The New York Times has an infuriating story out about the Atlanta Beltline, the biggest thing to hit Atlanta since John Portman drove old dixie down to build Peachtree Center.
Based on response to the story when it the Times created a link to it on Facebook, I’m not alone.
The issue is “gentrification,” the process of new money coming into central cities and old lack of money being pushed out. I’ve been watching it most of my life, from my Craftsman bungalow at the east edge of Kirkwood.
It’s a good thing.
When I moved to our house back in 1983, neighbors called us the first white couple south of the tracks since integration. It was the tail end of a brutal real estate recession, made worse by white flight, which turned the area we bought in from all-white to all-black within months of the Open Housing Act being enforced.
These were the true Greatest Generation, proud working-class people who were the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights era, who were now building lives, families, and legacies. They raised me, and grew me from a bigoted boy into something, if not good, then better than I was.
The racists, however, are still around. They started fleeing in 1968 and they’re still running. They’ve gone all the way to the state borders on the north and west. They write about how places like Dallas, Hiram, Woodstock, and Ellijay attract “families with clean country air.” Bullshit. They attract it with insular, nearly all-white cul de sacs and stroads leading to sterile chains and franchises. Don’t pretend otherwise.
To the racists they’re the doughnut, and we’re the hole. The state’s politics reflect that. But with gentrification the hole gets its revenge.
Atlanta Gentry Evolution
Atlanta could have become Detroit. We could have become Cleveland, or Birmingham. We didn’t, thanks first to our airport. It’s where the salesman met an engineer and partnered up to build a business. In time employees built their lives around these businesses and some sought homes close to work.
In the late 20th century, white “yuppies” (now grandpies) hewed to the color line, building up the northeast side from Inman Park north to Buckhead. Intown grew where it was backed up by a solid middle class base further out or (even better) a city that could be turned white quickly, with its own schools and cops. (Think Decatur.) Eventually this development moved south and west, toward downtown, but run-down warehouses were a gap of crime it couldn’t cross.
The Beltline bridged that gap.
The Story They Missed
E-Transport taught developers you didn’t have to build a freeway to get density sold. You could do it with a bike path and parks. While Kirkwood, Edgewood, and Reynoldstown were built by people buying cheap houses, renovating them, and taking a stake in the area, the new gentrification looks different.
Private equity bought nearly all the houses on the south and west side, tearing down collections of them to build apartment blocks fenced in from their neighbors like medieval castles. These are now being linked to each other with bike trails, not just the Beltline but the Beltline Connector, the Silver Comet Connector, and on and on.
Post-Beltline gentrification in places like West Midtown and Summerhill isn’t organic. It’s also, for the most part, for rent and not for sale.
Also, we still have color lines because nothing segregates like property taxes.
Summerhill was once the home of the Braves. They left Turner Field in the last decade for $1 billion in free land and tax credits, plus another billion in freeway improvements. (That’s another story.) Georgia State University took over the area, turning the old stadium into a football palace, building dorms and a basketball arena, making plans to fill in the rest with academic buildings.
John Smoltz and Tom Glavine wouldn’t recognize the place. Georgia Avenue is now lined with fancy bars, restaurants, and stores. (There’s even a Publix nearby.) White Bros are now looking avidly at the little houses to its south and east, places that were “no go” signs when the Braves were still at Turner Field.
The Limits of Gentrification
Growth doesn’t come from stadiums, or freeways. Folks with money don’t want to live in the noise. That’s where the ghettoes are growing. That’s where the color line, now a war of class against class, continues to exist. It’s an arc around most of I-285, the exceptions being skyscraper “Edge Cities” that house executives and separate the nearby neighborhoods from the roar of the crowd.
Growth comes from education and from research. The growth engines of the 21st century Atlanta economy are Emory University, Georgia Tech and Georgia State.
But there’s still a color line.
Near Summerhill, it’s the Downtown Connector. Mechanicsville and Pittsburgh, neighborhoods to the west of the Connector, have homes that look as attractive as any in Inman Park. But renovate at your own risk and build a fence that hides your car as well as your cat. Because poverty and crime are still where the heads of your neighbors live and the Greatest Generation is dead.
The real story of gentrification in the 2020s is about how capital builds great, protected castles, while the middle class is stuck with rentals and doing risky business outside those walls. I don’t know how this will play out because I’m now on my way out. But if the Times were serious about looking around corners, about finding the future, that’s where they’d go.
The Beltline is old news.
