This paper compares the spatial and environmental impacts of rapid growth through the five decades in Atlanta, Georgia and Shanghai, PRC. Both metropolitan areas represent the prime demographic and economic engines of their respective regions, and exhibit some of the worst environmental degradation problems, though from significantly different sources. Atlanta epitomizes spatial patterns of sprawl arising from an unfettered topographic and economic setting. Shanghai, in a political economy transitioning from decades of centralized constraint, seeks to spread out some of the world's densest core settlement population to its inner suburbs. Remotely sensed photographic images are utilized to classify land use changes, while census figures and environmental data are integrated in a Geographic Information System to correlate shifts through time.