirley Franklin giddily predicted it will eventually reach 8 million if we manage water resources and traffic smartly. Of course, Atlanta has never managed water or traffic well. And there’s no doubt we’re going to reach 8 million and not stop there.

Here’s the money quote from the AJC story:

It took 122 years from the founding of Atlanta for the area to reach 1 million people in 1959. The second million came 21 years later in 1980. The third million took 13 years, the fourth million seven years and the fifth million less than six years.

That’s scary. Using the mathematics, we’ll have the sixth million by 2013, the seventh million by 2017 and the eighth million by 2020. In other words, in less than 20 years, the metro area’s population will double from what it is today.

Sorry to be the spoilsport, but that’s too damned many people. It’s not a problem unique to Atlanta; the entire planet’s population has boomed to dangerous proportions in the past century.

Author and radio host Thom Hartmann has written eloquently about the planet’s population explosion and how it has served to deplete our natural resources in his book, Last Hours of Ancient Sunshine.

Look at our schools, our social services, our government agencies, our crime rate. Almost all of those significant problems can be directly traced to being overwhelmed by demand, and that demand is caused by too many people.

By all means, read Hartmann’s book. But be forewarned: It will change your world perspective.

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