Atlanta’s car-centric center, through a visitor’s eyes
An urbanist blogger from Savannah visited Atlanta earlier this year and shared some thoughts about the startling presence of car infrastructure (and lack of pedestrians) in the middle of the city.
A quote:
…notice how much real estate is given over to temporarily storing cars. And, this is a city with a fairly robust rail transit system. MARTA certainly has its flaws, but as the last true subway/heavy rail system built in America, it’s more than most cities have.
To be fair, he’s coming from a city that has one of the most walkable districts in the US, so Atlanta’s bound to be a strong contrast. And he doesn’t mention (or maybe doesn’t know) that there are lots of spots not far from here with a nice amount of pedestrian activity, particularly in my downtown Fairlie-Poplar area and the Peachtree Street corridor further north of the spot pictured above.
Nonetheless, I think he raises some solid points about many central parts of the city containing too damn much car infrastructure via parking facilities and highway on/off ramps. This patch south of North Avenue in particular is a real dead zone, something I’ve noticed many times myself on my regular walks through here.
I’d love to see Atlanta leaders focus on lessening the impact of cars on this area.


