Rocket City to be area's driving force
Planner predicts surrounding cities will add to metro
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Think hub. That's how Huntsville may be situated in 50 years as the city sprawls past its suburbs to cities in surrounding counties.
Atlanta began that way. Now, metropolitan "Hotlanta," with it's 4.7 million people, spreads across 13 counties and 75 cities in a seemingly endless jungle of subdivisions, strip malls, megamalls, town centers and beltways.
Crawford Howard, chairman of the Huntsville Planning Commission, said he envisions a Huntsville metropolitan area in 50 years that encompasses Decatur, Athens, Scottsboro, Guntersville and Cullman.
Huntsville will be the driving economic force in the middle, Howard believes, buoyed by a strong NASA and a vibrant defense, biomedical and aerospace sector.
"If you think of where Huntsville is located relative to the larger cities around Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Miss., we're right in the center of it with spokes to those cities all around us."
The space boom
It's difficult to imagine Huntsville proper growing to the size of the Atlanta area in 50 years. Atlanta metro climbed from 726,789 people in 1950 to 4.7 million in 2000, a 646 percent increase.
Huntsville grew from 16,437 residents in 1950 to 158,216 people in 2000, a 962 percent boost. The space boom led the way at a pace that will likely never be duplicated.
But even if greater Huntsville's growth is half of what Huntsville alone experienced the past 50 years, citizens can still expect a metropolis of nearly 1 million. The population of Madison County alone is nearly 300,000. Marshall, Morgan, Limestone, and Jackson counties more than double that figure.
Friendlier growth
Howard believes megamalls will give way to neighborhood retail centers, and satellite offices will replace giant work facilities in sprawling industrial parks.
"I think it will be demanded because of a lack of ability to keep up from an infrastructure standpoint to the growth patterns," Howard said.
"So you're going to see retail going to the people instead of people going to the retail," he said. Howard predicts more environmentally friendly homes outfitted with solar energy, and vehicles powered by alternative fuel sources. Neighborhoods will incorporate more "greenspace" in their designs for more health-conscience buyers and to offset the fact the houses have smaller yards.
"More parks, greenways, jogging/walking trails, things like that will be required of developers in the future," he said.
Concepts like the new walking-friendly Village of Providence development in west Huntsville will be more commonplace, driven by escalating fuel prices and rising health concerns. Howard predicts many urban thoroughfares, including Governors Drive, will be elevated to meet increased traffic demands.
Completion of the Memphis-Huntsville-Atlanta freeway, whenever that happens, will accelerate Huntsville's growth, he said, although he doubts development will take off across the Tennessee River. Flooding problems pose challenges there, he said.
Incorporation
Howard expects communities like Monrovia, Meridianville, and the Riverton/New Market area will incorporate as citizens in those towns scramble to control their own destiny.
"But I think we'll eventually see some form of a metro government that results in combining services," he said. "I just don't think the city or county can independently handle within the next 50 years the kind of growth this area will see.
"I think economically, it will be much more advantageous for citizens to have metro government and I'm sure it will start off on a small scale and build up to it."
Howard thinks Huntsville will develop some kind of mass transit system, whether it's an expansion of the city shuttle bus system or an elevated railway.
© 2005 The Huntsville Times
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