Wowza: Scale Maps of Barcelona and Atlanta Show the Waste of Sprawl

diagram-barcelona

This graphic was created by Alain Bertaud, a senior researcher at NYU’s Stern Urbanization Project. He was formerly principal urban planner for the World Bank. Part of his work has focused on comparing densities of world cities.

In this stunning comparison of metro Atlanta and Barcelona, you can see that the two regions have almost the same population. Barcelona is actually a little bit bigger in that respect. They also have a roughly similar total length of rail transit: Barcelona has 99 miles of rail lines to Atlanta’s 74. But the living patterns couldn’t be more different. Atlantans are just way, way more spread out. In fact, the urbanized area of Atlanta is 26.5 times that of Barcelona. That has an enormous impact on the usefulness of the transit systems, Bertaud explains:

Urban densities are not trivial, they severely limit the transport mode choice and change only very slowly. Because of the large differences in densities between Atlanta and Barcelona about the same length of metro line is accessible to 60% of the population in Barcelona but only 4% in Atlanta. The low density of Atlanta render this city improper for rail transit.

Bertaud counts “accessible” as within one-third of a mile of a rail transit station.

Bertaud’s comparison focuses mainly on how low-density development affects one aspect of city life: the efficiency of transit. But there are many, many other ways Atlanta’s spread out nature produces waste, inefficiency, and high costs. Atlanta’s sprawling scale means it needs roads, utilities, and public services that cover 26.5 times as great an area as Barcelona’s public infrastructure and services do. And it means individual people must travel farther — at great personal and environmental expense — as they go about their daily lives.

h/t @joesarling and @m_clem.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Is Atlanta Done With Sprawl?

|
The sprawling-est city in the Southeast — Atlanta — is entering a whole new phase, according to a new report from Christopher Leinberger at the George Washington University School of Business. Since 2009, the bulk of for-profit development in the region has been located in walkable regional destinations that account for just 1 percent of region’s […]

State Farm Opts for Atlanta Transit Over Sprawl

|
It was a major coup for the Atlanta region when State Farm announced yesterday locate one of its three national hubs there, a move that will bring 3,000 new jobs over the next 10 years. But what really makes this news interesting is that State Farm chose to put its new campus right next to […]

Parking Madness: Detroit vs. Atlanta

|
Yesterday, Chicago’s United Center parking lots bested Denver’s Court Place parking crater in the first match-up of Parking Madness 2014. Today, two heavyweights are facing off: It’s the motor city versus sprawl city in a bare-knuckle brawl of car infrastructure run amok. Without further ado, here’s the Detroit entry. Warning: This could get ugly. This […]

Job Sprawl Leader Atlanta Shows Signs of Reversal

|
When it comes to job sprawl, few regions have been as gung-ho as Atlanta. During the 2000s, Atlanta area employers sprawled at twice the national average. At the end of that decade, only Detroit and Chicago had a greater share of jobs further away from downtown. Just one in 10 jobs in the Atlanta region […]

Paul Krugman Links Sprawl to Persistent Social Inequality

|
Is sprawl holding back social mobility in America? Paul Krugman didn’t mince words yesterday in a follow-up to a post he wrote soon after the Detroit bankruptcy was announced. In that initial blog post, he compared Detroit to Pittsburgh and concluded that it wasn’t just the loss of manufacturing jobs that hurt Detroit — it was […]