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A city reborn


Martinman

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Welcome to Atlanta Mr. Chris. I have to agree with you that the downtown area is lacking in aesthetics and a warm fuzzy feeling, but I do believe that is finally shifting. With the creation of Centennial Olympic Park in '96, to the opening of the Aquarium and now the World of Coke is coming. All of these things have been and continue to revitalize that whole area. Now with Allen Plaza/Twelve CP and new restaurants being built and the proposed the Aquarius tower, that area is really booming again just like Midtown and Buckhead have for the last decade.

Hang in there man. Atlanta wasn't built in a day!

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All the stadiums, convention centers, hotels and tourist spots in the world, while helpful, will not make downtown Atlanta an urbane or interesting place...

The solution is residents, and lots of them-- a real urban neighborhood and all of the things that go with that...

Fortunately that seems to be happening now... It was what was missing for years---

Personally, when I visit NY or LA or Chicago I want to see the city, not its tourist attractions...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think a big part of our problem is the fact that Georgia is divided into some 150+ counties and within the metro area, each of those counties seems to be working against each other on important issues - attracting business, transportation, etc...

A good example of the difference between Georgia and Florida in this respect is that Miami doesn't even take up an entire county - and the metro-area is usually referred to as Metro-Dade while here in Atlanta, it's the Atlanta metropolitan area and depending on who's talking, can include anywhere from 13 to 28 counties.

Think of how much better something like MARTA would be if just the core counties of Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb and Gwinnett were really just one big county. The rail lines would've gone into Gwinnett and Cobb back in the 80's.

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I think a big part of our problem is the fact that Georgia is divided into some 150+ counties and within the metro area, each of those counties seems to be working against each other on important issues - attracting business, transportation, etc...

A good example of the difference between Georgia and Florida in this respect is that Miami doesn't even take up an entire county - and the metro-area is usually referred to as Metro-Dade while here in Atlanta, it's the Atlanta metropolitan area and depending on who's talking, can include anywhere from 13 to 28 counties.

Think of how much better something like MARTA would be if just the core counties of Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb and Gwinnett were really just one big county. The rail lines would've gone into Gwinnett and Cobb back in the 80's.

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So your beef with the city of Atlanta's downtown is...the quality of the people walking the sidewalks? It sounds like a race issue to me, but also a poverty issue as well...Just because people aren't dressed in suits doesn't mean they are homeless, and I know all of the pedestrians downtown are not homeless or living in poverty. Man, we want downtown to be a busy with pedestrians but we want them to be dressed a certain way or be of a certain income level? I think sometimes judgements like this one are made too quickly simply based on casual clothing. Remember there are 30,000 students at GSU downtown...
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I agree. Some days as I go around town all I can think is how this city still has a loooong way to go. Other times, like yesterday, while I was walking around downtown, I was just impressed on the level of activity going on in once depressed area....its amazing.
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Fortunately Atlanta's downtown area never declined the way it did in many cities. Downtown was on fire throughout the 1980's and enjoyed an absolutely massive building boom which only slowed down in the early 1990's. Millions of square feet of new office and hotel space were added.

Although office construction slowed, downtown continued to see mega developments throughout the 1990's. Phillips Arena was built. Turner Field was constructed. The World Congress Center underwent a huge expansion. Centennial Olympic Park was created and opened in 1996. Streetscapes were improved, and many government buildings were constructed and renovated. Grady and Crawford Long were undergoing major expansions.

Great things are in the works for downtown here in the 2000

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Such as i find it amazing that Houston with a population of 3million more people thn the ATL, has just gotten Rapid transit "Only" since 2004.It also doesn't go anywhere ("Yet") too far.The people of the Atlanta and the State were way ahead in the late 70's with MARTA.As even to this day MOST urban Cities in the U.S.don't have Heavy rail or Rapid Transit or like Houston ,who is only now planning or building a system.I chose to have my new house built downtown in a rapidly changing area.Its been a year of amazing changes that i have never seen in downtown.I don't mean to sound defensive.I just think the facts that are there that you may not have been aware of and a perspective from which you never took into consideration.
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