A plan of Atlantic Station from atlanticstation.comAtlantic Station has been the subject of a decent amount of debate in some of my classes, especially the city planning class that I took last semester, and I've been hearing a lot of conflicting opinions and ideas about the development since I've been in Atlanta, and only recently have I been starting to form a concrete opinion about it. First off, some more details about the place: since the developers started off with basically a barren wasteland, they could plan Atlantic Station as they wanted, with no real geographical boundaries besides the home park neighborhood to the south and the Interstate 75/85 connector to the East. They way that it is planned makes a lot of sense, with some traditional 'city blocks' in the heart of the district and some more wide open areas with pedestrian-friendly tree-lined streets and a small lake in the more residential areas.
It has some serious problems though, and I think someone in my city planning class put it well when they called it 'intown sprawl.' The location of this place is very important--it has no real link to the public transportation system of the city besides a rather unreliable 'shuttle' that runs from the outskirts of the development to the arts center MARTA station. This fact, which many folks may consider meaningless, makes the residential part of Atlantic Station nearly off-limits to lower-income people who cannot afford cars, which may have led to an unnecessary gentrification and social separation commonly found in wealthier suburban areas.
The design of the buildings is spectacularly unoriginal and could be found anywhere else in the country, and the huge underground parking deck with subsidized parking further adds to the notion of 'intown sprawl' because visitors are actually being encouraged to bring their cars to the development, despite the fact that the website labels it as 'pedestrian-oriented' and 'transit focused'. The whole development added a huge amount of traffic to that section of town, and now the home park neighborhood is having to make some street changes to prevent the traffic jams from extending into it. Meanwhile, there are still large surface parking lots in downtown and midtown Atlanta, where residential or green space could be added to increase the density and beauty of the city.
So what do I think about all of this? I think I agree with my history teacher, who said that it needs more time to change and become more personal and real, much like the old neighborhoods in Atlanta like Inman park or Virginia Highlands. Although it is a place for people to live with fancy apartment complexes and classy retail stores, I would never consider it a real neighborhood; I think of it more like a shopping mall with apartments nearby--a little piece of suburbia in the middle of a big city, complete with massive big-box stores (Ikea) that are usually found outside of the city and make walking difficult because of the sheer amount of space that they take up. It has no local flavor--you could pick up the whole complex and put it in just about any city in America, and it would look fine, and the locals would recognize 90% of the chain retail stores.
I have some issues with this, and it is definitely not a place that I would ever live, mostly because it's just too fake. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist and prefer and old-style neighborhood with small businesses, a market, and a post office, much like some of the neighborhoods in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. However, I will admit that Atlantic Station is definitely an improvement on what was there before, which was essentially an environmental hazard and eyesore for the city of Atlanta.
PS: A few new French cheeses to add to my list.
Boursault
Reblochon
Tomme Blanche
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