Quantitatively, we compared the land change statistics by the
ARC's 10-county, 20-county, and 29-county region (Fig. 2) with a
GIS overlay function. The geographic extent of the three regions represents the spatial expansion of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Therefore, the comparison of land change statistics across the
different regions can help reveal the regional disparity in urban
development (Fig. 5). With the relative percentage values, we were
able to compare the degree to which each land use class is spread
out through the metropolitan area over the ten years.