The sprawling expansion of the nation's mega cities into outer rings of further development depletes land in a natural state and increases air and water pollution. To sustain long-term growth, a metropolitan area must make major investments in its transportation, sewer, water supply, and wastewater infrastructures to diminish growth related environmental harms. Transportation, land use, and water policy decisions must be coordinated throughout a metropolitan area to ensure that each locality assumes its fair share of growth related costs and does not resort to cheaper solutions that lack environmental sensitivity.
This Article argues that the model government for a sprawling metropolitan area should be formed along regional rather than local boundaries. Most urban areas contain a large number of local governmental units whose borders were fixed along lines that no longer comport with today's mobile society. When these governments make decisions that overburden the region's infrastructure, they undermine the area's long term prosperity. A metropolitan-wide government with jurisdiction over localities within its borders best provides coordinated planning and ensures enforcement of regulations necessary to implement smart growth policies. The public, despite its awareness of clogged urban highways and its concern for a clean water supply, makes few connections between sprawl related problems and the country's system of fragmented government.
Many states, like Georgia, have created a patchwork of state agencies to control sprawl's ill effects upon specific resources like water, open space, and air. Because each authority usually addresses only one environmental harm, an overall coordinated approach to sprawl remains lacking.
This Article views the creation of an Atlanta metropolitan (regional) government as unlikely and reviews the Georgia state agencies created in the last three years to combat sprawl. It compares and contrasts the newly created Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, the Georgia Greenspace Commission, and the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District. The success of these state bodies in managing the environmental consequences of the Atlanta area's spectacular growth remains to be seen.