The city of Atlanta is heating up.
Goodbye, Silicon Valley and hello, Atlanta.
The fintech and payments industry, it's continued to
explode. The other piece is the creative industry.
As newcomers flood into north Georgia, many are choosing to
live near this.
The BeltLine is one of the largest urban redevelopment
projects underway in the United States.
Housing prices along the BeltLine's path have crept
upward in recent years, most notably on Atlanta's south,
west, and southwest sides.
What we've seen is roughly an $8 billion private investment
that has followed the BeltLine.
So you're talking about 11 to 1 return on public investment.
I saw the value of a loop that could connect poor and affluent
communities. Little did I know that other people had different
plans.
This is a story of what could have been and to some degree a
call to other cities to not repeat some of the same
mistakes.
What role did this path play in shaping modern Atlanta, and how
is the city making more space for millions of inbound
workers? Atlanta is a leading city in
what scholars call the New South.
There is roughly 500,000 citizens within the city of
Atlanta. It's a really rich place to find talent,
innovation and research here.
The whole region benefits from that.
Growth in the Metro has really outpaced the city's growth.
From 2000 to 2020, we've gone from about 4 million people to
about 6 million.
It's spread out over 29 counties.
That has taxed the region kind of environmentally because we
don't have a mass transit system that covers that whole
metropolitan area.
We're starting to see more people transition to the edges
of this city. Not everyone can afford to stay in the city
proper limits.
I think there are a confluence of things that have caused that
growth. You know, it being in the media, whether it be
through hip hop or in popular culture, has also attracted
many people to this city.
With this groundwork in place, Atlanta built up a civilian
labor force of around 3.2 million people.
Huge names like UPS, Coca Cola, the CDC, the Home Depot
and Delta Airlines have headquarters in the area.
So Atlanta is just winning because of that diversity of
corporations that that are located here.
Experts believe that Metro Atlanta's population will
continue to climb.
If you believe the reports, we expect that the Atlanta region
is going to add almost another 3 million people to the area.
And we believe that the BeltLine has a role to play
from a density perspective in being able to receive the new
population.
The BeltLine is a massive community space for walkers and
people on wheels.
We are essentially repurposing a mostly abandoned railroad to
create this 22 mile loop literally in the city of
Atlanta.
So basically it'll connect all these neighborhoods that
haven't really been connected by foot before.
We use it in a practical sense.
We use it to jog and to come out and get some air.
It was the idea of a graduate student at Georgia Tech named
Ryan Gravel. There are miles and miles of multi-use trails
that are complete. There are many parks that have been
constructed across the BeltLine.
What we have seen is extraordinary growth coming
alongside the BeltLine, but also the creativity that comes
along with it. It's an extraordinary asset here and we
are just finishing the funding for the full 22 mile loop,
which means now it can be finished and built out.
The BeltLine is a public-private partnership.
In this arrangement, the government provides funding and
benefits to businesses that invest in the project.
What we're trying to do is create what I describe as whole
communities. And so this means that you'll be able to access a
job, housing, a grocery store, medical facilities, educational
facilities, all in specific geographic areas where you
don't have to get in a car.
The group behind the BeltLine hopes to connect the loop to
the MARTA system and also build miles of safe streets in
its path. The project is expected to be complete by
2030. Huge swaths of the BeltLine are still in
construction, but the project has already left its mark on
the city.
I think it was a great idea in terms of connecting
neighborhoods.
I saw the value of a loop that could connect poor and affluent
communities and really create a more inclusive city.
Little did I know that other people had different plans.
Just as the BeltLine was being talked about and written about
in 2003 and 2004, single family home values were were
going up a lot right near the BeltLine.
A lot of money was made just by people holding on to vacant
homes.
And as a result, there has been a significant amount of
gentrification.
We roughly have put about $700 million into the BeltLine to
date. What we've seen is roughly an $8 billion private
investment that has followed the BeltLine.
So you're talking about 11 to 1 return on public investment.
And so that has caused a number of good things and also
a number of pressures within the city of Atlanta.
Here's one example.
We're investing in Atlanta.
We're growing in Georgia.
Microsoft is building a 90-acre campus on the west side of
Atlanta.
It's actually going to be very close to a MARTA station and
very close to the west side trail of the BeltLine.
We secured a 31-acre site, literally a stone's throw away
from where the new Microsoft campus will be.
That land will be in public hands.
And then we can curate something that really makes
sense for that legacy community.
You know, when you, for example, are a company like a
Microsoft, for example, that is bringing in, at a minimum,
jobs that pay over six figures, but yet, you know, the
median income for a Black family in this city is a little
over $22,000 a year.
Then there's a huge disconnect in whether these families will
be able to compete for these jobs.
Nathaniel Smith was initially a part of the team that planned
the BeltLine, but he parted ways with the project.
I felt that the BeltLine was moving in the wrong direction.
And both Ryan and I, we both resigned and we decided to pen
a letter that really spoke to the inequities that we saw.
The BeltLine has delivered on some goals like bringing people
together. The path typically records 2 million visits per
year.
And the project has also had an impact on the cost of housing.
That's partly because land is becoming more expensive in
Atlanta.
It became a public-private real estate project and a place to
make money and to speculate instead of a place to provide
transit and to provide public space.
Home values in southwest Atlanta soared by more than
300% from 2013 to 2021, according to Dan Immergluck.
The southwest Atlanta story is kind of a heartbreaking story.
A Black neighborhood, low income that had been
disinvested, redlined.
People had lived through that.
Their kids had lived through that.
And then here comes the BeltLine raising values.
But they're not able to benefit from it because they
lost their homes in foreclosure. That resulted in a
big shift in wealth away from working and middle class
families of color to private equity and Wall Street-backed
investors. So I think that was a deleterious transition.
As the city got more expensive and rents went up, myself and
other families like me tended to move towards south of the
city where the prices were a little more affordable at that
time. They're not that affordable anymore.
Since then, groups like the Atlanta Land Trust formed with
the goal of stabilizing at-risk people in the
community.
So today we are, to some extent, playing catch up.
And it would have been great if we had an opportunity to
secure more land earlier in the life of the BeltLine
because property values continue to increase in close
proximity to the project.
In the land trust model, homeowners purchase the
structure and sign a lease for the land.
As the value of the land rises, the group uses the
profits to support low income buyers.
I was actually the first recipient of a land trust home
with the Atlanta Land Trust, and with that program we were
able to afford a home.
It really reduced the price of a home.
Makeisha Robey, a former teacher, says owning her home
has provided the stability to pursue a career as an
entrepreneur. Atlanta, like many other cities, has tried to
encourage land developers to build more affordable housing
with limited success.
Locals say more can be done.
For example, the city could make inclusive zoning
mandatory. It could also tax commercial properties more to
pay for better city services.
We don't have the perfect answer yet, but there are a
number of institutions here that are working on it,
including the BeltLine.
Atlanta feels this responsibility to really make
sure that we retain this culture.
If we wash that out, you know, we could be any other city.
The leaders of Metro Atlanta expect to welcome more jobs and
people in the coming years.
If we are intentional about how we grow and grow in places
where the infrastructure already exists, it will allow
for us to provide better services to all of those
citizens, particularly as it relates to public
transportation.
Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the world.
A regional transit system would connect low wealth
communities to opportunities on the north side.
The challenge is that the north side has constantly
pushed back against MARTA.
If you walk around the city, the state of the sidewalks in
the city is horrendous.
It's one of the worst cities for biking.
These are all things that growth in the city's land
values should have benefited and haven't.
And yet, the city is constantly talking about being
in a state of austerity, not being able to hire policemen.
The schools are constantly in budget constraints.
It doesn't make sense.
This perpetual lack of investment builds upon wider
racial gaps in Atlanta, measured in both income and
assets.
We cannot address issues of income inequality or economic
immobility if we do not focus on the southeast.
Think about the top cities that constantly get cited for
these challenges: Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami.
We see that they're significantly pronounced in the
southeast.
Despite these concerns, which afflicts cities around the
country, Atlanta is moving forward with confidence.
We certainly are experiencing those inflationary pressures
that are here, but we have so many other assets that balance
that out.
One of the things that we have stood up is a BeltLine
marketplace. If you are a small business, if you can just
convert just a small percentage of that foot
traffic, you're going to do well.
There are some areas of the city that really haven't been
looked at for a while, so it's good to see sidewalks being
built, like green spaces being built.
And really that is really helpful.