The metro Atlanta region emerged as a national economic bright spot in recent decades. Population growth has boomed in Atlanta’s sprawling suburbs, fueling concerns over equity. The current vanguard of groups in the city are attempting to build with density while preserving affordable housing. Local planners believe that the BeltLine, a 22-mile-long pedestrian path, will reconnect communities and provide a bridge to the city’s future.
Financial and tech firms continue to flock toward metro Atlanta. This builds on the city’s strong logistics, entertainment and film, and health services industries.
Demand for quality housing in the region has become fierce, particularly in the city center.
“Atlanta is becoming a wider city,” said Nathaniel Smith, founder and chief equity officer at the Partnership for Southern Equity. “Now, whether we’ll be able to kind of balance that out and ensure that, you know, black folks don’t get pushed out … I’m not sure.”
In September 2022, the median home in the city of Atlanta was valued at about $400,000, according to Zillow’s Home Values Index. That price would be out of reach for the typical household in the city of Atlanta, which made about $64,179 annually in recent years. Rents also have ticked above the national median.
Some Atlanta locals believe ambitious urban redevelopment projects, such as the BeltLine, have contributed to fast-rising prices in the area.
The BeltLine is a 22-mile loop of walking and cycling trails built largely on abandoned rail lines and developed as a public-private partnership.
It was intended to connect different neighborhoods in the city with each other and to create, along the path, walkable communities where residents could access a variety of services without needing a car.
“We’ve put about $700 million into the BeltLine to date,” said Atlanta BeltLine Inc. CEO Clyde Higgs. “What we’ve seen is roughly an $8 billion private investment that has followed the BeltLine. That has caused a number of good things and also a number of pressures within the city of Atlanta.”
While the region evolves, a raft of community organizers are launching efforts to preserve housing affordability.
“It would have been great if we had an opportunity to secure more land earlier in the life of the BeltLine,” said Amanda Rhein, executive director of the Atlanta Land Trust, “because property values continue to increase in close proximity to the project.”
Watch the video to see how Atlanta plans to preserve housing affordability amid rapid growth.
Produced by: Carlos Waters
Additional Camera: Sydney Boyo
Graphics by: Jason Reginato, Alex Wood
Supervising Producer: Lindsey Jacobson
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The Rise Of Atlanta
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City is still stuck on old model that thinks public transit is connecting to suburbs that don't want or see the value of connecting. Meanwhile the surrounding Beltline nhoods where there is majority support and much higher chance of use for both work and recreationally have been shouting for light rail on Beltline to no avail. Until there is light rail on Beltline there is no public transit system worth scaling. The potential and value of Beltline rail transit is that it would have proved concept of a section of city where transportation mode from first hop to last hop would all have been seamlessly walkable in 5-15 mins. That would have been worth connecting to from suburbs. No brainer. But city decided to test your jogging skills by giving us 26 mile jogging path which they call the Beltline 😅😅😅 great. Now I'm working on my marathons smdh 😊
$4,800,000,000???
Seriously???
I live near the beltline. My property value has skyrocketed. My home is worth almost 4x what i bought it for 10 years ago.
They don't want to integrate. Why not expand MARTA transit system like how the Airport is an excellent experience! Better than JFK airport in NY!
Atlanta is a shithole
I feel bad for young people getting out of college looking for jobs. Also the United States pays their workers garbage. I work at a steel mill in Canada and make 120k as a labourer, the same job in the US makes less than half of my pay . If they’re such a top tier country they should pay their workers good fair wages.
What a waste of money.
As European, Pole, I can say it is just verry funny how Americans discovered… Sidewalks. 😂😂😂
The belt line was always a boondoggle – unless you're rich and white.
All I did was make the communities it touch more expensive for the people who already live there
imagine you're twisting yourselves into knots and ruining any chance of your city having any type of public transportation because you're too concerned about how many white people are moving downtown…🤡
It’s not just black families. Bro everyone is struggling. Go after the elites not races. You’ll never win the race battle
i grew up in NW ATL – Marietta and now live in the North East where the train system was established early and remains a reliable, safe, and clean mode of transit – this keeps cars off the road. I recently returned to ATL and took Marta from the airport to the Arts Center – the overall experience on the train was repulsive. The over powering odor of feces and urine combined w constantly being asked for $ made for an unpleasant commute. I may have been uninformed as a youth but I recall MARTA attempted to extend its lines to reach further outside the city limits but it was always voted down by the suburbs who were afraid of the crime during the mid / late 70's. Looking back if the MARTA lines were established early the traffic issues around ATL would be different. The growth in population and the lack of (safe / clean) mass transit demands residents to have a vehicle. Most vehicles on the road have 1 person in them. When a city has 16 wide lanes and still has a traffic issue then you have to look at the poor planning decisions the city made decades ago.
Wealth rich country have no work to do their money so they building pathway ,millions of people are dieing because their country has no money 😂
improving the area
Walkability is a great idea but when you restrict it to a thin loop around the city of course property values are going to skyrocket near it.
World's most expensive sidewalk.
Looks like a good place to get mugged!
Sidewalks GTHOH
Man these white liberal democrats need to stay on the west coast. Using public funds for everything always ends in economic disaster.
If people could PLEASE STOP MOVING HERE, yeah that’d be great..
If you don't tax the hell out of the rich, you'll never have enough money to take care of everything properly. The rich bribe politicians to give them tax breaks and other benefits to profit more and more and more. This is the problem and it's easily remedied if politicians were honest.
Relative has the Buckhead path coming right beside her house ,and the powers that be won't give her a decent privacy fence, so she'll be looking at both vagrants, Ga400 and the garbage to come. Graffiti already on the new concrete walls.
Forget applying the European model to America. Cars are here to stay, America's much more spread out than EU, and mass transit (sorry, last time we rode Marta, we were being stared down as possible victims, so never again) will not work. America's a horizontal land, not vertical, except in rare urban cities (how's that subway crime working for ya, NYC?) and nobody's getting a do-over.
Lived in the walkway, outside the walkway , studied it all since the beginning and still don't know what it is or what people hope for it to be. I don't get it ????
So much homelessness in the city of Atlanta and surrounding areas and you guys are spending$5,000,000,000 for this Wow It's all about the money it truly isn't about the people
4.8 billion for a walking path. How much of that went to kickbacks and greasy palms. What a waste of tax money