Today’s guest columnist is Doug Martinson.
Editor’s note: This column appeared last week in the Huntsville Real-Time News . I thought people in Birmingham might be interested in what leaders in Huntsville are saying about their city and ours.
Huntsville rocketed past Birmingham in 2020 to become the largest city in Alabama. And then the city just kept on growing.
Huntsville grew by 27.9% since 2010. Meanwhile, Mobile grew by 3.2% (primarily by annexation) while Birmingham actually declined by 7.5% and Montgomery declined by 4.8%. That’s according to a recent analysis by PARCA.
Recent wins by Huntsville include $460 million in downtown building permits so far in 2025, Alabama’s first IKEA store, and now the Space Command headquarters.
In addition, on a national level Huntsville is out-performing 95% of cities with a population of greater than 100,000 people, we earned the top slot in U.S News & World Report’s best places to live a few years ago and we are adding more than 11 people a day.
The questions: Why Huntsville? Why now? What happens next? What can the city do to handle so much growth and change?
Welcome to View from the Top, a new weekly column from AL.com exploring those questions. I hope that we can have a conversation about how Huntsville was able to chart a plan for growth, while other cities have not been able to.
In his recent Comeback Town column, a column that focuses on challenges and successes in Birmingham, David Sher itemized a list of projects that Huntsville won, both in the space and defense industry. But we also have made great strides in genetics and DNA, automobile and ATV manufacturing, with billions of dollars of construction.
In explaining why there was so much investment here, David gave what I think is the correct answer and that is UNITY. Huntsville and the surrounding communities (Madison, Athens, Decatur and even Fayetteville, Tennessee) all come together to win economic projects. We cooperate.
There was a recent article on the fact that there are 20 prisons in Jefferson County. How is that cost effective to operate that many facilities with that many guards, cafeteria and other workers? How does that happen and what can be done to end this wasteful spending.
I am a big fan of Comeback Town, and I am also an enthusiastic supporter of Huntsville. I am also excited that Mobile is going to have a column, Rising Tides. So, the three largest cities in Alabama will have a public forum to discuss and share ideas about what makes their city unique and also what has led to their success or held them back and hopefully have some degree of synergy of ideas to make Alabama better.
I was born in Tuscaloosa in 1963 during my father‘s third year of law school and then moved to Huntsville after he graduated in May 1964. Except for the time I spent attending college, law school, and tax law school, I have lived in Huntsville my entire life and am fortunate to have both of our children living and working here.
I have seen Huntsville grow dramatically and watched cotton fields turn into apartments and subdivisions. I watched and celebrated the moonwalks. I also remember, as an eighth-grader, going to see Dr. William R. Lucas, who was the director of Marshall Space Flight Center and a neighbor of my grandmother’s, and sitting in his office as he took a model of the space shuttle and told us how the shuttle would go into space and land like an airplane back on Earth. I saw the last Apollo launch, Apollo-Soyuz launch in 1975, and the last night launch of the space shuttle.
I have also eaten watercress from the stream in our backyard and visited New Market, where I learned how Huntsville earned its lesser known title as the Watercress Capital of the World.
I later followed in my father’s footsteps by going to law school and in my grandfather’s footsteps by serving as a member of the Huntsville City School Board of Education. My sons are both fourth-generation graduates of Huntsville High School, and my older son is a fourth-generation Huntsville attorney.
One thing I have always admired and liked about Huntsville is that it is an open community and society and I think that is one of the reasons for our success. Unlike a lot of other cities, it is not hard to be a part of the leadership, whether it be the chamber of commerce, elected offices, civic organizations, or youth sports and PTAs.
The Space Program and the Defense industry have brought so many people here with diverse backgrounds and advanced degrees. But it’s not just rockets. Another example of Huntsville’s uniqueness is the fact that former Gov. George C. Wallace once declared us The Hockey Capital of the South. As a long-time hockey player and referee, I have seen the valuable contributions so many of the players have made in this community and most of them would not have been here without the sport.
Having such a diverse population has served our economy well and allowed us to not only survive the various ups and downs of the economy but to prosper.
Maybe it’s the way the city searches for ways to experiment. Huntsville is a city that takes ideas from everyone and uses them to make it a better place to live. Sometimes that means building on its space history with Cummings Research Park or STEM programs that get kids into robotics and space camp. Other times, it means bringing hockey to the South by adding ice rinks and enthusiastically supporting a minor league team. More recently, the Orion Amphitheater has shown how Huntsville is willing to invest in cultural projects that give the city national attention.
What makes Huntsville different is that good ideas can come from anyone. If someone has a vision that can make the city stronger, people here are ready to listen. And I hope to find guest columns to share in this space, a place to talk about big ideas for Huntsville, about challenges and successes and creative ideas for new projects.
It is my hope that this column will spotlight some of the history that I learned from my grandmother and my father, and growing up here in the 1970s and working downtown on Northside Square, both as a middle and high school student and as an adult.
Click here to read the column Doug Martinson wrote standing up for Huntsville ironically a few months before it was announced that Huntsville passed Birmingham in population.
Doug Martinson is an attorney at Martinson and Beason , which was founded by his grandfather in 1937 and is a fourth generation Huntsvillian. He has served as President of the Huntsville City School Board, the Huntsville Rotary Club, the Huntsville Madison County Bar Association, Chair of the Huntsville Madison County Public Library Board, is a Commissioner of the Alabama State Bar, and numerous non-profit boards. He also was an NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Official until 2016.
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com
First, I must say that no two cities are alike, even thought they may be in the same state. Also Knoxville Nashville, Chattanooga and Memphis in Tennessee about the only thing they share is being in the same state. However the history, geography, and cultures are NOT the same.
Therefor simply, you can not copy another one and hope to get anywhere. Birmingham has tried too much of that, and gotten nowhere. It has followed too much and led almost nothing compared to its beginning as a boomtown iron and steel, not as much now. Perhaps it best comparison regarding advancement is the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Banking, Engineering and research. These are very significant and can be sources for leading the city to a better future.
You are absolutely ‘spot on’ correct about what creates the biggest obstacle to Birmingham’s further development, Don’t forget that Metro Birmingham is still growing but not very fast and it is still the biggest in the state.
One that affects all cities in the state is the state income tax. Neither Tennessee nor Florida have state income tax. This is a cause for more rapid growth. This does not appear to have held Huntsville back.
The worst obstacle is, and with racism still in this current picture, the break-up of the metropolitan area is far too many uncooperative separate cities. This issue has been raised often but only ‘baby steps’ have yet taken. They compete for new business as separate cities want new tax revenue. It is now Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area! Hoover’s population. Is that not encroaching on Birmingham City?
Truly effective, appealing advertising across the country does not exist. The only ones I see out of state are Montgomery’s ‘White Water Park.’ And Alabama RSA program investments across the state. One is in the Birmingham area but actually in Hoover is the Ross Bridge Resort and golf course. Not advertised, but it is responsible for the building of the tallest building on the gulf in Downtown Mobile. That is quite a useful and quite spectacular building!
Other Birmingham city assets are well hidden from out of state people and companies. Alabama Power (Southern Power HQ in Atlanta!) Atlanta’s airport still dominates. There have been several efforts to build that air traffic, but they have not gotten very far. George Wallace really hurt air travel when he imposed the fuel tax on airlines. Airlines were not going to pay that!
A remarkable thing about Huntsville is how their remarkable ability to avoid any of these obstacles has been. But key is still community unity combine with determination.
Senator Sparkman won something that was futuristic thinking and a large advantage to both, The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville when Werner von Braun arrived, it became his base of operations. That was such a huge success!
And for Birmingham, he got funding for what has become its highly regarded fresh research driven medical center that has become one of the very best in the entire country. Then it became a part of the new University of Alabama, Birmingham.
So, Whither Birmingham? Its city government is doing many new and helpful things itself, but what will stop its shrinking?
Thank you for your comments and you’re very valid points!
One thing I think people don’t realize is that the MSA of Birmingham is over 4500 mi.² and include cities like Cullman, Talladega, Sylacauga, alabaster and several other cities and counties that no one who lives there whatever say that they were from Birmingham. Meanwhile, Huntsville has less than 1400 mi.² in its MSA, so when people talk about Birmingham being the largest MSA they need to keep this in mind.
When Huntsville‘s leadership looked to other cities to model themselves after, we went to Austin, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, Nashville, Greenville, South Carolina and Chattanooga. We were able to take a lot of good things that they are doing in those cities and adopt them for Huntsville.
I do like Birmingham a lot and I want to see you succeed as I have many friends there and my son graduated from The now Defont Birmingham Southern College, which was a very sad loss for the state in particularly Birmingham, but that had more to do with Montgomery
Thanks!
Your point about Metro Birmingham and Huntsville area size comparisons is interesting. As I understand it ‘metros’ are based on commuter traffic. And I agree. Who from Calera, Clanton, or Cullman are are going to say the live in Birmingham? I would say, never anyone. even many close by wont: Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Mountain Brook, and Crestline dwellers who actually live in Mountain Brook. It is in part separation from the linger racist history that drives that attitude. I believe people really do think locally and for Birmingham that is a large part of why the Birmingham region is so torn into too many cities! They are unable to see the larger picture much at all. Sad that is!
Birmingham is now majority black. Yet the mayor has led some very effective and advantageous improvements. City crime has been a lingering problem. Recently they doubled the police force. Earlier the city put police on the downtown streets, not in cars. That made being Downtown so much safe it became more active. Now with Railroad Park, the significant movement of more whites, not necessarily whites only into new condominiums, and apartments, the downtown population has grown from essentially zero to over 20,000 people. Alabama’s Historic Preservation Tax benefit has spurred that movement. Pepper place market, Conversion of the old early modern Sears-Roebuck store is now an innovation center that has had good results.
If you are going to choose other cities to study, for Huntsville, the examples are excellent. I have been to all of them and especially Chattanooga when I was actually involved in their planning effort.
I was Dean of the School of architecture in Knoxville, and we set up a studio to work with the city and other guest architects. They had already converted their Train Station into a special hotel even using old train cars for hotel room.
Also, I was in charge of a the design-planning group for a new town design for TVA at Fort Louden. Similarly with student involvement for Downtown Mobile.
I keep my hopes up for Birmingham to keep getting better, not necessarily bigger! Atlanta is bigger and I do everything I can to stay away from it. More careful advance planning needs to happen before growth occurs, not after!
Thanks very much for your further informative response.
What do you mean people from Calera/Vestavia/etc won’t say they’re from Birmingham? Have you actually talked to those people? Of course they say they’re from Birmingham. The specification only comes once you’re inside the metro area. If talking to people outside the area, they all say Birmingham.
But I also want to point out that it’s tiring to blame the metro area disunity on racism as if there were no racism things would be solved quicker. But it wouldn’t, because there’s something people tend to forget, or at least underestimate: Birmingham is not a natural location for a city to anchor a metro area of its size (Even if the Bham metro were only cut down to Jefferson, Shelby and St. Clair, the OMB defined core counties, it’d still be just shy of a million people.). The terrain with its ridges and streams naturally isolates the many communities of the metro area (but it also didn’t have a main river going through the area that could’ve naturally anchored where a city should go, like it did with Knoxville with its otherwise similar terrain.). Add the railroads to that, and by the time highways and interstates come into play, there’s not much more they can really divide. Until the metro fully delves into understanding how its terrain both hinders and accelerates the development and interaction of its subcommunities, I don’t think unity will ever be possible, nor will the implied wanted consolidations even close to achievable. Just the idea of how transit could be affected just by recognizing how much more physically difficult it is to reach different parts of town on average compared to a lot of metros would do a lot (just remembering way back when as bus engine failures being normal from all the wear and tear of going up and down the terrain all the time).
Falling back on racism calls misses other things going on. For example, an area forming a municipality instead of joining another isn’t because the area dislikes everything to the existing municipality does. It just needs to dislike one thing, even if all 99 other things are enthusiastically loved (OTM is fine with Bham getting a lot of retail sales in places like the Summit, or office areas like the Colonnade. It’s even happy with Bham preventing development around Lake Purdy. But OTM really doesn’t like the Birmingham City Schools board of education). Even in the case of Pleasant Grove, it exists as a municipality only because there was one task it needed to do, but could only do if it were a municipality (It theoretically could’ve joined Birmingham to do that, but that meant agreeing to everything else that would come with that).
What I’d hope for, considering the unique conditions of the metro area, is a lattice of individualistic, mutually beneficial competitive communities, where the different communities are able innovate based off a good understanding their individual strengths and weakness. Different areas jump at catching the balls other areas fumble to prevent opportunities from leaving, and when one area brings a new game to town, the rest adapt to the change and find ways to improve that game. The key is making sure the connections of the lattice are strong enough that a wave can ripple through the entire network so that the different communities can adapt to the pull and follow the ones on the up (saying communities, as I’d treat Ensley as separate from downtown just as much as Cahaba Heights). I want friendly community rivalries to more develop beyond just high school sports, or even cross-town “alliances/co-ops” on a community level. I’d want the downtown to be a persistent leader, but it would be able to misstep at times with less of a burden on it.
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Roy Knight
Quote :
“Atlanta is bigger and I do everything I can to stay away from it. More careful advance planning needs to happen before growth occurs, not after!”
About Atlanta…Yeah. Me too Roy. I once lived in Atlanta. Back in the 90s. About a year is all I could take. While I made money, it was a nightmare living there and doing things as simple as just getting around…The perimeter is crazy !
And Birmingham needs to get over it’s bigger-is-better obsession and continue focusing on its quality of living, a “quality” which has had too many short-comings in its past and still remains haunted by its own seriously dysfunctional history.
And you’re spot on about careful planning.
Back in the 50s, my father, who was a senior engineer/physicist, worked with Von Braun and many others to help civilize and virtually force Huntsville to become a progressive, well planned and developed town…And it doesn’t take more than a bright sixth-grader to know that a major obstacle to any progress was the unfortunate geographical fact that Huntsville was a growing city, stuck in a racist, backwoods state like Alabama.
That notwithstanding, many newcomers back then saw the promise Huntsville held for them, and held on tight to their goals and dreams.
The way you do that ?…
It’s called anticipation and foresight.
…A vocabulary Birmingham needs to adapt and get used to.
~ Ballard from Huntsville
The incessant need to brung Atlanta into cimments on a regular basis speaks to the level of untellectual dishonesty that holds back progress. Yes, Atlanta has its issues. But after 35 years of incredible growth, both economically and in population, it is undeniable that Georgia has done some things very well. The CSA has 7.5 million people. They didn’t all end up here by accident.
As far as Huntsville, as happy as its rise is, I see the whithering nature of Birmingham as more sad. The last bastion of both incredible tragedy with a tight grip on old wats is smothering its potential. Another poster stated he thought racism was simply a lazy excuse. I disagree. It is the unwillingness to really face the hatred and what it has done to your city that keeps Birmingham where it was in the 1960s, in 2025.
Sorry. Typing on a phone.
The main issue was what has happened and what is not happening within the city limits of Birmingham itself, mostly inside one valley except for more recently somewhat wandering city limits.
Why is is always losing population? What can be done to turn that around. The suburban world is Birmingham city’s enemy. Why?
As you suggest that it is always going to be, So what adjustments might be helpful?
Great article. The author pointed out exactly why Huntsville is so successful and yet some still seem to miss it.
Cooperation. Unity. Smart planning. Seeing what others do well and copying that.
Some of the responses to the article show that we still have a long way to go in that department in the metro area of Birmingham.
We should copy other cities in a truly unifying spirit. Huntsville has shown that it can be done in Alabama(despite what some may think).
Metro area residents do say they are from Birmingham when they are out of town or abroad. They now need to say it as 5 cities not 35.
Terrain is not a valid reason for why we have so many municipalities. That is probably the worst excuse I have ever heard for so many duplicate governments.
It simply does not make good, sound financial business sense to have 20 jails in a metro of this size and the author rightly pointed that out.
He doesn’t have a dog in this fight, he is just telling us how dumb we look.
Now imagine duplicating resources 20 times over in multiple cities across the reason.
This valid reason is why we are looked at as backwards to a majority of the rest of the country. We are just too wasteful in a lot of things and bad at others(education).
Money could be saved and used toward things that would really make the metro better like: roads, transit, beautification, parks, safety, etc.
And to say that because one city doesn’t like one thing that another city or the metro does as a whole is reason to break off and form their own city shows the thinking that has crippled(and will continue to cripple) this region for generations.
It won’t ever change until we realize that we are all apart of the same body: the heart needs the brain: the brain needs the lungs and so forth in the same body to live.
The legislature took over the BWWB and made it regional for the betterment of the region.
Maybe it’s time for them to consolidate these cities(along with the fire departments, libraries, school systems, public works departments, transit, etc.) to cut out waste and make us better as a whole.
One body, one mind, one metro, one future. Not an us, them, we, they. Only real unity, will bring real lasting success.
OH and for Millenia, people have been communicating in many ways at a distance. Just one example unlike. telephone, internet texting and email is smoke signals. Also there are communities that really can’t and don’t want to communicate, truly isolated by choice and for food protection. On the Northern tip of the very long Vancouver Island in British Columbia, there are 31 small tribes that have their on little areas to fish. Each one of these has a different language and not one can understand another.
Yes! Thanks
It’s easy for us in Birmingham to feel threatened by Huntsville’s success, but it’s a chance for friendly competition – and we’ve had some successes of our own. We’ve spent so many years comparing ourselves to other cities in other states, while Huntsville was quietly and steadily building a legitimate rival right here in Alabama. They did so with the same rules, laws, and resources we have. This is a fair fight. If Birmingham loses in the long run, maybe we will have deserved it. Thank you David for this platform and for continuing your efforts to help our city and metro area.