Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Since you don't seem to have the ability to engage in a civil discourse without being mean and insulting, I will no longer respond to you.
Im not Ant'st biggest fan but he was accurate in debunking the false info'mation you gave regarding Dallas. I suppose that has more to do with you not responding as you did not respond to my remarks earlier asking you to post a single FACT that backed your claims.How convenient.
Im not Ant'st biggest fan but he was accurate in debunking the false info'mation you gave regarding Dallas. I suppose that has more to do with you not responding as you did not respond to my remarks earlier asking you to post a single FACT that backed your claims.How convenient.
Did I insult her one time in that post? I just said "Stop lying". For someone who loves Dallas, why doesn't she ever post in their forum?
Gwinnett is an extension of Atlanta because you say so? Yes it is a suburban county, but it still isn't Atlanta, so stop trying to give Atlanta credit for Gwinnett's diversity when Atlanta is indeed segregated. It speaks volumes when only 400k plus people out of a metro nearly 6 million want to live in the actual city.
You're being obtuse. Gwinnett is a core county of metro Atlanta and is included in Atlanta's urbanized area; of course it's an extension of Atlanta. And it doesn't "speak volumes" that around 450K people live in the city that anchors a metro population of 5.5 million; given the fact that Atlanta is not a historically large, dense city like its Northern counterparts, all it says is that in the past, Atlanta didn't have the ability to annex liberally like other large Southern cities in some cases and lacked the political will to do so in others due to racialized political dynamics in the 70's and 80's in particular. Otherwise, if Atlanta had nearly 350 sq ft of land like Dallas, it would easily have well over a million residents too.
The city of Atlanta has its residential segregation issues for sure, but Northern cities like Chicago have it even worse. That's simply a statistical fact.
Downtown Dallas is a lot more corporate feeling than Downtown Atlanta. Lots of shiny skyscrapers, but it feels...I don't know...bland. I think Downtown Atlanta has more interesting neighborhoods like Fairlie Poplar, Sweet Auburn/East Downtown, and South Downtown.
Downtown Dallas also doesn't have more residential buildings. Walkscore puts Downtown Dallas at just a few thousand people. Walkscore has Downtown Atlanta at 13.4k people. Stop lying.
More transit options? Really? Downtown Atlanta has about 5 subway stops. And it's not lightrail. It's actually heavy rail subway. Not to mention the streetcar just opened. Downtown Atlanta has the much more big city feeling seeing people coming out of the MARTA station that can remind you of the more urban cities the world and country. This is more of your bias flowing out of you. No one with a neutral mind would say Downtown Dallas has more transit options.
Downtown Atlanta feels dirtier because it's A LOT more crowded during the weekdays. It actually gives it a gritty feeling that I like more than...say...Midtown Atlanta.
I guess if you consider the Arts District downtown, then it does have more cultural offerings than Downtown Atlanta.
Dining options, concert venues, and nightclubs means jack for both. They both suck at these things in their respective downtown areas. Dallas isn't a New Orleans or Philly.
One thing Downtown Atlanta has over Downtown Dallas is that it's family friendly. A lot of people tend to forget Centennial Olympic park and realize that there's a lot of things for families to do.
I love compact, charming neighborhoods and you won't find this in Dallas. Only wide streets.
(My photos)
Those photos are from hanging around Farlie-Poplar...a small and atypical section of Atlanta.
You're being obtuse. Gwinnett is a core county of metro Atlanta and is included in Atlanta's urbanized area; of course it's an extension of Atlanta. And it doesn't "speak volumes" that around 450K people live in the city that anchors a metro population of 5.5 million; given the fact that Atlanta is not a historically large, dense city like its Northern counterparts, all it says is that in the past, Atlanta didn't have the ability to annex liberally like other large Southern cities in some cases and lacked the political will to do so in others due to racialized political dynamics in the 70's and 80's in particular. Otherwise, if Atlanta had nearly 350 sq ft of land like Dallas, it would easily have well over a million residents too.
The city of Atlanta has its residential segregation issues for sure, but Northern cities like Chicago have it even worse. That's simply a statistical fact.
I never said Chicago wasnt more segregated. I'm simply pointing out that the boosters want to ignore or deny Atlanta's as if blacks and whites are living all kumbaya there.
Lovely
Ant is absolutely correct in what he wrote about the present Whole Foods area which, as he put it, "was...a gritty area" at one time.
Whole Foods and other stores in that plaza only came into existence in that spot once the gentrification process reached a critical turning point of no return.
I've lived here for 35 years & Ponce's history is very much the stuff that gritty urban tales are derived from.
There have even been pictorial books, etc. made about the street & it's wild former to presently somewhat gentrified and toned down history & state of affairs. I kid you not, the Ponce corridor, Poncey-Highlands, Inman park, etc. all had serious declines after 1950 or so.
And when I moved here, Morningside & Virginia Highland were in the process of settling down & reinvigorating as the last tides of panicked white flight out, consisting of many long time & elderly or empty nest residents in those areas, subsided.
I never said Chicago wasnt more segregated. I'm simply pointing out that the boosters want to ignore or deny Atlanta's as if blacks and whites are living all kumbaya there.
I haven't seen anyone do any such thing in this thread.
I'm also curious as to how downtown Dallas beats downtown Atlanta when it comes to transit. And downtown Atlanta has a major asset in GSU, something downtown Dallas doesn't have an answer for.
Those photos are from hanging around Farlie-Poplar...a small and atypical section of Atlanta.
Fairlie-Poplar is a sizable part of downtown Atlanta and indeed is Atlanta's original and historic downtown district, which is the subject of this discussion as the title indicates.
Yes, I live in Buckhead but I and my husband (who has been an inner city school teacher with APS - who only takes jobs in the grittiest areas of town, intentionally bc he feels those children need him more - do quite alot of business on the southside of town but live where we live for proximity to our child's school). I refuse to subject a preschooler to a long commute. I won't do that. I actually prefer a more racially diverse area and actively seek out those areas as I want my child to experience everyone. Not just rich kids of x race. Not into that.
I do not buy that Ponce was in a gritty area. Nothing across the street from a Whole Foods will ever be that gritty. Sorry. Whole Foods does not setup in gritty areas or even working class areas or even solidly middle class areas. They just don't.
I would love for someone to point me to homes in downtown with potential. I asked if downtown had single family homes but all I heard were crickets. Check upthread. You'll see. I have also asked about and evaluated Grant Park. Do a search. The problem I found with Grant Park is that most of the families there are all white. Same as buckhead. It makes absolutely no sense to move further away and there would still be little to no racial diversity from families perspective, which I personally consider a huge plus. That and socioeconomic diversity.
Don't take this the wrong way... I think y'all could agree on more than you realize.
I suspect you just haven't been in town long enough, since you're a transplant.
Parts of Ponce have always been really high end, particularly leaving the city and in Dekalb Co.
The commercial parts of Ponce, where there are more multi-family housing and where Ponce City Market is has gotten much better. It is much nicer now than 5 years ago, but the differences are bigger from 10 years ago, 15 years ago, etc... The gentrification didn't happen over night.
The Single Family home neighborhoods going back a few decades were more working class. They were not near as expensive as they are now and Whole Foods has not always existed there. Now smaller neighborhoods nearby have always been fairly nice (ie Inman Park, Little 5 Points, etc..), but even they have gotten a huge uptick with the Old Fourth Ward getting much nicer. Some of the buildings on Ponce were a bit more run down and the city bought the old Sears building in part to keep it from decaying and to keep it from being totally vacant.
In fact before the 80s many of the people in some of those neighborhoods worked in the Sears building when it was still a distribution center.
As for Grant Park, I'd take another look. It is lacking diversity beyond white-black and some streets immediatly around the park are more expensive (and more white), but the neighborhood as a whole is not all white. I suspect it will get increasingly more white in the future with further gentrification, but from the 2010 Census there were 3 census tracts over that neighborhood.
One was to the northwest and shared with parts of Summerhill: 48% White, 45% Black
The second was to the northeast stretching short of the Glenwood Park: 65% White, 24% White
The Third, which is most of Grant Park, but mostly the southern 2/3: 56% White, 35% Black
So I'm having trouble understanding things in context. That isn't diverse enough, but Buckhead is? It is even more troubling to compare this to the previous comments on diversity of neighborhoods in Chicago.
You're idea for downtown is not a silver bullet and this is why it did not gain traction. There isn't much space for many single family homes, if they were built. It would be a way of getting a hand full of the richest people in town there. The problem is the land values are still too high for that. The economic functions for Downtown will be larger buildings that cost more, whether there will be more residential or not. Most on here would rather have 200 Yuppies with moderate levels of expendable income, than 5 extremely rich families living on a single block. They want to generate a bigger consumer base to increase retail activity.
Now there is an array of single family homes in the immediate adjacent neighborhoods, like Sweet Auburn and Old Fourth Ward. The home values can be high in spots, but the lot sizes are too small for large homes.
From Marketing perspectives... many of the projects throughout the city to the north couldn't have as easily been shifted downtown to draw people there, either. They do market area research and that type of move would have shifted the market area, but people do care about Downtown. The city tried for decades to make retail work at Underground. It was significantly nicer in the early 90s, than it is now...but even then it was struggling to keep enough foot traffic with money to attract better paying tenants. This led to decades of debate on whether the city should give it up or prop it up, but a good bit of money was invested to Underground and it didn't take off. There are also lots of existing struggling retail space to the South. We couldn't have built a PCM and changed that... that was sort of tried, rather they have to get the whole neighborhood of South Downtown to adjust, so a development like that could succeed.
My two cents... I still hope for the day downtown could attracts Macy's into the old Rich's building in the future. I want Atlanta to have that traditional early-mid century department store back in the center of town.
It has a huge convention business and luckily we finally got some traction getting more street level businesses to cater to that, beyond a few blocks of Peachtree St. Now those won't be the Southern part of Downtown.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
