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Washington and Atlanta are easily the two best cities for African Americans in the country, but when we speak of successful Black areas, they are mainly suburbs. I am planning on working in the government field when I graduate college and want to live in a walkable, urban, transit-connected neighborhood in one of these cities. This is a thread to compare urban districts in these two cities with significant African American populations (I'm from Atlanta so I'm used to higher black populations but I'll set the lowest percentage at 30%). Which city is better for Black urban living? Which has better transit access to black neighborhoods? What about amenities?
I've lived in both. Atlanta is not a highly public transit oriented metro area, especially, compared to D.C. Like D.C., its a relatively small city itself with large suburbs but its MARTA transit only serves Fulton and Dekalb counties, leaving out Clayton, Douglas, Cobb, and Gwinnett the adjacent counties. D.C. has subways, commuter rail, and buses that span out at least 30 miles and its subway system serves more areas. Both have limited arterials into/out of the city core. D.C. traffic is worsened by more rivers and closer proximity to other major metros, specifically, Baltimore.
D.C. is far more expensive than ATL. D.C. has better cultural pursuits given it being the nations capital. Atlanta has improved with the Georgia Aquarium but where's the Opera House or new Performing Art Center?
Also being in D.C. gives you the opportunity to travel to other cosmopolitan metros by car or train than living in Atlanta.
I give Atlanta the edge in weather.
Employment opportunities are better in D.C. if for no other reason than the Federal government does have to balance its budget and always seems to be in a hiring mode somewhere.
D.C. has better cultural pursuits given it being the nations capital. Atlanta has improved with the Georgia Aquarium but where's the Opera House or new Performing Art Center?
The Aquarium???? You mention it like it just opened LOL. Atlanta has definitely added more to its cultural profile since then, like the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, also built well after the aquarium, is the home of the opera and other performing arts.
Our families definitely migrated from the south. My family came from southern Virginia and most of the black people in DC came from North Carolina and southern Virginia. What does that have to do with our culture in DC? It developed in the city. Are you trying to say that GoGo came from the south because our families migrated to DC from the south? What about New Orleans?
Black people in DC, like most black people in America, eat the same food and have the same customs, but that is a race thing. I find it interesting that we, as black people, don’t actually support our own culture and say this is being black regardless of where in the country you’re from. We’re the only people that do that. I can’t think of another ethnicity that has degraded their culture to a region of a nation versus a cultural commonality. If being black is being southern, is being white and southern the same thing as being black from the south? If so, what exactly is being black in America?
Gogo is to DC like Country Western music is to Texas etc.
Ive already been accused of taking a poster for a joke for finding their statements funny but you have by far put on the best comedy show this week.
New Orleans is still a Southern city and outside of the French quarter,you can find a lot of the same styles of architecture found in many other cities including all across intown Atlanta.
Canal Street today has building that look just like those downtown Atlanta and they should because many of them were designed by architects from New York ,Boston,DC and Chicago.
This is true in Atlanta also.Some of the same architects have examples in both cities in their downtown cores.Many buildings built in the early 1900s.
So why is not possible DC and Atlanta dont have any similarities?You showed me and I also know first hand some areas of DC are not heavily populated or built up with low density single family housing ,open fields of nothing and wide highways located in the city just like Atlanta.
Are you really questioning why so many black native Americans have such a cultural connection to the South in cities outside the South having some charismatic elements of where the people who moved to the area came from to add to the mix?
New Orleans is almost 100 years older than DC and had from its beginning several cultures that made it what we see is unique about it today.
Despite what you may think ,DC is nowhere near in then vein of New Orleans. Just stop. Not one person but you think anything about DC is so unique other than its the capitol and it was a planned city.
Let me clarify that there are unique things ,but every single city has something unique about it. The problem is some places are hard to point to what those things are as they have a limited appeal.such as Gogo.
Country Music is on a whole another level than Gogo.Its a multi million dollar industry. Ive never heard of a sold out Gogo concert outside of the DC area.You tried that.lol
Gogo is
Charlotte really only has local government, a smattering of state government, and a relatively small subset of federal government jobs. The federal positions are mainly with the IRS, Customs and Border Control, VA (a big new VA hospital was recently constructed), and airport-related agencies like TSA and FAA. Out of those, any policy jobs will most likely be tax policy-related positions with the IRS and few and far between. The city works from a Black cultural perspective, but government isn't one of its economic fortes.
Raleigh, along with neighboring Durham, absolutely has a large and active Black community due to being the state capital and having several HBCUs, including the oldest in the South (Shaw). Not only that, but a healthy share of the Black workforce is college-educated and professional/white-collar. The policy analyst positions in the area will mostly be scientific-, healthcare-, and fiscal-related.
I clicked on that Bloomberg report and was surprised the Article mentions Texas and then notes incomes in Houston, Austin and San Antonio were higher than some cities deemed to be more known as Black meccas.
Ive already been accused of taking a poster for a joke for finding their statements funny but you have by far put on the best comedy show this week.
New Orleans is still a Southern city and outside of the French quarter,you can find a lot of the same styles of architecture found in many other cities including all across intown Atlanta.
Canal Street today has building that look just like those downtown Atlanta and they should because many of them were designed by architects from New York ,Boston,DC and Chicago.
This is true in Atlanta also.Some of the same architects have examples in both cities in their downtown cores.Many buildings built in the early 1900s.
So why is not possible DC and Atlanta dont have any similarities?You showed me and I also know first hand some areas of DC are not heavily populated or built up with low density single family housing ,open fields of nothing and wide highways located in the city just like Atlanta.
Are you really questioning why so many black native Americans have such a cultural connection to the South in cities outside the South having some charismatic elements of where the people who moved to the area came from to add to the mix?
New Orleans is almost 100 years older than DC and had from its beginning several cultures that made it what we see is unique about it today.
Despite what you may think ,DC is nowhere near in then vein of New Orleans. Just stop. Not one person but you think anything about DC is so unique other than its the capitol and it was a planned city.
Let me clarify that there are unique things ,but every single city has something unique about it. The problem is some places are hard to point to what those things are as they have a limited appeal.such as Gogo.
Country Music is on a whole another level than Gogo.Its a multi million dollar industry. Ive never heard of a sold out Gogo concert outside of the DC area.You tried that.lol
Gogo is
First, my comments have nothing to do with architecture.
Second, are Italians from the Northeast or Italy? Are Mexican’s from California or Mexico? So what are black people? Think about that.
Third, I’m not even going to respond to your ignorance or disrespect of DC’s culture. It’s expected not only from you, but many people around the country like you. And you wonder why people from DC felt like it was them against the world? You are an example of that. Takes me back to college days. We couldn’t care less what you think, stay in your city and we will stay in ours. We love our culture and you would never understand GoGo because it’s not just a type of music, it’s ingrained in our neighborhoods and the call and response creates a connection you wouldn’t understand unless you’re from here.
Last edited by MDAllstar; 05-25-2020 at 10:51 AM..
Does Atlanta have a black urban neighborhood? Midtown isn’t really black. Which urban neighborhoods are black in Atlanta? From my experience going to school in the south and visiting friends and family in Atlanta all the time, I don’t know of any black urban neighborhoods.
Well how many cities over 500,000 have an "urban black, middle class or better neighborhood"? Even NYC has seen a lost of its solidly black, middle class neighborhoods. Spike Lee lamented in the Wall Street Journal several years ago how his childhood neighborhood had gentrified.
Our families definitely migrated from the south. My family came from southern Virginia and most of the black people in DC came from North Carolina and southern Virginia. What does that have to do with our culture in DC? It developed in the city. Are you trying to say that GoGo came from the south because our families migrated to DC from the south? What about New Orleans?
What genres of music does Go-Go draw from?
Quote:
Black people in DC, like most black people in America, eat the same food and have the same customs, but that is a race thing. I find it interesting that we, as black people, don’t actually support our own culture and say this is being black regardless of where in the country you’re from. We’re the only people that do that. I can’t think of another ethnicity that has degraded their culture to a region of a nation versus a cultural commonality. If being black is being southern, is being white and southern the same thing as being black from the south? If so, what exactly is being black in America?
I don't have the slightest idea what this is supposed to mean.
Well how many cities over 500,000 have an "urban black, middle class or better neighborhood"? Even NYC has seen a lost of its solidly black, middle class neighborhoods. Spike Lee lamented in the Wall Street Journal several years ago how his childhood neighborhood had gentrified.
He did lament that, but Spike Lee laments a lot of things.
Gentrification has a lot of issues behind it, but I do think it's important to kind of look at some of the research and data behind what's happening as somewhat touched on in this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...rified/432813/
You can't have a conversation about urban living in DC without talking about Gogo. It's our official music in the city and the GoGo museum is in the planning process to be constructed. Anybody moving to DC needs to understand and respect the history of GoGo and how it shaped our culture. Even our G-League basketball team is named the Capital City GoGo. They play in our brand new Entertainment and Sports Arena in Congress Heights in Ward 8 along with the 2019 WNBA champions the Washington Mystics.
First, my comments have nothing to do with architecture.
Second, are Italians from the Northeast or Italy? Are Mexican’s from California or Mexico? So what are black people? Think about that.
Third, I’m not even going to respond to your ignorance or disrespect of DC’s culture. It’s expected not only from you, but many people around the country like you. And you wonder why people from DC felt like it was them against the world? You are an example of that. Takes me back to college days. We couldn’t care less what you think, stay in your city and we will stay in ours. We love our culture and you would never understand GoGo because it’s not just a type of music, it’s ingrained in our neighborhoods and the call and response creates a connection you wouldn’t understand unless you’re from here.
LOL
Obviously you care quite a bit but ok
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