Most of us want to know how much population growth is happening in our region and where the concentrations of growth are occurring. ARC does annual county-level (and City of Atlanta) estimates. Take a look at 33n later this week or keep an eye on our social accounts for that data.
As a preview/appetizer of sorts on this Map Monday, we are going to look at a different source for population estimates in our region. Many analysts need to know more than the counties where growth is occurring — they also need a sense of the neighborhoods that are capturing the largest share of growth within those counties. Often, it’s hard to find timely data for that level of spatial detail. For instance, the Census Bureau’s small-area (census tract and block group-level data) is a rolling average of data taken between 2013 and 2017. Luckily, there are available current year (2019) private-sector, proprietary population estimates numbers based on a solid methodology, using older Census estimates as a base. One such dataset comes from ESRI’s Business Analyst Online, which is available to the Atlanta Regional Commission and other state regional commissions through a regularly renewed licensing agreement.
Below, you can check out a tract-level map of ESRI’s estimated population change between 2010 and 2019. While the majority of positive change continues to be to the north of the 10-county region, there are strong pockets of population growth within the City of Atlanta, as well as on the suburban southside. Since the data feeding these maps is proprietary, we can’t share the exact figures, but you’ll be able to see our own county-level estimates in our forthcoming post.
The map below shows the change in density (persons per acre) for the 2010-2019 period. One can see even more clearly the concentration of growth in the core of our region and in the northeastern part of the City of Atlanta. Even though the first map indicated some strong absolute growth in larger census tracts to the south of the region, taking density into account provides a needed caveat to those absolute trends.
In the next two maps, we take a look at recent trends in built and/or permitted housing. Permit data provide background for ESRI in generating the estimates mapped above. These data also provide key information to ARC’s Research and Analytics Group in development of our major jurisdiction (county and City of Atlanta) population estimates.
Immediately below, you can see the point locations of all single-family units permitted in our region in 2018. The mapped locations are often exact, but sometimes they are generalized to the zip code area. There is significant clustering of 2018 single-family development in the northern suburbs. The data for this map and the final one on this post comes from HBWeekly, a private sector company, and so exact locational information is confidential.
The final map in this post shows the existing multifamily development in the Atlanta region, as well as the location (and projected size) of projects under construction as of the end of 1Q 2019. The majority of existing and under-construction multifamily projects are either within the City of Atlanta or at least inside I-285. This data comes from CoStar, a commercial database tracking multifamily, retail, office, industrial and hotel development.
