WIDENING EDUCATIONAL GAP. IN SPRAWL CITY. RACE, POLITICS, AND PLANNING IN ATLANTA

Urban sprawl is a generic term used to describe what is in fact a two-part process. One the one hand, there is sprawling low-density growth at the suburban fringe, and on the other hand, there is the concurrent disinvestments and abandonment of older/urbanized communities. There are factors that stimulate sprawl, such as the desire of many for low-density residential choices, access to and availability of adequate infrastructures, and quality of education. Sprawl is often supported by public subsidies for roads, sewers, water lines, mortgages, and tax breaks. The conditions within Metropolitan Atlanta not only match this definition of urban sprawl but also have additional features of the problem, which gives Atlanta and it s outer fringes a degree of uniqueness. In the late 1060s, local county governments made decisions as to where to place a mass transit system (MARTA) would be located. Federally funded highway construction, in the same time period, combined with local political considerations, dictated much of the physical direction that Atlanta sprawl took. Atlanta's sprawl was further affected by the practices of home mortgages or other forms of venture capital needed for business formation. Whether intentional or not, metropolitan planning and coordinating agencies like the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) may have exacerbated the problem of urban sprawl.