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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.
— The Conversation
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... View full entry
Following last week’s visit to Portland-based Skylab Architecture, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Atlanta, GA this week to meet multidisciplinary boutique studio House Walker. Led by Hank Houser and Gregory Walker, the firm has expanded from its 2004 founding to encompass a... View full entry
According to a new study by storage space marketplace StorageCafe, four of the top five most active downtown areas for new apartment construction are in the South, with Atlanta, Georgia ranking first for built downtown apartments over the past ten years. The city yielded over... View full entry
The School of Architecture at Georgia Tech University has announced the appointment of Ingeborg Rocker as its new Chair and William Harrison Professor of Architecture effective September 1st. Rocker joins Georgia Tech after working in the software industry and holding separate academic positions... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled the design for One Centennial Yards, the first ground-up tower at the Foster + Partners and Perkins&Will-designed Centennial Yards master plan in Downtown Atlanta. Envisioned in partnership with Atlanta’s Goode Van Slyke Architecture (GVSA)... View full entry
Highly popular due to their location and vibrant amenities, urban neighborhoods around the country have seen a boom in new apartments in the last five years. In fact, the top 20 most active neighborhoods — led by Downtown Los Angeles — have delivered a staggering 80,000 brand new rental units. — RentCafe
Downtown Los Angeles’ 10,136 new dwellings were followed by a distant second Midtown Atlanta, which had 5,936, and the formerly working-class Hunters Point neighborhood in far western Queens, which trailed Atlanta by a few hundred at 5,423. Los Angeles is currently looking to add more than... View full entry
Foster + Partners has unveiled details of their master plan for the Centennial Yards site in Downtown Atlanta. Designed in collaboration with Perkins+Will, the project forms part of a $5 billion transformation of former parking lots and railyards into a regenerated mixed-use development. The... View full entry
A new mixed-use high-rise development designed by Olson Kundig is currently under construction along Atlanta’s BeltLine. Led by developer New City, LLC, 760 Ralph McGill Boulevard is a 1.1 million-square-foot project that includes office space and street-level retail organized around a central... View full entry
Through its master planning effort for Atlanta’s Freedom Park, SWA Group is participating in "Flowering Forest – A Tree Tribute to Civil Rights Leader John Lewis," a collaborative, living memorial to the late Congressman and Civil Rights leader, to be located in the park. John Lewis... View full entry
Monica Obniski, the current 20th and 21st Century Design curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum, has been selected to lead curatorial efforts for the decorative arts and design at the High Museum in Atlanta. According to a High Museum press release, Obniski will oversee exhibitions and programs... View full entry
This intertwined history of infrastructure and racial inequality extended into the 1950s and 1960s with the creation of the Interstate highway system.
As in most American cities in the decades after the Second World War, the new highways in Atlanta—local expressways at first, then Interstates—were steered along routes that bulldozed “blighted” neighborhoods that housed its poorest residents, almost always racial minorities.
— The New York Times
Writing in The New York Times, Kevin M. Kruse connects the dots between highway planning and America's historical campaign to keep African Americans "in their place," an impetus that can be traced back to slavery and its modern day manifestations: segregation, urban... View full entry
The library, which opened in 1980, has been undergoing needed interior repairs and upgrades since last summer. But changing Breuer’s historic facade has been a point of contention since architecture firm Cooper Carry proposed cutting holes into the building to make way for the windows. — Curbed Atlanta
After an Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System survey found that 72 percent of participants "were interested in seeing more windows added to the building," it was insisted to become a reality. Naturally, with such an iconic building, there was cause for concern. The renovations are estimated to... View full entry
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has unveiled $1.6 million in grant funding dedicated to preserving historical sites that demonstrate significance with relation to Black history and African American cultural heritage from around the country. The funding, part of a larger, multi-year... View full entry
The Urban Food Forest would include edible trees, shrubs, vines, walking trails, community garden beds and a number of other features that would be open to the public for free. — The Hill
The Conservation Fund is working in southeast Atlanta to help create a new 7.1 acre Community Urban Food Forest, the largest in the country. The effort aims to convert an existing agricultural property into a new model for urban park and forestry initiatives by growing a variety of fresh foods... View full entry
Portman was a pioneer of the devices with which somber modernism was given glitz: mirror-glass, wall-climbing glass lifts, sky bridges, swooping curves. He described some gaudy candelabra he put around a piano stage in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis as a “homage to Liberace”. His buildings became known for their “Jesus moments”, those times when, emerging from a deliberately understated entry into some architectural emulation of the Grand Canyon, a visitor would reliably exclaim, “Jesus!” — The Guardian
Rowan Moore pens a piece on the lasting impact of the late John Portman's other-worldly buildings in Atlanta, which were known for eliciting “Jesus moments” from surprised visitors and also described as “Disneyland for adults” by less-impressed critics. View full entry
