“Can the Beltline save Atlanta?” That’s the question that the Guardian asked a few weeks back regarding whether the city’s planned 22-mile network of trails, transit and parks connecting 45 Atlanta neighborhoods will mitigate one of the country’s largest cases of urban sprawl. But perhaps the more poignant question—and the one that is central to our research on green gentrification—is for whom? If the Beltline saves Atlanta, who will reap the benefits?
The disinvestment of Atlanta’s urban core as well as its status as the most segregated Southern city in the country, has left Atlanta as the perfect canvas for gentrification. Our research has shown that time after time, in cities like Boston, Houston, or Barcelona, large-scale redevelopment projects involving new green amenities have excluded minorities or poor residents while touting their efforts to improve the livability of the city. Although in the Guardian article the author does not call out gentrification by name, he does address the issue of affordable housing, saying the Beltline’s promises of affordable housing have come up short. Yet the question of who this affordable housing is for is one that is missing and ultimately the most important.
First, the fact that affordable housing is based on a percentage of the city’s median income does little for people living in many of the neighborhoods on the Beltline’s path, which are among the poorest in Atlanta. The vast majority of people living in these neighborhoods will not benefit from affordable housing because they are simply too poor to afford them. Using city-wide median income as a benchmark does not take into account the distribution of income in the city. Atlanta, and many other American cities, is segregated by both race and by income, meaning that the gap between those living in the poorest neighborhoods and those living in the wealthiest neighborhoods is so large that simply taking the median does not account for the inequity.
Secondly, policies to create new “affordable” housing do not protect those currently living in gentrifying neighborhoods. Atlanta’s rich history as one of the nation’s first cities to see a free black community settle and thrive in the years after the civil war, means that many black families living in these neighborhoods actually own their own homes—or did, before the recession of 2008—, and has made home ownership a source of pride and a legacy of Atlanta’s black community. Yet the rate at which prices are rising along the Beltline means that property prices for these residents may exceed their ability to maintain their homes. Ironically, these same families are those who have stayed in the center of the city through decades of sub-urbanization, maintaining the “urban form” that others claim has been lost.
Improvements made to neighborhoods adjacent to the proposed Beltline include those that residents have been requesting for decades- flood control, the promise of better transit, and general economic investment. In addition, the Beltline project provides opportunity for active transportation, and more open and green space. It is no doubt that the Beltline is changing Atlanta, but we must also consider whether the benefits of these improvements reach those who need them most, or whether they may simply exacerbate the racial and social inequity that already exist in the city.
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Top photo: Atlanta Beltline with midtown skyline.
