Projecting Sprawl? The Atlanta Regional Commission and the 1975 Regional Development Plan of Metropolitan Atlanta

Abstract

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.