Atlanta's journey toward true urbanization

[memester]

Originally Posted by Camelback

I would say eastern 1/3 of the US was almost all continuous forest and pockets of western cities, especially in the north were all forested.

San Francisco was a treeless sandy peninsula, according to the park ranger's history lesson at Coit Tower.

Look at it now (parkland).
https://goo.gl/maps/bE3WEVPZNv4sN18SA

https://goo.gl/maps/2hwCzA3yYuJj8j9SA

Frederick Olmstead refused the original commission to design Golden Gate Park because he was convinced the sand dunes would never support trees or shrubs.

[chris08876]

If one rents a weather balloon from Hertz and rises to about 500 ft and somehow all the trees would be eliminated, one would see that Atlanta is very urban.

The trees mask the urban nature.

It can be a little deceiving especially when looking at aerials.

[jmecklenborg]

Somehow a fully grade-separated heavy rail metro system was built in a city that wasn't oriented around traditional radial avenues. Some stations were built in random spots and zero effort was made to encourage walkable development around them. The metro area has tripled in size since Metro began operations but we still have stuff like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/At...!4d-84.3879824

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by chris08876

If one rents a weather balloon from Hertz and rises to about 500 ft and somehow all the trees would be eliminated, one would see that Atlanta is very urban.

The trees mask the urban nature.

It can be a little deceiving especially when looking at aerials.

It would look more urban than it is now, but it wouldn't make it look very urban.

[Labtec]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

No offense, but Buckhead isn't walkable. It's worse than those Miami parking podium hoods

He asked for walkable retail. Buckhead village is very walkable. I also took Marta and walked from Lenox down to Buckhead village and there are sidewalks and it's walkable.

https://goo.gl/maps/QQA8i2BBsYnRrZKk7

https://goo.gl/maps/jFQGJyC8Ues3bcn3A

People just don't walk besides the ones who live in the highrises to get their Starbucks or exercise. The roads are wide but it's technically "walkable."

[Labtec]

Originally Posted by Doady

San Francisco-Oakland is one of the leaders among metropolitan areas in the US of greater than 2 million people in terms of both the percentage of people taking transit to work, and walking/cycling to work. Las Vegas and San Jose are among the leaders among MSAs of 1 to 2 million people.

On the flipside, Atlanta is one of the worst in terms of both transit use and walking or cycling among metropolitan areas of 2 million or more. It is not only worse than SF-Oakland in terms of both transit and walking/cycling mode share, but also Las Vegas and San Jose.

Looks like those numbers are from 2011. The beltline and many major projects in Atlanta weren't around back then. The area has changed a lot in just the past 3-4 years alone with a ton of urbanization. And things will only improve with projects like

Centennial Yards (mentioned at 1:40):
• Video Link

Summer Hill:
• Video Link

Redevelopment at Underground Atlanta:
https://atlanta.eater.com/2021/5/17/...lanta-downtown

And more. The most booming area will be West Midtown as Microsoft purchased Quarry Yards and will build essentially a second headquarters there https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/202...-with-atlanta/
Facebook, Google also moved into offices in the area and there's a whole bunch of development going on in West Midtown which has transformed the most.

[Segun]

Originally Posted by Labtec

Centennial Yards (mentioned at 1:40):
• Video Link

.

This is what I like about Atlanta. No other major city's downtown in the US can build a mega-project and have it advertised specifically for a Black audience.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Segun

This is what I like about Atlanta. No other major city's downtown in the US can build a mega-project and have it advertised specifically for a Black audience.

I think Atlanta and DC do the best job of at least appearing as they want black people to be apart of their city's identity. Most cities with large black populations treat the community as a problem that needs to be fixed, instead of a cultural asset that can actually make their metro's more vibrant and prosperous. What ends up happening is that the middle/working class black people end up just leaving the area or not being engaged in the city's civic identity and the city ends up just exacerbating whatever race/class issues (real or perceived) that are already present.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Labtec

Looks like those numbers are from 2011. The beltline and many major projects in Atlanta weren't around back then. The area has changed a lot in just the past 3-4 years alone with a ton of urbanization. And things will only improve with projects like

Redevelopment at Underground Atlanta:
https://atlanta.eater.com/2021/5/17/...lanta-downtown

And more. The most booming area will be West Midtown as Microsoft purchased Quarry Yards and will build essentially a second headquarters there https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/202...-with-atlanta/
Facebook, Google also moved into offices in the area and there's a whole bunch of development going on in West Midtown which has transformed the most.

Overusing the "HQ2" concept here. Microsoft hasn't said that. And even the biggest projections show Atlanta's office (in many years) at half the current size of the HQ.

PS here are some updated commute stats, which I suppose is my thing here. I included Seattle to protect our honor.

Atlanta MSA, 2018 ACS: 3.0% transit, 1.3% walk, 0.2% bike (maybe 3% and 1.9% in the 2011 chart?)

Seattle MSA, 2018 ACS: 10.7% transit, 4.1% walk, 1.1% bike (the chart looks like about 9% transit and 4.8% for the last two?)

[C.]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Suburban Atlanta does have that city in a forest feel. I think that's why many are drawn to it. Very green and offers good privacy. Suburban Chattanooga and other cities and towns in the Piedmont/ Southern Appalachian area have that same set up.

The best way for the city to increase density would be to start with the immediate core area ( maybe place the connector underground, though it's fun to drive through with the skyline in view despite shitty traffic) and build around the transit nodes near MARTA stations, similar to what DC is doing with the metro out into it's suburbs in NoVA and Maryland.

Atlanta has all of the ills of city living AND that of suburban living with none of the benefits. I do like Atlanta culture but the physical layout of the city is just pathetic from someone that likes to walk/take transit to work.

[Gordo]

dup

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by mhays

Overusing the "HQ2" concept here. Microsoft hasn't said that. And even the biggest projections show Atlanta's office (in many years) at half the current size of the HQ.

If there's are "HQ2s" for Microsoft it's Bay Area (more than 20k employees there when including LinkedIn and Github), one of the India offices, or Dublin.

It is notable that they're building an engineering office in Atlanta though. Typically when you see cities touting a Microsoft/Google/FB/Apple office of some type it's a sales or operations office moreso than product development (even in places like NYC or Austin), but this is a legit engineering center. It's nice to see some expansion of that type of work outside of Bay Area/Seattle for these companies.

[mhays]

Yes, it's notable. But 20,000 or 30,000 people just isn't on the scale of the HQ. In Amazon's case, at least the original 50,000-worker concept was almost on the main HQ's scale.

[Labtec]

Originally Posted by mhays

Overusing the "HQ2" concept here. Microsoft hasn't said that. And even the biggest projections show Atlanta's office (in many years) at half the current size of the HQ.

PS here are some updated commute stats, which I suppose is my thing here. I included Seattle to protect our honor.

Atlanta MSA, 2018 ACS: 3.0% transit, 1.3% walk, 0.2% bike (maybe 3% and 1.9% in the 2011 chart?)

Seattle MSA, 2018 ACS: 10.7% transit, 4.1% walk, 1.1% bike (the chart looks like about 9% transit and 4.8% for the last two?)

They haven't said that but I'm just going by what someone told me who has knowledge on the project. He said when it's all done the projections are 20K to 30K employees in West Midtown and Atlantic Station + datacenters.

Airbnb recently opened a large office/tech hub as well. https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-annou...technical-hub/

The reason Atlanta is attractive for these tech companies is because a combination of Georgia Tech (one of the best engineering schools) is in Midtown and also all the Historically Black Colleges in the city. These tech companies want to recruit more minorities for positions because of the stereotype that all they do is hire White and Asian males.

Atlanta is #7 in total transit ridership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_by_ridership
63,998,500 annually (just for the subway). Which far outpaces other southeastern cities.

[mhays]

No, that's just "rapid transit."

Also, it's just individual agencies.

[hammersklavier]

Atlanta has several strengths and weaknesses that make it almost unique in the Sunbelt. Its biggest strength is that it has been the Deep South's dominant urban area for a very long time, and with that comes an older and more resilient kind of urbanism than one sees in cities like Phoenix or Las Vegas. In practice, this means that Atlanta has (1) a large and well-connected urban core and (2) a preponderance of urban nodes surrounding this core. Not only that, but Atlanta is rapidly densifying in and around its existing urban nodes. There are entire reasonably urban neighborhoods, such as "Blandtown" (heh) and the area around the Historic Fourth Ward Park, that look either entirely new or substantially rebuilt in the last decade. So in terms of urban form, Atlanta is kind of underappreciated; not only that, it is also improving. Frankly, Atlanta almost certainly has the largest tract of contiguous walkability anywhere in the South, and from what I can tell its walkability in the inner city is lowkey on par with Denver.

However, Atlanta's biggest weakness is transportation. There are two overlapping problems here. The first is that Atlanta tried to be a car-oriented place in terrain that doesn't really favor car orientation. This is what gives rise to its infamous disconnectedness and its trying to treat two-lane roads like suburban arterials. This is also a much more significant problem to the city's northwest. The older parts of the metro are significantly more connected and include an interesting matrix of leafy bungalow neighborhoods surrounded by densifying commercial corridors. The second problem is that Atlanta utterly disregards its other transportation system, one which already links the city center with most if not all of its historic secondary nodes and one which would offer the city a far stronger skeleton for intensification were it not entirely given over to freight. Atlanta very badly needs a Japanese or European style regional rail system, and it has the infrastructure already in place to handle it.

And of course there is the Interstates 75 and 85 corridor, a scar so large that it shears Downtown, Midtown, and the Georgia Tech environs all from one another. It is at least a block wide at all times and there are four large interchanges which create entire neighborhood-size holes in Atlanta's urban fabric. Right now, Atlanta does not feel like it has a contiguous urban fabric so much as "islands of urbanity" and I lay the blame for that entirely on that highway. It makes it difficult to perceive Atlanta's inner city for what it is. Something clearly has to be done to make that highway less of an obstruction in Atlanta's urban fabric.

[Tuckerman]

An excellent summary by hammersklavier!!
This is an excellent summary of some of the key issues in the development of an “urban” Atlanta. One point that offers hope for a more “standard” urban fabric is the possibility of building a park like cover over the I75/85 connector in the area between downtown and upper midtown. This is being quite seriously considered at this time. In addition the high growth and densification of the “Westside” (the other side of the connector from Midtown) has spurred this thinking. Highly instrumental in this breach of the connector was the repurposing of the Atlantic steel mill into the Atlantic Station complex and the construction of the 17th St Bridge. Thus the potential for a far larger central area of high density combining downtown, Midtown and the Westside seems highly likely in years to come. Add to this the growth of two large educational institutions, Georgia State University and Georgia Tech, that are contributing significantly to the tightening up of the central Atlanta area. Finally the long Peachtree St. corridor between Midtown and Buckhead is also getting more and more dense.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

Frankly, Atlanta almost certainly has the largest tract of contiguous walkability anywhere in the South, and from what I can tell its walkability in the inner city is lowkey on par with Denver.

I've walked all over downtown and midtown Atlanta and have yet to see any "tract of contiguous walkability". Downtown is mostly pedestrian hostile parking garage/Peachtree Center Portman world, and Midtown is mostly random condo towers in a streetcar suburb. Neither are pleasant for pedestrians. Peachtree isn't a pedestrian friendly street, and that's the primary corridor. Where are these nodes?

Also, New Orleans, by a longshot, is the most walkable city in the south. Charleston and Savannah are also very walkable.

Also disagree about transportation. Atlanta has the best transit in the South, by far.

[liat91]

Midtown seemed decently walkable over a large area to me. Nothing random about it, especially considering it’s a southern city.

Downtown needs sprucing up in its urban form, but I think that’s actually happening.

The West Side is being built up now and hopefully some taller buildings go up on the east side once midtown is sufficiently built out. Imo nothing more should go up in Buckhead, other than enlarging the village area a bit.

[cabasse]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I've walked all over downtown and midtown Atlanta and have yet to see any "tract of contiguous walkability". Downtown is mostly pedestrian hostile parking garage/Peachtree Center Portman world, and Midtown is mostly random condo towers in a streetcar suburb. Neither are pleasant for pedestrians. Peachtree isn't a pedestrian friendly street, and that's the primary corridor. Where are these nodes?

Also, New Orleans, by a longshot, is the most walkable city in the south. Charleston and Savannah are also very walkable.

Also disagree about transportation. Atlanta has the best transit in the South, by far.

when, crawford? your depiction of atlanta seems at least 10 years old. the differences in midtown especially between then and now are fairly substantial. not a lot of height added but quite a few new buildings nonetheless, most with streetfront retail.