The Project That Remade Atlanta Is Still a Work in Progress

A few decades ago, the prospect of a “glorified sidewalk” transforming Atlanta’s urban core might have seemed far-fetched, if not totally bonkers. Yet today, the Atlanta Beltline has firmly established itself as a high-octane economic development engine for the city—and it’s hardly halfway finished.

Originally proposed in 1999 as a Georgia Tech master’s thesis by Ryan Gravel, the nascent Beltline plan envisioned 22 miles of mostly abandoned railroad tracks encircling the heart of the city reimagined as a multimodal trail loop for cyclists and pedestrians, flanked by parks, public art, shops, offices, housing, and, ideally, a streetcar circuit.

Reimagining Urban Mobility

Originally proposed in 1999 as a Georgia Tech master’s thesis by Ryan Gravel, the nascent Beltline plan envisioned 22 miles of mostly abandoned railroad tracks encircling the heart of the city reimagined as a multimodal trail loop for cyclists and pedestrians, flanked by parks, public art, shops, offices, housing, and, ideally, a streetcar circuit.

The project rejected Atlanta’s automobile obsession and instead envisioned a city where residents could walk, bike, skate, scoot, or hop on a trolley to weave over, under, or around chronically traffic-choked roadways. It imagined a transportation network linking the city across geographical and socioeconomic divides, connecting people of all demographics to jobs, grocery stores, schools, doctors’ offices, retail, restaurants, and events venues.

“It’s a new kind of commercial district for Atlanta,” says Clyde Higgs, president and CEO of Atlanta Beltline, Inc. “Think about everything that you care about: Education, going to work, getting a great meal, watching a movie, [visiting] a medical facility—all the things that contribute to your quality of life you’ll be able to find on the Beltline.”

In many ways, that’s exactly what the Beltline has become since crews poured concrete for its first segment, the now bustling Eastside Trail, in 2012. But it’s also so much more—and, for some, so much less. 

Development Boom and Affordable Housing

Along the 11 miles of currently paved pathways, glassy residences and office complexes sprout like weeds; high-end restaurants sling $20 cheeseburgers and $100 steaks; and commissioned and unsanctioned artwork, from complex metalwork to intricate graffiti, line the trail. Two-and-a-half million people traverse the Beltline annually.

These features have boosted property values along the built and planned legs of the project, pricing some longtime residents out of their neighborhoods and even the city, while making other property owners and developers rich.

After a slow start amid the Great Recession of the late aughts, affordable housing initiatives have picked up speed; the city’s inclusionary zoning policies—laws that pressure residential developers to earmark some units for lower-income households—have produced thousands of apartments for low-wage earners and even formerly unhoused people. 

Economic Benefit Comes at a Social Cost

But the Beltline is still, for many, synonymous with gentrification.

In 2016, Gravel resigned from the board of the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, the project’s fundraising arm, citing concerns of “equity”—worries that the trail network designed to bring everyone together was, in fact, driving people apart and widening the city’s already vast income gap. 

“Nobody could have predicted this level of economic impact the Beltline has had on Atlanta,” Gravel said in a recent interview. “But there were people who recognized that if we built this beautiful thing, it was going to make the communities around it more desirable, which is naturally going to drive up the [property] values and taxes and rents.”

Gravel concedes that the city and project leaders have stepped up their game when it comes to affordable housing development since he left the board. But a main component of his grand vision of equity is still missing: Beltline transit. He and others see it as vital to making the multimodal loop more than a tourist attraction and development propellant and to solidifying its status as an amenity for the rich and the poor. However, its future has been called into question by a relatively new opposition movement.

The Beltline’s Vision on Rails and Trails

Better Atlanta Transit, an advocacy group established in 2023 to oppose light rail along the Beltline, insists that lining the greenway with streetcar tracks is “inequitable, unnecessary, and extravagant.” It would be invasive and overly expensive—indeed, the first 1.3 miles would cost at least $230 million—and it would blight an otherwise serene urban ecosystem, the group believes.

“Everything that Ryan [Gravel] talked about when he formulated the Beltline idea as an economic and community development project has happened, and it didn’t take rail to do it,” says Ken Edelstein, the Better Atlanta Transit spokesperson.

Better Atlanta Transit portrays itself as pro-transit expansion. The organization wants MARTA, the city’s heavy rail network, to sprawl farther across town and even beyond. Its backers want bus rapid transit lines throughout the city, and they want transit to the Beltline, but not necessarily on it—and certainly not along the entire 22-mile loop.

With the Beltline growing almost as clogged with walkers and bikers as Atlanta’s streets and highways are with cars, the group has suggested paving another loop within the loop—“a separation of wheels and heels,” Edelstein says, that would keep pedestrians segregated from the avid cyclists ripping down the trail.

But Better Atlanta Transit has distorted Gravel’s vision, the Beltline visionary himself says. He and former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard, an early champion of the project at city hall, started their own advocacy group in 2018: BeltLine Rail Now.

Atlanta’s Future: A Dilemma of Changing Priorities

“Do we want to do what we said we wanted to do 25 years ago and become a different kind of city—not based on a road grid but on nodes and transit and land-use decisions that we could make that are sustainable, equitable, and move people in their life?” asks Matthew Rao, an interior architect and the BeltLine Rail Now cochair.

Higgs says the Beltline is on track to be fully paved by 2030 and to ultimately create 7,200 affordable housing units along the path. But Beltline rail? Plans for it have been pared down.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced in March that the city would ditch plans for streetcar tracks on the Eastside Trail and instead stitch a light rail line through the less-developed, less wealthy Southside Trail neighborhoods.

Better Atlanta Transit hailed it as “wise and courageous,” while Beltline Rail Now said the administration’s “changed priorities” could further divide the city based on income.

Would you like to comment on this article? Send your thoughts to: [email protected]

• Government
• Infrastructure

• Atlanta Beltline
• Equitable Design
• Landscape
• Real Estate and Investment
• Sean Keenan