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C Ch ha ap pt te er r 9 9 The African Diaspora in a Changing Metropolitan Region: The Case of Atlanta, Georgia ROBERT D. BULLARD INTRODUCTION Metropolitan Atlanta has experienced constant growth through the 1900s. With population growing at an annual rate of 2.9 percent since 1950, in the 1960s Atlanta established its regional dominance. During the 1970s and 1980s the city of Atlanta proper, became increasingly Black, and experienced a steadydecrease in its share of the metropolitan population. Metropolitan Atlanta continued to experience breakneck growth from the 1990s through 2004 (Frey 2006), with African American in-migrants comprising much of the new resident group. Approximately 85,000 people moved into the Atlanta metropolitan area annually since the 1990s (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006a), compared to an annual average of 62,000 in the 1980s. The region has gained more than 77,000 new residents each year since 2000 and nearly 112,000 in 2006 alone, the most recent year for which data are available (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006a, 9). The ten-countyMetropolitan Area (Cherokee, Cobb, Douglas, Clayton, Fayette, Fulton, Henry, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Rockdale) had a population of over 3.7 million people in 2004 (Atlanta Regional Commission 2003), 3.8 million people in 2005, and almost 4 million in 2006 (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006a). The twenty-eight countyMetropolitan Statistical Area of Atlanta grew from 4.2 million in 2000 to 4.7 million in 2004 — making it the eleventh largest metropolitan area in the United States (King 2006). Planning officials’ estimates indicate that the region will receive another 2.3 million people by 2030, increasing the region’s total population to more than 6 million people (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006b, p. 4). Between 1990–2005, the Atlanta region added 1.25 million persons. Population growth was slow in the city of Atlanta, increasing by only 26,900 or less than three percent of the total population gain. On the other hand, the northern portion of the region gained 616,000 residents or almost 50 percent of the region’s population growth; the southern part of the region gained 289,900 persons or 23.1 percent of the population gains during 1990–2005. Fulton County continues to be the region’s largest county with 874,100 residents in 2005. Gwinnett Countyled the region in net population increase, adding more than 21,000 persons each year since 2000 (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006b, p. 3). RACIAL DIVERSITY Between 2000 and 2004, African Americans, Hispanics, and other racial minorities accounted for more than 80 percent of the population growth in the 28-county metropolitan Atlanta area, in reducing the region’s White population from 71 percent in 2000 to 57 percent of the 4.7 million people in metro Atlanta by 2006 (Atlanta Regional Commission 2006a). Each year, the region adds about 100,000 people to the suburban and exurban counties, with four of five newcomers being racial or ethnic minorities (King 2006). Unable to annex surrounding unincorporated areas as Houston, Phoenix, and San Diego have, Atlanta proper is only the forty-first largest city in the nation, largely because its growth has been primarily suburban sprawl development . According to the Atlanta Regional Commission (Atlanta Regional Commission), the city’s 2006 population 124 Robert D. Bullard estimate of 451,600 is higher than it has been in at least twenty-five years. During 2000–2005 the Atlanta metropolitan area added 245,982 African Americans, bringing the regional total to 1.4 million — or roughly 35 percent of the region’s population (Bullard 2007). The number of new African Americans to the region was nearly twice the number of African Americans who moved into the next-fastest-growing metro area for African Americans in the United States (Miami-Fort Lauderdale). Atlanta moved from having the seventh-largest African American in-migrant population in 1990 to having the third-largest in 2004 (Frey 2006). For much of its history Whites and Blacks constituted the vast majority of Atlanta’s resident population. In 1940 only 1.4 percent of Atlanta’s population was foreign-born, with little change a decade later. In the early 1980s, however, the ethno-racial landscape of both the city and the metropolitan area began to change, as private relief agencies resettled refugees from Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Eastern Europe in the area, and Atlanta’s booming economy drew large numbers of immigrants from Mexico and other countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Middle...

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