City on the Verge
Atlanta and the Fight for America's Urban Future
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
What we can learn from Atlanta's struggle to reinvent itself in the 21st Century
Atlanta is on the verge of tremendous rebirth-or inexorable decline. A kind of Petri dish for cities struggling to reinvent themselves, Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the country, gridlocked highways, suburban sprawl, and a history of racial injustice. Yet it is also an energetic, brash young city that prides itself on pragmatic solutions.
Today, the most promising catalyst for the city's rebirth is the BeltLine, which the New York Times described as "a staggeringly ambitious engine of urban revitalization." A long-term project that is cutting through forty-five neighborhoods ranging from affluent to impoverished, the BeltLine will complete a twenty-two-mile loop encircling downtown, transforming a massive ring of mostly defunct railways into a series of stunning parks connected by trails and streetcars.
Acclaimed author Mark Pendergrast presents a deeply researched, multi-faceted, up-to-the-minute history of the biggest city in America's Southeast, using the BeltLine saga to explore issues of race, education, public health, transportation, business, philanthropy, urban planning, religion, politics, and community.
An inspiring narrative of ordinary Americans taking charge of their local communities, City of the Verge provides a model for how cities across the country can reinvent themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pendergrast (For God, Country, and Coca-Cola), an Atlanta native, devotes this detailed study to how the city might be revived and reimagined for the 21st century. Mixing planning, history, and personal anecdotes, he describes an urban renewal project's path from grassroots idea to $4 billion project, slated for 2030 completion. The BeltLine, a collection of abandoned rail lines ringing Atlanta, could reconnect wildly disparate elements of a city that "sold its soul to the automobile" and has long been equated with urban sprawl riven with racial and economic inequality. The key: connected light rail, trails, pedestrian paths, and improved accessibility. Pendergrast has an obvious love for both the city and the energy behind the BeltLine project, but the level of neighborhood-by-neighborhood detail may be daunting for nonresidents. At the conclusion, the scope widens as he invokes similar projects, but this section touches only lightly on broader planning principles. More tellingly, his most powerful anecdote involves a beloved African-American maid who worked for his family for decades and lived less than eight miles away. He first saw her house nearly 40 years after her death in 1975, while doing research for the book.
