The South has some beautiful architecture. Traditional elements and warm-weather foliage adorn homes and public buildings of every scale, producing what's best described as "charm."  But, due to unfortunate timing, the South suffers from some horrible sprawl and congestion. Much of its (explosive) growth took place post-1960, likely after air conditioning made it possible to tolerate the summers. The huge influx of money and development coincided perfectly with the heyday of car-centric development—America was building the future of the human habitat: the suburb. A migration from dense, historic cities to the new suburbs unfortunately meant the teardown of downtowns, to the point where some American cities are completely unrecognizable compared to what they were 75 years ago. Cincinnati is shown below. This would've been the fate of NYC were it not for Jane Jacobs. 

The newness of the South's development makes most of it completely unwalkable, spread out, and car-centric (exceptions: Charleston, New Orleans, etc). Now that I've been in Atlanta for a few months, I have a few observations on the mode of life here and the state of the built environment, especially as it compares to the Northeast.

The Highway

Atlanta is defined by highways. The city is encircled by I-285, an interstate officially called the Atlanta Bypass and used unofficially as a boundary for the city. People describe locations as "inside-the-perimeter" or "outside-the-perimeter" even when the highway doesn't correspond with actual city limits.

This delineation is useful: it gives one an idea of how long it'll take to get somewhere. Atlanta, in part, is defined by interstates because it relies on them more than it does on local roads. Even a distance of less than two miles must often be traversed through the highway—it seemed bizarre to me at first to accelerate to 70 mph and brake three minutes later to take an exit, but that's just a normal way to get around. Most main roads lead, one way or another, to the interstate, collecting cars as efficiently as possible to feed them into the highway. A road in Midtown, for example, suddenly doesn't go forward anymore because everyone is forced to take a right towards I-85. Both directions of travel turn into the fast-track to the highway. Even the supposed heart of the city (Midtown) is split open by a massive 12-lane merging of the great I-75 and I-85. Federally funded roads define local life. A resident of Atlanta has to rely on dollars from Idaho to travel two miles in her own city.

The Metropolitan Area

Atlanta is supposedly the sixth most populous metropolitan area in the country. This statistic is very deceiving when one considers where exactly this population resides. The city proper is barely half a million people while the suburbs are five million+. Atlanta is not even in the top 100 most densely populated cities in the US. It's certainly a big city but only when considers vast swaths of sprawl that must be reached by highway. The metropolitan area—the suburbs—constantly draw away wealth, people, and resources, and it feels like they've been doing so for decades. To stay economically viable, the city proper seems to cater to the commuters from the suburbs with easy access to highways and plentiful parking.

Attempts and Pockets

Atlanta definitely has some neighborhoods that are walkable and dense, and it's making an effort to fix sprawl. The most famous project is the beltline, a railroad track encircling the city that's being converted to pedestrian/bicycle only. The beltline is fantastic—it has attracted a lot of development in the form of shops, restaurants, and apartments, and it's genuinely a fun place to be. But I would call it an "urban trail," rather than a street: It feels like a novelty destination, not a part of everyday life. Most people drive to the beltline or plan an outing on it. Atlanta has pockets like this, but the only way to get to them is by driving. The result is massive parking lots next to "entrances" for the beltline or block after block of parking garages next to a nice street. The places that do have vitality, streetlife, and a comfortable scale of buildings, cars, and pedestrians are universally loved. They also tend to create an upward spiral of economic development and wealth. Everyone loves downtown Decatur, for example, and it has some of the best restaurants in the city. The demand for places like it in Atlanta is very, very high.

There are also attempts at walkability and bikeability, some funny and some sad. A protected bike lane out of Piedmont Park suddenly disappears into a massive five-way intersection or, in a common scenario, is blocked by parked cars:

While you could call Midtown walkable, I describe a walk through it as a high octane experience. It's not exactly a comfortable walk: the blocks are very long, every street has four very wide car lanes, and there is no parallel parking to psychologically shield you from cars going by at 50 mph. The streetfront also turns into parking lots and garages often—not only are they eyesores, but you have to constantly be on the lookout for a car entering or leaving.

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All of these things stand out to me because I have points of comparison, places I've lived and been to where the urbanism felt good. I've also been carefully observing, through lived experience and theory, what exactly makes for a comfortable and thriving human habitat. Atlanta is not unique in its problems with sprawl and congestion—places like Dallas and Phoenix are probably even worse. But the results of how the city has been built are felt by everyone, whether or not they can attribute it to the car-centricity of the place. Unless you've experienced an alternative, you assume that this is how things are. Traffic and parking dictate what plans one is and isn't able to make, and, as one of my friends says, not having a car in Atlanta means a life of house arrest. Or spending hours touring the city via bus on the way home.

Awareness of and projects addressing the lack of good urbanism in Atlanta are growing. Much of this work, however, feels pointless. Density is either created with tower-in-a-park development or with flashy mixed-use projects that are only accessible by driving through a six-lane collector road. It feels like the city needs to approach development in a radically different way if it's to ever become less car-dependent. Instead of chasing metrics like number of bike lanes, all the best cities, neighborhoods, streets, and buildings strive to be one thing above all else: human-scale.