Assignment 1: Audra

Here is a shot of downtown Atlanta headed west on public transit. Here one can see a clear example of Ford’s general model of a central business district (CBD) and transitioning areas. To the left is Atlanta’s CBD, with its cluster of skyscrapers dedicated to office, hotel, and government space. In the distance one can see a replication of downtown, a whole new CBD. Geographically, there’s nothing to stop this expansion and replication as CBDs have migrated to Midtown and even further into the distance in Buckhead and the Perimeter. Just outside of the downtown CBD is clearly is the frame or transition area. Instead of finding a dilapidated “skid row”, this particular section is being built up with mixed-use development to include housing (hopefully both low and high income housing) and different types of public spaces. Even more construction is underway as seen on the right. So instead of remaining a zone of discard, given its close proximity to the interstate, this land is now transitioning to a zone of assimilation. It is located at the “peak land value intersection” or PLVI. This area is highly accessible, right off of the interstate, therefore attractive and valuable.

Here is another shot headed west on public transit into downtown. Here I am going directly over the massive interstate that runs through the city. In order to be a truly cohesive city environment, downtown needs to be linked to assimilated areas. In Atlanta, one must cross the “dangerous movement zone” (DMZ). Interstate I-75 is definitely a DMZ and one that I find unpleasant to cross as pedestrian. I used to live downtown on Edgewood Avenue and would never go to the eastern part of Edgewood on foot or bicycle because I had to go across a very busy off ramp and underneath the highway. This is definitely a DMZ. If you have access to a car or MARTA pass, downtown Atlanta seems to have a more symbiotic relationship between zones.

So once you’ve made it downtown, you find yourself in the central business district. Here is essentially the hotel and convention district of the Atlanta CBD. This photo is of the AmericasMart buildings with six different skywalks connecting just these two buildings. And one of them is a double-decker skywalk. Several of these skywalks can be found in downtown Atlanta, mostly hotels linking to convention centers. This is just bad urban design. What do you notice from the photo? It’s pretty dark. Walking along this bit of street is not very enjoyable. It’s cold and windy. Although, I guess you really don’t need to be walking around here unless you have some sort of business at the exhibition center. In which case you probably drove and parked in one of the several parking garages just outside of the photo and walked across one of the skywalks. I was certainly surprised to find sign of human life on the bottom of the street, an Indian restaurant. It was closed. This is just one inherent problem with any CBD of any substantial size. I wouldn’t say this particular area of Atlanta is over concentrated or clustered with skyscrapers, but the skywalks do seem to discourage street activity and having tall buildings so close to one another creates wind tunnels.