teshadoh said:
I'll second the welcome back Larry (I'm Brad by the way). But I'll actually post something here, which I've debated doing because I generally avoid the "WTF is the matter with that city?" arguements.
But here goes - I like Atlanta, but I can't & won't defend it. As I wouldn't expect anyone who lives in Manhatten to defend Levittown or a Chicagoan to defend the majority of Chicago. But beyond that, Atlanta isn't for everyone. It's much smaller than any of the similiarly sized metros, & I suppose I like that. I like laid back southern towns, & in my neighborhood that's how it feels. I like walking through the cemetary, watching the trains go by, eating at a nearby bbq joint & drinking beer in a neighbor's backyard. It truly is a city of neighborhoods - which explains why downtown is mostly a ghost town, even with our mega fish tank being built. But if you don't like streetcar suburbs, then you won't like Atlanta. 'Urban Atlanta' has more in common with what Chicagoans consider the suburbs - like Oak Park.
But the real question is - despite Atlanta not being nearly as nice as most large US cities, especially in comparison with non-sunbelt cities - should Atlanta be judged by it's suburbs whereas most great cities aren't? Are we truly being non-biased & analytical when bitching about Atlanta - when most cases you're complaining about it's spawl. Yet not consider that in reality - every city in the US is a Phoenix AZ or Houston TX.
Because guess all of you are soaking in? That's sprawl. I'm sure your sprawl is nicer than Atlanta's sprawl.
It's not that I don't disagree that comparably to similiarly sized cities - Atlanta is inferior in most regards. It's the hypocrisy of pointing fingers at a city & thus absolving all other cities of their sprawl, that bugs me a bit. While we're at it - let's debate over which dictator is the least offensive - Hitler, Stalin, or Pinochet?
Ok, I promise I'll get off my soapbox now. Atlanta's not far my favorite city, but it's not nearly as bad as most like to call it.
Hi, Brad. I'm glad to be back. Part of the reason for my often combatative seeming responses about Atlanta is that people often judge the city based on a combination of some conference they attended at the World Congress Center, visiting an aunt in Alpharetta, or reading the current common wisdom on the city. Granted Atlanta isn't Paris,
but then again neither is Cleveland.
I was once dropped off near Hastings Street in Vancouver, on a weekday evening (in the rain, which makes the story worse -- but is irrelevant to my point) by a cab driver with a sadistic streak who assured me that I could find a place to exchange money and find a means of getting to my destination (which turned out to be out near Burnaby). For whatever reason, the section of the city I landed in was shut down solid. No open stores, many empty buildings, and the only signs of life I saw were a few people sleeping in doorways. Map in hand I walked for what seemed like miles before I felt I was in a live city. Now anyone with any knowledge of the place knows that Vancouver isn't a ghost town.
But if I hadn't made an effort to explore the whole city at different times of day, ask locals where interesting destinations were, and done a little active research, I could have left the city assuming that Vancouver is a dead empty city, inhabited only by derelicts (it's not like Burnaby would have given me the impression of a hyperurban environment either).
I spent six months in NYC in the early eighties, and despite the repuation of the city as never sleeping, there were
many offhours dead spots in the city.
I'm not advancing this to claim that Atlanta and NYC are comparable. But many of the criticisms of Atlanta are really applicable to parts of the most urban of U.S. cities, and when you begin moving down the urban food chain I'd stack up intown Atlanta against many of the mid tier cities in terms of those traits which people ascribe to urban environments (street life, walkabiltiy, public transit efficacy and usage). I mean , how lively is downtown Buffalo or Akron on a Sunday morning?
