The original article calling the situation explosive is a pathetic overstatement. As previously mentioned this has been afoot for years. It’s only recently gained traction because of a Republican majority in the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. The biggest driving factor in this movement is a desire for better responsiveness from local government. No one serious is under the illusion that simply redrawing and renaming lines on a map will lower crime or make them safer.

A trillion dollars later, the Ford people are long gone, the money, too. The only thing left are: (1) data that are depressing at best; and (2) the clientele, which has grown larger. Kaplan saw the problems in “An Empire Wilderness.”

Unfortunately neither he, nor anyone I’m aware of, has proffered a credible cure. Chesterton, anyone?

This is not where families live. This is where 20-somethings with high paying jobs live ($3-400K for a one-bedroom townhouse!). The schools are inner-city. The Atlantic Station dwellers are Liberal, Single, mostly no-children and work Downtown.

Milton County is Families, churches, shopping malls, franchise stores and restaurants, amazing public schools, conservative.

Atlanta traffic is a factor in this as well.

Atlantic Station is 25 miles from my home, in extreme North North Fulton, but it takes nearly a hour to get there due to traffic, and our rush hour is from 6 am – 9 am and 3 pm – 7 pm. During these times, it could take up to two hours to get to Atlantic Station….so we just don’t go.

I go downtown 5-6 times a month (I have friends who live intown). My neighbors go downtown (south Fulton) 5-6 times a YEAR at best.

The Atlantic Station model is moving it’s way North. Plans for this kind of work-shop-play area are being set up in North Fulton’s Roswell, Alpharetta and our exurbs of Forsyth County (North of North Fulton)

It’s not that there is a white flight or a wealth-flight to the suburbs. It’s a lifestyle and cultural thing. In Atlanta, inside the perrimeter (Highway I-285 is our beltline) is one lifestyle and outside of the perimeter is another. South Fulton is inside, North Fulton is outside, simple as that.

To answer your question – Yes, people do come in from other parts of town and it is having an impact on the area. However, I doubt that many people from the would-be secessionist area go there on a regular basis. AS is designed as a live-work-play area, so most of the people who are there live or work nearby.

One thing to note – There are far more than two areas (North and South Fulton) in play in Atlanta. Those are just the only two that share a common government.

They won’t be driving to the cities. The commutes will be intra-suburban. The cities are no longer the job generators. Joel Kotkin has been documenting this trend.

The Gap locations within the US are sufficiently localized and small that only communities adjacent to them need to be gated for security. The hinterlands here are relatively secure.

We are in nothing like the situation of the Medieval and Ancient walled cities. Not yet, anyway.

COVER STORY: “Cities see crime surge as threat to their revival: Louisville, Trenton, N.J., and other metros whose downtowns are booming once again fear nationwide jump in violent crime may hurt prosperity,”Â? by Haya El Nasser, USA Today, 25…

Medieval walled cities had hinterlands from which they drew food, water, labour and soldiers, and to which they supplied wares (think Machiavelli’s Florence, or the German cities within the Holy Roman Empire). Gated communities, and for that matter outer suburbs, will exist only as long as the wealthy denizens can buy cheap oil, drive to work in the cities in their SUVs, and buy their food in big supermarkets.

Peter
http://kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist

I’m certain race plays at least a part here but I’m wondering if the 29 paying 42 of the freight even have 29% of the political representation in county government or if they are simply cash cows to be milked? Nothing delegitimizes a government entity faster than taxation without representation. Even corruption is more tolerable.

Are the Fulton County boards elected by district or “at large” ?

Depends what you think the underlying problem is. If it is paying a premium for services you never use, you secede and let some larger group of people bear the cost of sustaining the government-funded programs in the poor area. In that case, it not only helps but solves your problem. If the problem is the existence of poor people in a high crime and otherwise unattractive area, that is not a problem or set of problems, it is a condition whose existence does not imply a “solution”.

The “effort” of decades of large-scale social spending has not been ruined by corruption. That is like the old Stalinist idea that the Five Year Plan did not work because of concealed Capitalist “wreckers”. Like the FYPs, the social spending does not accomplish what it purports to do because it can’t, no matter how diligent or well-intentioned the people spending it or operating the programs may be.

What has been accomplshed is simply subsidizing failure, which, like anything which is subsidized, only gets you more of it.

They just announced a 12,000 seat outdoor concert venue in Alpharetta (suburbs) so that we dont have to go downtown for concerts

What will end up happening is the state government will have to step in, and the pain will be more widely dispersed.

The idea that social spending is going to “fix” these areas is no longer believed by anybody. They are perpetual running sores. So, get the largest unit of government to spread the pain to diffuse it.

How to “close the Gap”? Can’t be done, I don’t think. The kinds of compulsory changes that would be needed would be unacceptable. So it will stay as it is. But maybe someone else sees happy outcomes within our grasp that I do not see. It would be nice if that were so.

And as you briefly mentioned above, even if you somehow pour in money to force development in these marginalized areas, you don’t get rid of the marginalized people: they just move somewhere else.

The problem is cultural, not economic. You have to do something about kids wanting to be pimps, drug dealers and thieves. This isn’t like China, where sort-of-halfway-honest entrepreneurship is widespread.