In 1975, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), the designated metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for Atlanta, Georgia, adopted a new regional development plan (RDP) for the seven counties that comprised the metropolitan area. During the process of writing the plan, ARC staff adapted a large-scale urban model to produce a set of region-wide population, employment, and land-use projections, for a 30-year horizon (1970—2000). The development policies ARC ultimately adopted encouraged the building of a vast, low-density landscape, exactly as the model predicted. A number of participants argued that the model had distorted the process by privileging policies that closely matched its projections of sprawling growth. Yet in spite of its trouble, the model helped ARC establish its legitimacy as a powerful force in the development of metropolitan Atlanta. An examination of the process of writing the 1975 RDP provides a case example of the role of planning technologies in shaping regional planning discourse in the latter part of the twentieth century.
For background reports on the early efforts of regional planners to utilize urban models, see two special issues of the Journal of the American Institute of Planners devoted to urban models: Volume 25, no. 2 (1959) and Volume 21, no. 1 (1965). For an early comparison of several leading urban models, including EMPIRIC, see Ira Lowry, ‘‘Seven Models of Urban Development: A Structural Comparison,’’ (paper presented to the National Research Council Highway Research Board, Conference on Urban Development Models, Hanover, NH, June, 1967). The difficulty of using large-scale models like the EMPIRIC model that ARC adapted for the 1975 RDP was aptly described by the USDOT in the 1970s: ‘‘The effective calibration and application of EMPIRIC requires a significant degree of familiarity with both the development process, and particularly with the fundamental principles of econometric techniques. The model can very easily be misapplied.’’ See U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 66.
2.
For one of the few examinations of specific cases of how and why models were adopted, see Howard Pack and Janet Pack, ‘‘Urban Land Use Models: The Determinants of Adoption and Use,’’ Policy Sciences 8, no. 1 (1977). For a quick overview of some of the issues and consequences of large-scale urban models over the years, see Sheryl Burling-Wolf and Jiangua Wu, ‘‘Modeling Urban Landscape Dynamics: A Review,’’ Ecological Research 19, no. 1 (2004); Michael Iacono, David Levinson, and Ahmed El-Geneidy, ‘‘Models of Transportation and Land Use Change: A Guide to the Territory,’’ Journal of Planning Literature 22, no. 4 (2008); Richard Klosterman, ‘‘An Introduction to the Literature on Large-Scale Urban Models,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994). The accuracy of projection techniques used in planning models has been studied independently. For examples of this scholarship, see Andrew Isserman ‘‘The Accuracy of Population Projections for Subcounty Areas,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 43 (1977); ‘‘Projection, Forecast, and Plan: On the Future of Population Forecasting,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 50, no. 2 (1984); ‘‘The Right People, The Right Rates,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 59 no. 1 (1993); Steve Murdock, Rita Hamm, Paul Voss, Darrell Fanin, and Beverly Pecotte, ‘‘Evaluating Small Area Population Projections,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 57 no. 4 (1991); Dowell Myers and Alicia Kitsuse, ‘‘Constructing the Future in Planning,’’ Journal of Planning Education and Research 19, no. 3 (2000); Jeff Tayman, ‘‘The Accuracy of Small Area Population Forecasts Based on a Spatial-Interaction Land Use Modeling System,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 62, no. 1 (1996). More recently projection models have been examined in conjunction with studies of the politics of major infrastructure projects. See Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, Mega-Projects: the Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, Washington, DC (2003); Bent Flyvberg, Nils Bruzelis, and Werner Rothengatter, Megaprojects and Risk: an Anatomy of Ambition, New York (2003).
3.
The role of regional planning agencies in the late 1960s and 1970s has been described but remains only partially explored. For a few general examples, see Robert Fishman, ‘‘The Metropolitan Tradition in American Planning,’’ and Margaret Weir, ‘‘Planning Environmentalism and Urban Poverty: The Political Failure of National Land-Use Planning Legislation, 1970-1975,’’ both chapters in The American Planning Tradition, edited by Robert Fishman (Washington, DC: Brookings Press, 2000). Scholars have recently begun to explore how federal interest in regional solutions for urban problems evolved in the 1960s and early 1970s. See Wendall Pritchett, ‘‘Which Urban Crisis? Regionalism, Race, and Urban Policy 1960-1974,’’ Journal of Urban History 34, no. 2 (2008). Yet the issue of how regional planning agencies operated during this obviously critical period, how they managed their position between scales of government remains largely unknown.
4.
Atlanta Regional Commission (hereafter ARC), ‘‘Memorandum from Bart Lewis to Connie Blackmon,’’ September 1984, Atlanta Regional Commission Collection, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center (hereafter ARCC, KRC, AHC).
5.
Writing about the growth of Atlanta has followed relatively consistent themes of boosterism and race, but the role of regional planning has not been well explored. For examples of Atlanta’s history, see Ronald Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta, New York (1996) and ‘‘Roads to Racial Segregation: Atlanta in the Twentieth Century,’’ Journal of Urban History, 15, no. 1, 1988; Robert Bullard, Glenn Johnson, and Angel Torres, editors, Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta, Washington, DC (2000); Larry Keating, Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion, Philadelphia (2001); Kevin Kruse, White Flight, Princeton, New Jersey (2005); Charles Ruthheiser, Imagineering Atlanta, New York (1996); Dana White and Tim Crimmins, ‘‘How Atlanta Grew: Cool Heads, Hot Air, and Hard Work,’’ Atlanta Economic Review, January/February, 1978.
6.
The power ARC derived from the federal government enabled the Commission to influence the major infrastructure investments that gave shape to Atlanta’s physical footprint. ARC’s power supports the idea that the American federal state has been much stronger than typically acknowledged. See William Novak, ‘‘The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,’’ American Historical Review (June, 2008). The phrase ‘‘selffulfilling prophesy’’ was captured by Robert Merton, ‘‘The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy,’’ Antioch Review (1948).
7.
As the 1960s drew to a close, Federal interest in the practices and policies related to urban and suburban development was reaching a crescendo. Waves of new regulations designed to address the growing environmental movement found support in the halls of Congress and the White House, transportation infrastructure funding was bolstered to ensure completion of the Interstate Highway System and to help plan and build new mass transit systems, and laws to address social and economic inequality were enacted. Scholarship addressing this period is extensive, but research focusing specifically on the events behind the expansion of environmental and transportation policy and infrastructure is small. For a critique of the lack of attention by historians to environmental policy, see Ted Steinberg, ‘‘Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History,’’ The American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002). For a few examples of existing work in the subfield of U.S. environmental history, see Samuel Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986); Samuel Hays, A History of Environmental Politics Since 1945 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hal Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1998). For greater detail on the Congressional history of water pollution legislation, see Paul Milazzo, Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945-1972 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006). For interpretation and explanation of different aspects of federal air quality regulations post-1945 as they relate to planning and development, see David Currie, ‘‘The Mobile-Source Provisions of the Clean Air Act,’’ The University of Chicago Law Review 46, no. 4 (1979); Michael Kraft, Environmental Policy and Politics (New York: Longman Press, 2001), Ch. 2; R. Shep Melnick, Regulation and the Courts: the Case of the Clean Air Act (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), Ch. 2; Brian Stone, ‘‘Air Quality by Design: Harnessing the Clean Air Act to Manage Metropolitan Growth,’’ Journal of Planning Education and Research 23, no. 2 (2003). Details about the history of transportation policy (and its affects on the built environment) have been more widely reported. Example works include, Owen Gutfreund, Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape (New York: Oxford University, 2004); Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), Ch. 2, 9, 14; Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (New York: Viking, 1997); Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (New York: Columbia University, 1997); Bruce Seely, Building the American Highway System: Engineers and Policy Makers (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1987); Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States: An Historical Overview (Washington, DC: Greenwood Publishing, 1999).
A key, but often overlooked, indicator of the emerging regional emphasis in federal policy was the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968. Signed into law at the end of Lyndon Johnson’s second term, the act was designed to channel the growing number of urban-oriented federal funding programs through a regional review process in hopes of bolstering the level of coordination between local governments. Circular A-95, issued by the Office of Management and Budget in early 1969, spelled out the intentions and requirements of the act, which effectively directed regional planning agencies to review all local government applications for federal funds for transportation (highways, transit) and environmental (wastewater treatment) infrastructure. For details, see Office of Management and Budget, Circular No. A-95: What It Is-How It Works (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976). Early criticism of the A-95 program’s effectiveness came in the form of the Task Force on Land Use and Urban Growth’s 1973 report, The Use of Land. See Task Fore on Land Use and Urban Growth, The Use of Land: A Citizen’s Policy Guide to Urban Growth (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1973).
10.
Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, ‘‘Metropolitan Area Planning and Development Commissions Created’’ (1971).
11.
The history of public regional planning agencies has been outlined, but not covered in great depth. Examples of existing research include, U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitan Councils of Government (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966); U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Regional Decision Making: New Strategies for Substate Districts Volume I (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973); U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Toward More Balanced Transportation: New Intergovernmental Proposals (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974); Bruce McDowell, ‘‘Substate Regionalism Matures Gradually,’’ Intergovernmental Perspective 6 (1980); and Mark Solof, History of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (Newark, NJ: New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, 1998). After the passage of Intermodal Surface Transportation Equity Act (ISTEA) in 1991, the duties of regional planning agencies were substantially reshuffled. For details, see Robert Gage and Bruce McDowell, ‘‘ISTEA and the Role of MPOs in the New Transportation Environment: A Midterm Assessment,’’ Publius: the Journal of Federalism 25, no. 3 (1995); and Judith Innes and Judith Gruber, Bay Area Transportation Decision Making in the Wake of ISTEA: Planning Style in Conflict at the Metropolitan Planning Commission (Berkeley, CA: University of California Transportation Center, 2001). Criticism of regional planning agencies has come from several directions but has focused most intensely on exposing bias (racial, economic, geographic, and transport mode) within the political leadership of the agencies. For examples, see Paul Lewis, ‘‘Regionalism and Representation: Measuring and Assessing Representation in Metropolitan Planning Organizations,’’ Urban Affairs Review 33, no. 6 (1998); Arthur Nelson, Tom Sanchez, James Wolf, and Mary Beth Farquhar ‘‘Metropolitan Planning Organization Voting Structure and Transit Investment Bias: Preliminary Analysis with Social Equity Implications,’’ Transportation Research Record 1895 (2004); and Thomas Sanchez, ‘‘An Inherent Bias? Geographic and Racial-Ethnic Patterns of Metropolitan Planning Organization Boards,’’ The Brookings Institution Series on Transportation Reform (January, 2006)
12.
One of the other issues in which ARC had been involved was managing development along the Chattahoochee River. The Chattahoochee River Corridor Plan adopted by the Commission in 1972, and the Metropolitan River Protection Act passed by the General Assembly in 1973, had brought a 48-mile stretch of the river directly under ARC’s administrative control. Development projects proposed within a 1,000-foot buffer on either side of the river were required to be reviewed and approved by ARC before land-disturbing permits could be issued. See ARC, Chattahoochee Corridor Plan, 1972, ARCC, KRC, AHC; Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia ‘‘Metropolitan River Protection Act’’ (1973)
13.
The local political climate presented a challenge at times. Although ARC benefitted from a legacy of state support for publicly funded regional planning, the fact of its existence had not escaped public debate. As the legislation that would establish the Commission wound its way through the General Assembly, a handful of legislators, county commissions and a few vocal citizens raised questions about the legality of a dramatically expanded regional agency. Under Georgia law, they asked, did such an agency have a constitutional right to exist? More critically, was the agency a super-government that would supplant locally elected commissions? A few even asked if ARC was a toehold in an effort to introduce a Marxist government? Although both daily papers, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution, supported the creation of ARC, their writers consistently referred to the new agency as an umbrella government, an awkward choice of phrase that likely exacerbated local suspicion. ARC duly paid lip service to the accusations to alleviate fears but carried on with its duties. See Atlanta Constitution, ‘‘A View From Atlanta-in-Dekalb,’’ January 18, 1970; Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution, ‘‘And Now an Umbrella,’’ February 1, 1970; Atlanta Journal, ‘‘Regional Council: 3 Views,’’ January 2, 1971; Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution, ‘‘Atlanta ‘Umbrella’ to Spread?’’ February 7, 1971; Atlanta Constitution, ‘‘Cobb Residents Tear Into ARC at Hearing,’’ February 8, 1973
14.
This largely reflected procedural recommendations included in a 1967 report by the American Society of Planning Officials (APSO) that had laid out a strategy for reformulating Atlanta’s regional planning agency. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, ‘‘Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission’’ (1971)
ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
17.
ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 20, ARCC, KRC, AHC. Other North American cities that adopted EMPIRIC for regional modeling included Boston, Washington, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Winnipeg, and Toronto. See U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 55.
18.
A good example of the differences in the way soft infrastructure like land-use and hard infrastructure like highways were debated in the planning process can be found in the ARC, Staff Recommendations Report-Regional Development Plan, 1975, 3-25, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
19.
The major environmental policies included restricting development in flood plains, in areas where the water table was high, in areas with hard sub-surface rock, on steep slopes, and soils where the shrink-swell rate was high. The major transportation policies advocated for road improvements, downtown accessibility, rapid rail and bus infrastructure, bicycle facilities, and transportation for the elderly. See ARC, Regional Development Plan of Metropolitan Atlanta, 1975, 11-13, ARCC, KRC, AHC. Several of the policy areas ARC included in the RDP were there because of the influence of the American Law Institute’s model land-use code published in 1974. See American Law Institute, A Model Land Development Code (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1974).
20.
Projections are usually defined as mere extrapolations of past trends, whether linear or exponential. They do not take into account external factors, like migration rates, or attempt to account for contextual nuance. Projections are considered simplistic and formulaic. Forecasts, however, do account for contextual nuance, moving from the basic information provided in a projection to a more sustained consideration of likely future scenarios. Forecasts often utilize data from different sources to enhance accuracy and plausibility. Because of this, they are considered more sophisticated. But small area projections and forecasts, the kind used in a regional planning process, both possess well-documented problems with accuracy. The smaller the geographic area, the more difficult it is to use published rates of change derived from national data to measure in migration and out migration, births, and deaths. Accordingly, most research has tended to study projections and forecasting for accuracy and performance. But whether defined as projections or forecasts, their role in the planning process tends to be similar. In fact, in practice, the terms often have been interchanged. While the inaccuracy of small area forecasts and projections need not be problematic for planning, because they have come to occupy a significant place, in the process of producing plans their accuracy (real or perceived) has become important. Forecasts are subject to political manipulation, particularly by powerful actors interested in using the projections for their own gain. Yet research on this problem has been limited to overviews and theoretical generalizations; detailed case studies of the ways projections operate are virtually nonexistent. And investigations of how projections and forecasts are positioned in a concrete case of a planning process are lacking. See Dowell Myers and Alicia Kitsuse, ‘‘Constructing the Future in Planning’’, Journal of Planning Education and Research 19, no. 3 (2000).
21.
Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 1.
22.
For a contemporary discussion of the features and merits of urban models, see Britton Harris, ‘‘New Tools For Planning,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 2 (1965); Alan Vorhees, ‘‘The Nature and Uses of Models in City Planning,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 25, no. 2 (1959); Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975) Ch. 1. For a description of the grandfather of large-scale urban models, see Alan Black, ‘‘The Chicago Area Transportation Study: A Case Study of Rational Planning’’ Journal of Planning Education and Research 10, no. 1 (1990).
23.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, p. i, ARCC, KRC, AHC. The EMPIRIC model was originally developed by Traffic Research Corporation, which was acquired by Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company. Peat, Marwick, Mitchell eventually became the global accounting firm, KPMG.
24.
For a discussion of the persistence of the rational model and its expression in popular urban models, see Michael Batty, ‘‘A Chronicle of Scientific Planning’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994). In terms of the education of planners, standard planning textbooks of the period included, Mary Maclean, Local Planning Administration (Chicago: International City Managers Association, 1959); F. Stuart Chapin, Urban Land Use Planning (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1965); Kevin Lynch, Site Planning (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960). All presented the rational-comprehensive plan as the standard. The most rigorous critique of the rational planning process was Alan Altshuler’s The City Planning Process (Ithaca, NY, 1965). Of course, much more famous is Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1969) and Paul Davidoff, ‘‘Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 4 (1965), though both lack the depth of Altshuler’s work.
25.
Richard Klosterman, Community Analysis and Planning Techniques (Savage, MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 1990 ), p. xv.
26.
Identifying what could be called typical planning goals during the early 1970s is difficult. One approach is that taken by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1961). She noted a number of characteristics of good urban places, anchored by dense and diverse neighborhoods, which found resonance among young planners. Another, somewhat contrasting vision emerged in Ian McHarg’s Design With Nature (New York: Garden City, 1969). McHarg’s ideas were based on regional ecological carrying capacity and tended to use highly technical methods of analysis. Either way, the general goals associated with good planning at the time (mass transit, environmental protection, compact development) were both at odds with the brute projections of the model and in sync with the model’s technical and scientific character. And the model’s fairly strict reliance on data and quantitative analysis conflicted with the loose style of political horse trading that had long characterized Georgia’s local political establishment.
27.
For a broad discussion of the tradition of policy analysis in planning, see John Friedmann, Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), Ch. 4.
28.
The accuracy of projections used in planning has been studied independently and more recently in conjunction with the politics of major infrastructure projects. For examples of this scholarship, see Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, Mega-Projects: the Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Bent Flyvberg, Nils Bruzelis, and Werner Rothengatter, Megaprojects and Risk: an Anatomy of Ambition; Andrew Isserman ‘‘The Accuracy of Population Projections for Subcounty Areas,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 43, no. 3 (1977); ‘‘Projection, Forecast, and Plan: On the Future of Population Forecasting,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 50, no. 2 (1984); ‘‘The Right People, The Right Rates,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 59, no. 1 (1993); Steve Murdock, Rita Hamm, Paul Voss, Darrell Fanin, and Beverly Pecotte, ‘‘Evaluating Small Area Population Projections,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 57, no. 4 (1991); Jeff Tayman, ‘‘The Accuracy of Small Area Population Forecasts Based on a Spatial-Interaction Land Use Modeling System,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 62, no. 1 (1996).
29.
The history of large-scale urban models begins with the entry of computers into planning practice in the 1950s, when models were used to allocate population, transportation, and land use within sub-metropolitan areas. The most famous of these was the Chicago Area Transportation Study that began in 1955, which set a standard for metropolitan-level allocation models. See Alan Black, ‘‘The Chicago Area Transportation Study: A Case Study of Regional Planning,’’ Journal of Planning Education and Research 10, no. 1 (1990). For a general overview of these early models, see Alan Voorhees, ‘‘Land Use and Traffic Models: A Progress Report,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 25 (1959); Britton Harris, ‘‘Urban Development Models: New Tools for Planning,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 2 (1965); Highway Research Board, Urban Development Models: Proceedings of a Conference (Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1968); Douglas Lee, ‘‘Requiem for Large-Scale Models,’’ Journal of the American Institute of Planners 39 (1973); Peter Stopher and Arnim Meyburg, Urban Transportation Modeling and Planning (New York: Lexington Books, 1975). A more recent appraisal of urban models can be found in a special issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. Among the articles in the issue are Michael Batty, ‘‘A Chronicle of Scientific Planning: The Anglo-American Modeling Experience,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association (1994); Britton Harris, ‘‘The Real Issues Concerning Lee’s Requiem,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994); Richard Klosterman, ‘‘Large-Scale Urban Models: Twenty Years Later,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994); Richard Klosterman, ‘‘An Introduction to the Literature on Large-Scale Urban Models,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994).
30.
On the issue of quantitative methods and policy analysis in planning, see John Friedmann, Planning the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1987), Ch. 4.
31.
ARC, ‘‘ARC Working Paper: Development of a Data Inventory Reference System and Regional Information System Design,’’ December 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
32.
ARC, The Atlanta Region: Framework for the Future, 1975, 2, ARCC, KRC, AHC .
33.
Metropolitan Planning Commission, ‘‘Transportation Policy Project, Reports 1-4,’’ 1956, ARCC, KRC, AHC. The phrase ‘‘a continuous planning process’’ would reappear again and again during the 1975 RDP process. For more details about urban models, see the selection of articles in a published symposium on such large-scale models published in the Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994).
34.
Atlanta Regional Metropolitan Planning Commission, Atlanta Silhouettes: People, Jobs, and Land, 1962, From Mule to Marta Collection, MSS 619, KRC, AHC; Metropolitan Planning Commission, Up . . . Ahead, 1952, ARCC, KRC, AHC; Metropolitan Planning Commission, Now ... Forever, 1954, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
35.
The EMPIRIC urban model was well traveled among regional planning agencies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. First developed in 1963 for use in the Eastern Massachusetts Regional Planning Project, EMPIRIC was applied in a number of different cities over the next decade. In short, the model was designed to (1) allocate regional projections of population, employment, and land use; (2) assess the impact of planning policies on the distribution of growth; (3) help evaluate policy decisions. A simultaneous equation module sits at the center of the model. For a detailed description of the model, see U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 55-66.
36.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, vII-30, ARCC , KRC, AHC.
37.
‘‘ARC Forecasters Pose Questions,’’ The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, October, 28, 1973, E1.
38.
In 1970, only part of the Atlanta metro area had been divided into census tracts and/or traffic analysis zones, which limited the amount of historical data that could be input into the EMPIRIC model. After the 1970 Census, ARC was contracted by the Office of Management and Budget to help establish future census tract boundaries in metropolitan Atlanta. See ARC, ‘‘1974 Action Program Element Summary Descriptions,’’ 1974, ARCC, KRC, AHC. In the early 1980s, in a series of memos reflecting on how input data for EMPIRIC had been selected, ARC staff noted that 1961 and 1970 had been picked as baseline years for the model because of limited data, particularly information about land use. Lack of good data introduced an additional source of error into the model. See ARC, ‘‘Memorandum from Bart Lewis to Connie Blackmon, December 31, 1982, Regarding: Need to recalibrate EMPIRIC,’’ 3, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
39.
The share of growth projection technique involves comparing population or employment change in a small area to a larger, reference area. If the small area (e.g., census tract) comprised a small share of the total population of the reference area (e.g., county or state) in the past, that small share would remain constant while being projected into the future. Thus, the model consistently predicted that areas with a small share at the beginning of the projection period would have a small share at the end of the projection horizon. For a more detailed explanation of how share of growth is calculated, see Stanley Smith, Jeff Tayman, and David Swanson, State and Local Population Projections: Methodology and Analysis (New York: Kluwer, 2001), Ch. 8.
40.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, ARCC, KRC, AHS; ARC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975, ARCC, KHC, AHC.
41.
ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 17, ARCC, KRC, AHC .
42.
The decision to bundle development policies set limitations on the number of possible outcomes of the modeling process, even before the process got started. Decisions about which policies to include in each bundle were the result of collaboration by staff and the board.
43.
ARC, Development and Initial Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975, VII-17, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
44.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, ARCC, KRC, AHC; U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning, 61.
45.
‘‘The ‘trend-based’ approach of the model is commonly recognized. One resulting problem is the difficulty in representing a situation that is not supported by adequate historical data.’’ U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning, 65.
46.
ARC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975 , VII-30, ARCC , KRC, AHC.
47.
ARC staff only fully acknowledged EMPIRIC’s error when the process to update the 1975 RDP begin in the early 1980s. See ARCC, ‘‘Memorandum from Bart Lewis to Connie Blackmon, December 31, 1982, Regarding 1980 EMPIRC forecast errors,’’ 1. See also ARC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975, II-6, IV-22, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, Regional Development Plan Small Area Forecast, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
48.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, The Atlanta Region: Framework for the Future, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC. The first EMPIRIC projections were released in early 1975. See ARCC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975.
49.
ARC, Study Design for Development and Application of EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model, 1972, VII-29, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
50.
In fact, EMPIRIC, by design, did not have a ‘‘strong, unique theoretical foundation,’’ which put a ‘‘heavy burden on the ability of the analyst to develop his own conceptual structure and to translate into a set of meaningful, valid statistical relationships.’’ U.S. Department of Transportation, An Introduction To Urban Development Models and Guidelines For Their Use in Urban Transportation Planning, 66.
51.
ARC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 8, 26, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
52.
ARC, Trends in Land Use Planning Law for the Atlanta Region, June 1976, ARCC , KRC, AHC.
53.
ARC, The Atlanta Region: Framework for the Future, 1975, 5, ARCC, KRC, AHC
54.
John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: the Political Economy of Place (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1987) 50.
55.
Growth has been at the center of controversy about planning since at least the early nineteenth century. For instance, Ebenzer Howard’s influential garden city idea was a response to urban growth and deteriorating living conditions in industrial-era London. Into the twentieth century, planning in the Western world has been valued (and despised) for its ability to simultaneously encourage and control growth. For an overview of this relationship and some of its intricacies, see Robert Fishman, editor, The American Planning Tradition (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000) and Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the 20th Century (New York: Blackwell, 2002). One might be inclined to go back to Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow (London: Sonnenschein, 1902) to see how growth was conceptualized as a necessary pre-condition for the realization of garden city.
56.
Among the well-known participants in the New York plan were Clarence Perry, Thomas Adams, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., Robert Murray Haig, and Edward Bassett. For finer details about the plan and the process behind its production, see David Johnson, Planning the Great Metropolis: The 1929 Plan of New York and Its Environs (New York: Taylor & Francis1995).
57.
The history of regional planning in the United States has been covered by a number of authors. Among the major contributions are Roy Lubove, Community Planning in the 1920s: the Contribution of the Regional Planning Association of America (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963); Carl Sussman, ed., Planning the Fourth Migration: The Neglected Vision of the Regional Planning Association of America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976); John Friedmann and Clyde Weaver, Territory and Function: the Evolution of Regional Planning (Berkeley: University of California, 1979); Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the 20th Century (New York: Blackwell, 1988); Bruce Katz, ed., Reflections on Regionalism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2000); Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration: a Philosophy of Regional Planning (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Donald Miller, ed., The Lewis Mumford Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1986); Robert Fishman, ed., The American Planning Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Robert Fishman, ‘‘The Fifth Migration,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 74, no. 4 (2005). Less public attempts at regional planning included the work of Thomas Harrison Reed in the 1930s. A political scientist by training, Reed wrote about metropolitan governance and advocated for the establishment of regional planning agencies in the U.S. cities. As a consultant, Reed also authored a number of reports analyzing specific cities, Atlanta being one of them. See Thomas Reed, Municipal Government in the United States (New York: The Century Company, 1926). Mumford’s writings are vast, but good introductions to his ideas about regionalism include, Lewis Mumford, ‘‘The Ideal Form of the Modern City,’’ in The Lewis Mumford Reader, ed. Donald Miller (New York: Pantheon, 1986 [1952]). Publishing only one major work in his lifetime, Ebenezer Howard was more succinct. Patrick Geddes was more prolific, but to see his most durable contribution, see City Development: A Study of Parks, Gardens, and Culture-Institutes, a Report to the Carnegie Dumferline Trust.
58.
See Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett, Plan of Chicago ( New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993).
59.
Richard Flanagan , ‘‘The Housing Act of 1954: The Sea Change in National Urban Policy,’’Urban Affairs Review33, no. 2 ( 1997).
60.
In order to implement the 1962 Federal-aid Highway Act, the Bureau of Public Roads developed a program nick-named ‘3C’: ‘continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive.’ The program was designed to encourage metropolitan planning organizations to connect transportation plans to land-use and economic issues. See Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States: An Historical Overview (Washington, DC: Greenwood Publishing, 1999) 50.
61.
Major federal legislation with regional planning implications included: 1964 Highway Act, 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1966 Historic Preservation Act, 1966 Metropolitan Development Act, 1968 Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, 1969 NEPA, 1970 Clean Air Act Amendment revisions, and 1972 Clean Water Act.
62.
See Cliff Ellis, ‘‘Interstate Highways, Regional Planning, and the Reshaping of Metropolitan America,’’ Planning Practice and Research 16, no. 3/4 (2001); Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Samuel Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); John Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Official Code of Georgia, 50-32-11, 1971; Yale Rabin, ‘‘Federal Urban Transportation Policy and the Highway Planning Process in Metropolitan Areas,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 451 (1980).
63.
Atlanta Regional Commission, Annual Report, 1972, 9, 17, 22, ARCC, KRC, AHC. Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, ‘‘Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission’’ (1971)
64.
ARC, Development and Application of the EMPIRIC Activity Allocation Model for the Atlanta Region, 1975, V-5, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
65.
ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 26, ARCC, KRC, AHC .
66.
ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 47, ARCC, KRC, AHC .
67.
That the RDP presented water quality as an important issue reflected Governor Jimmy Carter’s push to make environmental management a higher state priority as well as the looming implementation of the federal Clean Water Act, which made cleaning up surface water a high federal priority. See Journal of the Senate of the State of Georgia, ‘‘Inaugural Address by James Carter,’’ January 12, 1971; Peter Rogers, America’s Water: Federal Roles and Responsibilities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Milazzo, Unlikely Environmentalists, Ch. 8.
68.
ARC, Staff Recommendations Report: Regional Development Plan, June 1975, 3-9, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, Regional Development Plan, 1975, 20, 36, ARCC, KRC, AHC. For an extended discussion of the history of the post-World War II environmental movement, see Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside.
69.
ARC, The Atlanta Region: Framework for the Future, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
70.
For an interesting contribution to the discussion of the role of population projections in planning and public policy see Martin Wachs, ‘‘Ethical Dilemmas in Forecasting for Public Policy,’’ Public Management Forum (November/December 1982); see also Andrejs Skaburskis and Michael Teitz, ‘‘Forecasts and Outcomes,’’ Planning Theory and Practice 4, no. 4 (2003).
71.
Arcc, ‘‘ARC Board Meeting Minutes, December 13, 1972,’’3.
72.
ARC, ‘‘Letter to ARC from Atlanta Chapter American Institute of Architects, September 8, 1975,’’ ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Georgia Conservancy Statement Regarding the Proposed ARC Regional Development Plan,’’ September 3, 1975, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Letter from Virginia Taylor to Harry West, July 25, 1974,’’ ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Letter from Virginia Taylor to L.D. Lacy, May 31, 1974,’’ ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Board Meeting Minutes, January 13, 1975,’’ ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Board Meeting Minutes, January 13, 1975,’’ ARCC, KRC, AHC.
73.
ARC, ‘‘Memorandum to Community Development Advisory Council, Atlanta Regional Commission from Thomas D. Hills, June 5, 1975,’’ARCC, KRC, AHC
74.
‘‘Chief Defends ARC’s Population Estimates,’’The Atlanta Constitution, June 30, 1978 , 1C.
75.
Regional population projections were required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the aegis of Section 208 of the 1972 Clean Water Act. As the designated regional planning agency for metropolitan Atlanta, ARC was responsible for producing the projections. Caution Collection, Box 51, Emory University Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library, ‘‘Memorandum to Members of the Atlanta Regional Commission Executive Committee, October 19, 1977’’
76.
ARC, ‘‘Memorandum from Bart Lewis to Connie Blackmon, December 31, 1982, Regarding Need to Recalibrate EMPIRIC,’’3, ARCC, KRC, AHC .
77.
ARC, ‘‘Area Development Plan for the Atlanta Region: 1981-1982,’’ 1981, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, ‘‘Briefing on New Forecasts for the Atlanta Region, 1990, 2000, 2010,’’ 1983, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, Final Technical Report: Atlanta Region Forecasts, 1983, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
78.
The process of regional planning in Atlanta, and throughout Georgia, changed after the Georgia Planning Act was signed into law in 1989. Overnight, the state mandated a more bottom-up approach to regional planning. The new regulations, along with mandates included in 1991’s Federal ISTEA program, required ARC to dramatically increase the level of public participation in the process. See Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, ‘‘State-Wide Planning and Development - Governor’s Development Council Created; Regional Development Centers; Local Governments; Department of Community Affairs; Department of Natural Resources; Powers and Duties’’ (1989); Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, Public Law 102-240, 102nd Congress, 1st session (December 18, 1991); ARC, ‘‘A Community’s Vision Takes Flight: Vision 2020: Key Initiatives for the Future,’’ 1995, ARCC, KRC, AHC. Later RDPs are in many ways even more closely linked to federal transportation policy than ever before. When Congress passed the ISTEA in 1991, the formula for receiving federal transportation funding changed rather significantly. Regional planning agencies were given new power and authority to plan.
79.
ARC, ‘‘Memorandum from Bart Lewis to Connie Blackmon,’’ September 1984, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
80.
Federal programs that required projections as part of awarding funds included the Federal-aid Highway Act of 1962, Urban Mass Transit Act of 1964, Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, and Clean Water Act of 1972.
81.
The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, ‘‘ARC Forecasters Pose Questions,’’ October 28, 1973
82.
Atlanta Region Metropolitan Planning Commission , ‘‘Regional Planning for Metropolitan Atlanta: A Fresh Start,’’ March 1971, ARCC, KRC, AHC.
83.
As Richard Klosterman noted in 1994, ‘‘large-scale urban models are likely to be much more important for future planning practice than they have been in the past twenty years .... The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 both require a consideration of the long range effect of land use-transportation interactions that only large-scale urban models can provide.’’ See Richard Klosterman, Large Scale Urban Models: Retrospect and Prospect,’’ Journal of the American Planning Association 60, no. 1 (1994) 5.
84.
Tom Sanchez, ‘‘An Inherent Bias? Geographic and Racial-Ethnic Patterns of Metropolitan Planning Organization Boards,’’ The Brookings Institution Series of Transportation Reform (January, 2006); Arthur Nelson, Thomas Sanchez, James Wolf, Mary Beth Farquhar, ‘‘Metropolitan Planning Organization Voting Structure and Transit Investment Bias: Preliminary Analysis with Social Equity Implications,’’ Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1895 (2004)
85.
Anthony Downs, ‘‘Urban Realities: Some Controversial Aspects of the Atlanta Region’s Future,’’ The Brookings Review 12, no. 3 (1994). For a brief introduction to the idea of intra-regional competition driving uncoordinated local decision making, see also Drew Whitelegg, ‘‘A battle on two fronts: competitive urges ‘inside’ Atlanta,’’ Area 34, no. 2 (2002).
86.
A summary of the Atlanta Regional Commission and its duties, as well as a discussion of different strategies for dealing with regional issues can be found in Arthur Nelson, ‘‘Options for Regional Decision Making in Metro Atlanta,’’ Research Atlanta Report (Atlanta: Research Atlanta, 1999).
87.
For two recent examples of research that attempts to measure the success of regional planning policy, see Leora Waldner, ‘‘Regional Plans, Local Fates? The Influence of the 1976 and 1985 Atlanta Regional Development Plans on Local Go\vernment Policy,’’ (PhD Dissertation, University of California-Berkeley, 2003); Jason Henderson, ‘‘Contesting the Spaces of the Automobile: The Politics of Mobility and the Sprawl Debate in Atlanta, Georgia,’’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Georgia, 2002), Chapter 3. See also Arthur Nelson, ‘‘Comparing states with and without growth management: Analysis based on indicators with policy implications,’’ Land Use Policy 16 (1999).
88.
The effect of regional planning in metropolitan development has received precious little attention. Examples of recent work that attempts to address regional planning activities and institutions includes Ray Bromley, ‘‘Metropolitan Regional Planning: Enigmatic History, Global Future,’’ Planning Practice and Research 16, no. 3/4 (2001); Cliff Ellis, ‘‘Interstate Highways, Regional Planning and the Reshaping of Metropolitan America,’’ Planning Practice and Research 16, no. 3/4; Robert Fishman, editor, The American Planning Tradition (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000).
89.
Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, ‘‘Metropolitan Area Planning and Development Commissions Created’’ (1971).
90.
ARC, Regional Snapshot: the Changing Atlanta Region, 2003, ARCC, KRC, AHC; ARC, Regional Snapshot: Density vs. Sprawl, 2004, ARCC, KRC, AHC; The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, Moving Beyond Sprawl: the Challenge for Metropolitan Atlanta (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000); Anthony Downs, ‘‘Urban Realities: Some Controversial Aspects of the Atlanta Region’s Future,’’ The Brookings Review 12, no. 3 (1994).
