My friend Robert linked to this amazing Atlanta Time Machine site a few days back and I haven’t been able to take my eyes off of it since. The author of the site, a man named Greg, has mined the archives of the Georgia State University Library’s Special Collections and then painstakingly re-created the photos, creating a compelling “then” and “now” site that I simply can’t stop surfing obsessively.

I love to see how Atlanta has changed for both better and worse. The juxtapositions and contradictions are endless. One witnesses the unfortunate gutting of Atlanta’s public trolley transportation and the rise of the meager but still impressive subway system. The vibrant downtown of old, with Kosher delis, movie theaters, butchers, book stores and all forms of commerce and showing all the signs of a real city, gave way to a largely soulless wasteland of corporate ego and seeping poverty, but at least it now has trees!

The site got me thinking, as I frequently do, about Atlanta. I have a perpetual love/hate relationship with this city. Actually, let me rephrase that. I never hate Atlanta. But sometimes, I lament that this city isn’t anywhere near where it should be in terms of quality of life, given its undeniable powerhouse status among American cities. Perhaps that’s why it’s such a success story, at least success in certain terms.

Another friend of mine, Travis, inaugurated his blog back in 1998 or 1999 or so with the following quote (I paraphrase, because Trav gave his weblog the old rm –r treatment a few weeks back):

Do I like Atlanta? Of course not! She is a brutish elder sister, who cleaves supermen from her breast.

Crystal clear, as far as I’m concerned, and a great quote. But I don’t find Atlanta quite so brutish. Genteel and relentless at the same time, perhaps, but never destructive, unless it comes to its historic buildings. Atlanta simply does not allow people to fail. If you’ve read “A Man In Full,”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553381334/qid=1088690135/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-3280501-9923910?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 you can get an idea of what I mean by that. It’s the anti-New York. Rather than an “If I can make it there” attitude, Atlanta has an “I can’t lose” mind set.

Atlanta stands as one of the greatest cities in the world for economic opportunity. Certainly, in the United States, Atlanta has only a small handful of equals: Boston area, Houston, and maybe Las Vegas. Sometimes I think the official motto of Atlanta should be “What Bad Economy?” During the crash, nearly everybody I know was affected in some negative way: outsourced, laid off, fired, down-sized. Many took this as a sign to move somewhere else. Of all the people that stayed, all have found new, better jobs or pursued even more tantalizing opportunities here in Atlanta. Of the people who left, few have found jobs at all or, if they have, they earn less and work more. I frequently meet people who have just moved here, often having recently graduated from college, graduate programs or professional programs, in order to take advantage of opportunity knocking. When I ask them why they chose Atlanta, the answer is always “Atlanta is the only place hiring people from out of town.” Go to Computer Jobs and look at the numbers next to each city. This town is going gangbusters on nearly all economic fronts: transportation, housing, construction, service, retail, information technology, manufacturing, high tech manufacturing. The list goes on. Add on to the economy a relatively minority and alternative lifestyle friendly area (compared to the rest of the country), and you get seekers of all race, color, creed, orientation coming to the party. Every gay person in the South moves here because, well, it’s just about the only cool place in the South for gay people to live where one can have a career (New Orleans and Miami are great cities, but come on, people need to be able to do more than party). African American culture throughout the country views Atlanta as the “Black Mecca,” a city where African Americans have political and economic power – a true rarity in these United States.

But just as they come, so do they go.

And that’s one thing about Atlanta: just as everybody moves here for opportunity, they eventually leave for “greener” pastures. From migrating northward within the Metro Area to shorten commute times, get “more house,” or grab a plot in a good school district, to leaving the city in favor of a “small town” or a “real city.” You can just about count on the fact that your friends are not permanent here. But that’s starting to change a little bit. As the inner city changes for the better by increasing density, offering better housing, fostering diverse commerce and generally providing a higher quality of life, people are starting to stick a bit. But it’s a long process, and Atlanta is still decades away from offering the livability (notice I did not say opportunity) of cities like Seattle, Portland, Boston and New York.

Most of my tens of readers probably live in Atlanta. But if not, I’m going to digress a little bit from my rant to explain something about this city.

Most visitors to Atlanta from afar tend to come for business. Regionally, they come to go to Six Flags and to shop. None of these visitors ever tastes what truly is the greatest aspect of Atlanta: its neighborhoods. More so than any city in which I’ve lived, Atlanta is a collection of ideologically aligned, but very distinct neighborhoods. East intown Atlanta is, to me, a great place to live. The trees, the old houses, the quaint commercial districts and the people conspire to make it a pleasant place to be. The problem is that you have to leave. Development has sprung to the edges, and while projects go in here-and-there inside the city and greatly ease our need to head for the burbs to run our errands, the inordinate amount of development is happening far further afield. For every amenity added to the city, dozens are built on formerly vacant, forested tracts of land. Several of the fastest growing counties in America are suburban Atlanta counties. With no control in place, and no hope of inter-county coordination, Atlanta has little to look forward to in terms of controlling the sprawl – a hallmark of “new urbanism.”

The problem is, in short, that there’s always one more county, just one county further away from the center of things, that’s willing to open its arms and embrace the march of “progress” (and subsequently, the bulldozers and traffic) to fill its coffers. With no Metro government or cohesive planning, and no State initiatives to control it, it will continue until it’s no longe sustainable. But with nearly infinite fuel for the fire, that date is far from near.

Hidden as it is among the trees, completely removed from view, intown Atlanta is a tough nut to crack. You really have to know where you’re going in order to go, well, anywhere. Atlanta’s streets form a nest of snakes. Two lane former-highways provide the only real inter-neighborhood transit and they are so clogged that one must almost always wait through several cycles at traffic signals. The trees hang over the streets, which is charming, but disorienting for people who are used to finding their way through geographic markers in the distance (having grown up in Colorado, I could always tell which direction was which by looking for specific mountains). Streets almost never go in one direction such as East-West. Hell, some streets even intersect with one another more than twice. It’s not out of the question to hear the following exchange:

“It’s where X street meets Y street.”

“Which time?”

Out in the suburbs, it’s even worse. The directions always use some homogenous chain retail or restaurant outlet as sign posts, which change frequently and always look the same. “You have to get on the I-85 service road, and turn left at the Cracker Barrel. You’ll see a Houston’s on the left. Turn just past the Houston’s but before the Shoney’s.” The reason for this, I have since determined, is because the street signs are usually non-existent or worthless. If you do see a street sign, which is rare, you’re stuck in traffic too far away to be able to read it. By the time you see it, it’s usually too late.

All of this confusion, along with the perceived danger of stumbling into a high crime area, ensures that tourists and visitors stay downtown and never partake of the joys of the “real” ATL.

TO BE CONTINUED.