More than any other major U.S. city, Atlanta regularly reinvents itself. From the Civil War’s devastation to the 1996 Olympic boom to the current housing crisis, the city’s history is a cycle of rise and fall, ruin and resurgence. In Planning Atlanta, two dozen planning practitioners and thought leaders bring the story to life. Together they trace the development of projects like Freedom Parkway and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. They examine the impacts of race relations on planning and policy. They explore Atlanta’s role as a 19th-century rail hub—and as the home of the world’s busiest airport. They probe the city’s economic and environmental growing pains. And they look toward new plans that will shape Atlanta’s next incarnation. Read Planning Atlanta and discover a city where change is always in the wind.

Atlanta, the epitome of the New South, is a city whose economic growth has transformed it from a provincial capital to a global city, one that could bid for and win the 1996 Summer Olympics. Yet the reality is that the exceptional growth of the region over the last twenty years has exacerbated inequality, particularly for African Americans. Atlanta, the city of Martin Luther King, Jr., remains one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Despite African American success in winning the mayor's office and control of the City Council, development plans have remained in the control of private business interests. Keating tells a number of troubling stories. The development of the Underground Atlanta, the construction of the rapid rail system (MARTA), the building of a new stadium for the Braves, the redevelopment of public housing, and the arrangements for the Olympic Games all share a lack of democratic process. Business and political elites ignored protests from neighborhood groups, the interests of the poor, and the advice of planners.

This collection of case studies focuses on seven US cities and consider revitalization programmes over the past 15-20 years and analyze their successes and failures. The studies were carried out by the National Center for the Revitalization of Central Cities in 1990 under the auspices of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Center commissioned leading scholars to carry out this research and develop programmes and strategies for a national policy for revitalizing central cities.

Atlanta Underground presents a city history through the lens of its buried and paved-over urban landscape. Atlanta has been built, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt so many times that it has created an artificial surface dozens of feet above the original ground plane, leaving room to explore the stories that lie below. Clues and paved-over evidence of the original streetscape are still accessible, but only to those who know where to look. The story begins with the railroads that brought people and business to Atlanta, and the intersections of transportation that Atlanta eventually outgrew. This tour of the city's history include the former sites of Union Station, Underground Atlanta and the Zero Milepost, and the unusual attempts to fill the void they left behind (a wax museum, musical instrument museum, a skating rink). Contemporary photos of this urban spelunking landscape will illustrate this telling of Atlanta’s history: how it came to be where it is, how it acquired its unique name, and how its colliding street grids were established. The rapid growth and change of Atlanta’s many lives has led to some downright interesting hidden locations and architectural curiosities, and AtlantaUnderground will reveal them one by one.