Framing Atlanta’s BeltLine as a font for gentrification

2023-02-03T13:22:00-05:00

Although the BeltLine was designed to connect Atlantans and improve their quality of life, it has driven up housing costs on nearby land and pushed low-income households out to suburbs with fewer services than downtown neighborhoods. The BeltLine has become a prime example of what urban scholars call “green gentrification” – a process in which restoring degraded urban areas by adding green features drives up housing prices and pushes out working-class residents.

Atlanta’s in-progress 22-mile-long urban greenway is often cited alongside New York’s High Line and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park as developments that spurred displacement in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a concern echoed by opponents of the LA River Master Plan in recent years.

Georgia State University Professor of Urban Studies Dan Immergluck points to the BeltLine’s under-delivery of affordable housing in areas where property values exploded after its TIF was adopted in 2005 as its main flaw. The “urban regime” initiative to lure tech and other high-paying companies using tax incentives is also a factor. Between 1990 and 2019, Atlanta lost one-fifth (receding from 67% to 48%) of its Black population due to gentrification.

New leadership is attempting to address the issue through inclusionary zoning. Meanwhile, the BeltLine's CEO Clyde Higgs has admitted to past oversights and says they are now tracking the problem proactively in order to identify areas that “may re...

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Framing Atlanta’s BeltLine as a font for gentrification