Midtown Atlanta growth and development since 2010 (apartment complex, leasing, buy)

[dtyfygiu]

Originally Posted by ShenardL

Midtown was full of surface parking lots maybe 10 years ago, my friend from Manhattan came down and said the same thing back in 2011ish. He said where's all the people? But when he visited this past November, he said "Wow, what a change, I can picture myself living here" and now he's planning to move to Midtown.

Lol are you trolling? Midtown is still to this day filled with surface lots and parking garages. Nowadays the massive parking is just at the bottom of a new tower, which kills the streetscape. Midtown is still a pedestrian desert to this day. You might see a couple people walking (into a store and then back into their car), but its nothing like NYC lol. The far fringes of Queens and Brooklyn has triple the pedestrian traffic than Midtown. Even the ghetto dump, Brownsville, is lively and filled with people in the streets. Oh yeah and unrelated, lively streetscapes helps with crime. People are less brazen to do crimes with a bunch of witnesses.



But okay maybe I'm being to negative...I really like that new google building, love the lighting effects at night. Even though I hate the massive parking decks that anchor these new skyscrapers, its sure as hell better than a parking lot/vacant lot. Piedmont Park is amazing, its truly a great urban park on par with the greats like Central/Lincoln/Golden Gate/etc. Hope they keep improving in and letting it blend with the urban fabric. Oh and of course the whole beltline /PCM area is lovely. See Atlanta is doing some things right, just be smarter in other parts...

[MichiganderTexan]

Originally Posted by dtyfygiu

When we point things like this out (which are 100% factual) we get scolded saying we're Atlanta haters. No, Atlanta is a fine city. It's just that for a city/metro that is going to surpass Miami & Philly in population soon and join the big dogs, the streetscape is pathetic. This gets repeated alot but it really feels like Atlanta is a oversized suburb. How can people say Atlanta is a world class city when the core of the city is damn near dead?

This is pretty much true of every sunbelt city with the exception of Miami which is definitely not a traditional southern city. The Texas cities have this same problem with streetscape/core, Atlanta is doing no worse than them and they all have significantly higher populations than Atlanta with the exception of Austin.

[MichiganderTexan]

Originally Posted by primaltech

North Florida is. South Florida is not very southern. It's definitely not the cultural Deep South. It's Latin world, and New Yorkers. Not the land of good old country boys pulling up in a pickup truck and asking what y'all are fixin' to.

Massachusetts has a Republican governor. Is it part of the south? Lol, that doesn't have anything to do with it. When Georgia has a Democratic governor and both senators (which will happen soon- it already has 2 Democratic senators), that won't make it not a southern state. It's the heart of the Deep South.

This South Florida has nothing in common with the deep south.

[MichiganderTexan]

Originally Posted by dtyfygiu

Atlanta needs to liven up the city core. Do like Chicago does in the summertime and have festivals/events every single week in midtown/downtown. Get people to the city.

Not sure what you've been paying attention to Atlanta has festivals pretty frequently in the summertime. Maybe not every week but some type of event is going on close to it. I get the overall premise of your posts. It's unrealistic at this point to expect Atlanta to become something that it's not. Every sunbelt city pretty much has this same problem with the exception of South Florida. I don't think you can point to anything anyone else in the South including all of Texas is doing that's extraordinary when it comes to urban planning.

[waronxmas]

It's clear some of y'all don't know any Black folks from South Florida. Lol Also, plenty of Rednecks in South Florida as well.

Of course, the most important point, the South is not a monolith. Miami isn't special for having large immigrant population. Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas do as well with different groups of people.

[MichiganderTexan]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

It's clear some of y'all don't know any Black folks from South Florida. Lol Also, plenty of Rednecks in South Florida as well.

Of course, the most important point, the South is not a monolith. Miami isn't special for having large immigrant population. Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas do as well with different groups of people.

South Florida is not culturally like the deep south I don't see how anyone that's spent any significant amount of time there can really believe that. American black populations tend to trend more southern culturally even in some Northern cities like Chicago. If you think Atlanta's immigrant population compares to Miami in particular the Caribbean population I Don't know what to tell you.

[demonta4]

Originally Posted by dtyfygiu

Lol are you trolling? Midtown is still to this day filled with surface lots and parking garages. Nowadays the massive parking is just at the bottom of a new tower, which kills the streetscape. Midtown is still a pedestrian desert to this day. You might see a couple people walking (into a store and then back into their car), but its nothing like NYC lol. The far fringes of Queens and Brooklyn has triple the pedestrian traffic than Midtown. Even the ghetto dump, Brownsville, is lively and filled with people in the streets. Oh yeah and unrelated, lively streetscapes helps with crime. People are less brazen to do crimes with a bunch of witnesses.



But okay maybe I'm being to negative...I really like that new google building, love the lighting effects at night. Even though I hate the massive parking decks that anchor these new skyscrapers, its sure as hell better than a parking lot/vacant lot. Piedmont Park is amazing, its truly a great urban park on par with the greats like Central/Lincoln/Golden Gate/etc. Hope they keep improving in and letting it blend with the urban fabric. Oh and of course the whole beltline /PCM area is lovely. See Atlanta is doing some things right, just be smarter in other parts...

You say you're getting disagreement due to constructive criticism, but I don't see how any of this is constructive. We already know Midtown has a lot of parking. We're already filling in surface lots with residential, and we're already building bike lanes and have plans for removing even more car lanes from Midtown. None of this is new, and very little is constructive, you're (not just you but a ton of posters here) just ranting. That's fine, and I often go off about Atlanta too, but let's not ignore context and just how far we've come since 2010 to make criticisms our city is already getting over for the most part. Our metro is still mostly car, so of course, our urban areas won't look like NYC. We don't even have nearly the population to sustain that amount of street activity yet we still do better than Dallas and Houston because we actually try to improve things for pedestrians here.

[bryantm3]

What I'm upset with is the parking that's coming with all the new residential development, and the focus on luxury-only apartments. The subway line only goes so many places in Atlanta. They are just moving in more people who have the luxury not to take the train.

The development in midtown has not been for people who live in the city, it's been exclusively for rich suburbanites who want an "urban destination" to go to— meanwhile, the people who these devlopments have displaced now live far, far away from the train lines in ramshackled apartment complexes scattered all over the metro.

Old school intown residents lives weren't improved by any of this development, they were just moved away. Meanwhile the new midtown residents drive and the train ridership has gone down.

[demonta4]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

What I'm upset with is the parking that's coming with all the new residential development, and the focus on luxury-only apartments. The subway line only goes so many places in Atlanta. They are just moving in more people who have the luxury not to take the train.

The development in midtown has not been for people who live in the city, it's been exclusively for rich suburbanites who want an "urban destination" to go to— meanwhile, the people who these devlopments have displaced now live far, far away from the train lines in ramshackled apartment complexes scattered all over the metro.

Old school intown residents lives weren't improved by any of this development, they were just moved away. Meanwhile the new midtown residents drive and the train ridership has gone down.

We know by now that all new housing will be luxury, this has been the case for a decade now. Our main issue is not developing our areas away from the core. There are so many other MARTA stations that have terrible land use. Let's develop those to bridge this housing shortage we're in and improve density while doing it.

[chiatldal]

Originally Posted by MichiganderTexan

South Florida is not culturally like the deep south I don't see how anyone that's spent any significant amount of time there can really believe that. American black populations tend to trend more southern culturally even in some Northern cities like Chicago. If you think Atlanta's immigrant population compares to Miami in particular the Caribbean population I Don't know what to tell you.

My question why does that matter? How does Miami have larger Caribbean population makes it less "Southern". Even with that Atlanta is still much closer to Miami culturally then it is Vicksburg MS.

The problem with this the exemption creates the exemption. What I mean is I been on City data for a while so I seen this southern debate many times, I seen threads that FL, TX, Ok, LA, VA even NC being argue as not Southern enough. Which is Ironic because if you add the population together that's over 2/3 of the South population. Which means what ever people are trying to define the South as stereotypical is actually in the minority. And what they removing is actually the majority. States like MS and AL what people use as example of most Southern states actually are among the least populated states in the south. Meanwhile 4 of 5 the South most populated states are being debate as the south or not. Basically people strip the South from the South, then argue such place is different from the South after they strip the diversity of the South away.

I also don't like this because the South is the only region where people try to define it by how least cosmopolitan a place is. You don't hear blank is not Midwestern enough. So the question become why can't the south be cosmopolitan? and why can't what is southern can't grow and change?


but as far pedestrians in South Florida that has more to do with in being a large beach resort city then a cultural difference. The funny thing is if you look at development Miami is actually develop way more Car Orient than the core of Atlanta. The streets are wider and odd enough there actually less street level retail in Miami, they develop a lot of Condo building with these grand entrances drive ways. So it's not urban planning either it's literally just Miami is a beach city.

More traditional urbanity is New Orleans.