The History of Atlanta (Part 2): Other People

The Braves' abandonment of the city for the suburbs got me interested in the impact of the team on our city, so I've been reading.  One of the things I've read is a fascinating essay from Georgia State University about the changes in the neighborhoods surrounding the stadiums (Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and Turner Field).  This image is from that essay:

People used to live there, but the city forced them out not only to build two stadiums but before that to build expressways to connect the city with the suburbs.  In those days there was no requirement that "urban renewal" projects make any provision for the people who are displaced, so no one knows what happened to those people.  Larry Keating's book, Atlanta:  Race, Class, and Urban Expansion, details the pattern over decades of redevelopment plans that get rid of housing and neighborhoods where poor people live -- especially poor black people -- without (for most of the period) any effort to provide a place for them to go.  Neither the white businessmen who used to directly led the city or the black political class that replaced them paid any attention to this until the Federal government eventually forced them to, and even then efforts were half-hearted and promises were rarely kept.

It wasn't just the interests of the poor, mostly African-American, citizens of Atlanta whose interests were ignored.  The city also had a terrible track record of supporting the interests of middle-class white residents, which its support for Georgia Department of Transportation plans to turn intown neighborhoods into even more expressways so all the people who moved out of the city during desegregation could come back every day to go to work.

The Washington-Rawson neighborhood was destroyed in an early round of urban renewal, and became Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.  With little regard for the neighborhood, Turner Field was built just south of the older stadium and has adversely impacted Summerhill, Peoplestown, and Mechanicsville.  Now Mayor Reed is promising "one of the largest developments for middle-class people that the city has ever had” will replace Turner Field.

Let's just say, for purposes of discussion, that that actually happens.  What happens to the people who've lived in the area, all these years, putting up with empty lots that fill up with cars on game day and traffic and the asphalt sea that is Turner Field and no supermarket?  Just as the city's leadership -- both elected and unelected -- have felt free to make bad decisions about other people's money, they have not shown more regard for other people's homes and lives.

We'll see if this time it's different.