I hear or see it every now and then. Oftentimes the words come up when provoked in the context of traffic, over crowded restaurants, and have even shifted to any form of unpleasant experience living in our metropolitan city.
“We are full.” It’s almost a subtle way for locals who have been here longer than 10 years to say: “Atlanta needs to stay exactly how it is, don’t move here." Coincidentally enough, I saw a shirt advertised saying those exact words:
“Don’t move to Atlanta, we are full.”
Even the local media has picked up on the “We Full” narrative.
This post focuses on the empirical answer to the question: Is Atlanta Full?
Traffic, development, traffic caused by development — and with the New York Times calling us the ‘Sultan of Sprawl,’ it’s easy to feel like we’re full. But peel back the frustration and the grievances tied to population growth, and the data tells a very different story.
We all know traffic is horrific – but never as bad as LA! The influx of people to our city has been well-documented but as several locals lament and proclaim “we full” on our increased population – especially the pipeline of folks filling in and around Beltline-oriented neighborhoods, I wanted to truly understand where we actually rank in density.
Before diving into the arithmetic, it is important to delineate Atlanta proper and metro Atlanta. Since the 2023 count, 510,823 citizens reside in 135.3 square miles in Atlanta proper. This equates to just under 3800 people / sq mile. Metro Atlanta is much larger with 11 core Atlanta counties and 40 if you go by what the official census uses. Metro Atlanta has approximately 6.3M people across 8376 square miles which puts the population density at 752 people per square mile. For the sake of this blog post, we’re going to focus just on Atlanta proper.
Back to the question: Is Atlanta Full?
Let’s start with a comparison to a few other cities in terms of strictly population density below
From pure population density in Atlanta city proper, placed next to other 3-4 sports franchise cities, we are one-fifth to one-third of their density. New York City is approximately 28,000 people / sq mile. We are not close to being full when population density ratios are stacked up among other major US cities.
If you include all of metropolitan Atlanta, our density, world-wide, barely squeaks inside the top 1000! Read the full report here.
If our population density is so much lower, why does Atlanta feel full?
Two major factors contribute to Atlanta feeling full: cars and zoning. Cars are more visceral so let’s start there.
Approximately 84% of Atlanta households have at least one car. In comparison 64% of households in Washington D.C., 66% in Boston and 70% in San Francisco have cars. When analyzing the raw numbers, this is anywhere from 80k-137k more cars on the street in Atlanta.
What compounds the Atlanta traffic problem over any of the other cities above: we don’t have a natural boundary of water. We just have more houses outside the city with cars coming in, out, and through the city every day. Metro Atlanta has approximately 4.4M registered light-duty cars. The crack that keeps delivering the hits when it comes to a car centric lifestyle is at the right time, you can get around Atlanta in 15-20 mins just about anywhere. At the wrong time, settle into music or a long-form podcast.
The sheer amount of cars in Atlanta and metro Atlanta is the number one reason “we are full.”
How do we create an environment where a car-less or car-light lifestyle exists? The most straightforward answer is our most underutilized and under-leveraged asset: MARTA rail. Sometimes I still pinch myself that we have a substantial and bonafide heavy rail transit system. Travel anywhere else in the South and the numbers and infrastructure don’t compare.
MARTA has a cool brand but a poor reputation. Six years ago MARTA rail ridership peaked with approximately 61M million annual trips. Last year, MARTA rail had 29.4M rides or approximately 80k people a day. This decline is dreadful. The road to recovery from Covid hasn’t started trending back yet. Hopefully in 2025 it does. Even with all the declining numbers, we are still way ahead of any other rail or light rail or commuter rail.
A few comps:
Miami has 57k daily rail only riders.
Charlotte has 27k daily rail only riders
Orlando has 3-5k
Nashville and Tampa have less than 1000 riders a day.
Hopefully we have bottomed out at 80k people day and that number grows exponentially from here on out. MARTA is the only true heavy-rail in the Southeast and if we don’t leverage it for our future city’s growth, it’s our loss.
I’ve heard from hundreds of people: MARTA doesn’t go anywhere. It goes more places than any other rail goes, and much more, in a Southern city. It’s not that MARTA doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just that where it goes, often times nothing is there.
Besides the natural boundless geography inducing urban sprawl and car-dependent lifestyles, a severely under-utilized transportation asset in MARTA, the third and arguably most systemic reason for feeling we are full is the zoning laws.
60-75% of Atlanta proper is zoned for single family dwellings!
For comparison, San Fran is 38%, Chicago is 41%, DC is 48%. Interestingly enough, Boston is up in the Atlanta territory at 80%. Going to chalk that up to families living in Boston proper since the Revolutionary War but just a guess.
The single family dwelling zones ban duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, apartment buildings, and even ADU’s.
Here are some good articles about zoning: Where can I build an ADU in Atlanta? And historical context and insight here on single family zoning laws.
Changing laws and rezoning seems nearly impossible, however we should triple down on the areas that are less restrictive. Below are two maps showing the areas for single family zoning and then another showing areas prime for growth. Coincidentally, they are downtown and along our significantly underutilized heavy rail!
I experience the underutilized land daily when I walk around downtown and South Downtown and see a sea of surface level parking lots empty 70% of the time.
Here is one of the most insightful and interactive map when looking at trends around Atlanta's growth in population and density.
According to the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), metro Atlanta added 46,000 new jobs in 2023, but the region only permitted around 33,000 new housing units.
Asking the question one more time: Is Atlanta Full? The answer may not matter because people from all over the country and all over the world are moving here. From a pure quantitative analysis, we are far from full. If we keep growing the same way we have been: cars required, limited heavy rail usage, underutilized growth in zone-friendly geographies, Atlanta is going to get a lot more full much faster.
The bright side is we do have a release valve and it revolves around intentional development, pre-pandemic MARTA usage, connected trails, bike lanes, scooter rides, and driverless cars that free up significant vacant parking spots. The best new about all of these strategies: they allow us to keep the majority of our surprise and delight tree canopy – a major win!
Atlanta may seem full today, but if we make the right decisions, it won't feel full as more future residents inevitably move in each month.