Elements of Urbanism: Buckhead & Midtown Atlanta

[Overstreet]

No, I don't.  Our version of "Midtown" would be the Southbank or Brooklyn/Riverside Ave.

Or Beaver street between the railroad and I-95. MidTown had some industry in it too and run down housing.

[billy]

I believe (could be wrong) that the boundaries of midtown were North Avenue, 14th Street
Monroe or Charles Allen (sic) and 75/85.
Buckhead was supposed to be defined by Peachtree, Piedmont and Lindbergh but the implied boundaries expanded outwards so people could claim the label.

[tufsu1]

correct...downtown and midtown Atlanta are adjacent...North Avenue basically serves as the northern boundary of downtown.

[krw]

Hi.  Longtime lurker.  First time poster.  I have had family in Jacksonville for the last 20 years so I like to know what is going on.  As a 17-year resident of Atlanta, I felt I need to chime in.

First,  yes Downtown and Midtown are adjacent.  Downtown is officially 2-mi x 2-mi and is bounded by I-20 (south), Boulevard/Monroe Dr (east), North Ave (north) and Northside Dr (west).  Midtown is the 2-mi x 2-mi square just north - North Ave (south), Boulevard/Monroe Dr (east), Pershing Point/Brookwood Split (north) and Northside Dr (west).  Buckhead is essentially everything north of the Brookwood Split (75/85 split at 17th St), east of I-75 and north of I-85) - a big, big area. 

Essentially, think of Atlanta like Manhattan.  Manhattan has Downtown (Lower Manh.), Midtown and Uptown (Upper East and West sides).  Atlanta has Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead (our uptown).  Atlanta is probably one of the few cities (like New York) that has multiple CBDs within the city limits proper.

As to the poster who said that "downtown (Atlanta) is a mess."  I have to defend Atlanta on this one.  Yes downtown still struggles with life after 5p, but it has come a long way in this past decade.  I question how long ago that poster was last living and working in Atlanta.  There are more restaurants in downtown than there have been in the almost two decades I have lived here and probably longer than that that increasingly attract not just workers and tourists, but residents like me. 

Just last month, my wife and I went downtown on a Saturday night to eat dinner, go to the aquarium and look at the lights in Centennial Park.  The place was packed.  We had to wait for a table at Legal Seafoods (on a night with no conventions, big events in town).  The ice skating rink at the park had a long wait to get on the ice.  The whole scene would have been unheard of 15 years ago.  So downtown still has further to go and has its problems (some of which are similar to Jax's), but it has come a long way since I have been here.

[JFman00]

I was so curious if analysis had been done on the two neighborhoods in Atl I was primarily in this weekend on MJ and was not disappointed. The difference between Buckhead and Midtown could not have been more stark.

I was staying in Buckhead because it was cheaper, and was intensely disappointed by the design. The incoherent street layout, long driveways and auto/parking garage-centric main entrances reminded me much more of Deerwood/Town Center than an urban core. A perfect example that density and transit on their own are not sufficient ingredients for creating vibrant urban neighborhoods.

Midtown on the other hand, seemed like a very very promising neighborhood, with an easy to navigate grid system and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. As a first time visitor to Atlanta without a local guide, getting around Midtown both in car and on foot was entirely painless. Getting anywhere in Buckhead, regardless of transportation mode, would have been impossible without GPS (even with it, I drove by my hotel 3 times before turning down the right driveway).

I thought it worth bringing up again since these design and development results are for all intents and purposes set in stone. For better or worse, Atlanta is stuck with Buckhead as a "vertical suburb", whereas Midtown has the potential to be an easily accessible CBD or even a livable, walkable and vibrant urban neighborhood. Above all, we can't fixate on density, or fixed-rail, or a convention center, or eliminating the visibly homeless as a magic bullet. (re)Building sustainable, desirable neighborhoods takes a degree of coordination and vision that has to be maintained over the long-term, something this city seems to have struggled with. But with all the potential and history Jacksonville has, I'm optimistic.

[twojacks]

I too lived in Midtown during the early 80's.  The slogan was "much ado about Midtown".  When I looked around, it was very much like a run-down springfield and not all that much 'adoing'.  Yeah, it does look like it's been cleaned up and developed, but jeez, I hope we don't emulate the big city thinking that we need downtown IKEA's, and Starbucks, or any other national/international company to say we've made it.  Those big companies are big because they pay their workers squat.  That seems to be the current model of American capitalism. 

I'd much rather see greater development emulate the king and park street areas.  Local business hire locally and spend their money locally.  I think about that every time I get an hankering for Red Lobster.  Sure their cheezy biscuits are the bomb, but isn't my money being spent better at St. Johns Seafood?  When I think of desirable urban areas, two or three or four come to mind...dupont circle, south beach, san francisco, southsiide Pittsburgh, and Greenwich Village in NY.  My dream, would be that Jax grows its own entrepreneur class and opens hundreds of business, not owned by large corporations, but rather by my neighbors down the street.  Yeah, Jacksonville is the cat's meow in terms of the raw materials it has to work with...river, weather, beaches, etc. and I'd hate to see that sacrificed or overlooked by some entity that just only sees Jacksonville as a viable market to suck money out of the area, or hire hundreds at $8/hr.  Sky scrapers?  We probably have enough sorry to say.  I've read it before and I agree, that's not the kind of development we should be seeking at this time.  Fact, nothing in downtown D.C. is over 12 stories high and yet, no one would argue they need a sky scraper to denote their success.