(L)ooking for (A)tlanta
Having lived in the city for two years, I’ve heard a lot of people claim that Atlanta is the [fill in the blank] of [fill in the blank] — usually, it’s “the NYC of the South.” I suppose this might be true, but it seems like a faulty comparison. The cities have, like all cities, remarkably different histories and geographies. They also have radically different geographic features. Atlanta is not an island. But then again some would claim that it is an island in Georgia, marked by progressivism and diversity. Georgia, though, is a lot of things and one of those things is Atlanta. Atlanta is also a lot of things. There are many distinct neighborhoods each with their own histories and movements and characters.
In some ways, Atlanta then might be most likely regarded as the Los Angeles of the East. Characterized by sprawl and car culture, media and diversity, spectacle and speculation, the two cities share more than people might first imagine. Each city remains defined by elemental concerns in their histories: water and fire. While the fires of the late nineteenth century defined Atlanta in its resurgence, it is the bringing of water to Los Angeles by William Mulholland that defined the growth of that city. Likewise, now Atlanta frequently worries about water shortages while their western counterparts remain plagued by the fear of wildfires. Each of these concerns seem to have more to do with the unsustainable sprawl of man-made development than they do with simple “natural” occurences.
Another way the two cities seem similar is in the diversity of neighborhoods.
Loz Feliz, Silver Lake, Watts, Sherman Oaks, Culver City.
Inman Park, The West End, Midtown, Grant Park, Buckhead.
These neighborhoods mean a lot within each city; they mark identity, history, affiliation, race, class, and pastimes. They tell the microhistories of their respective cities, and the car-scale of both Los Angeles and Atlanta determine that sometimes despite the neighborhoods’ relative proximity to one another, they feel very far apart. Neither city has the easy access of large-scale public transpoortation. While both MARTA and LA Metro seem to do the best they can with the given resources, they aren’t the NYC MTA and they aren’t BART. Thus, I imagine in some ways these neighborhoods take on even more significance. Yes, neighborhoods in all cities mean something, but when the scale of interaction changes, so do our identifications.
These identifications are not ontological categories. However, having recently moved from one part of town to another, I’ve become intersted in how these neighborhood histories shape our understanding of the city. What does it mean to be from Atlanta — from Buckhead — from Vine City — from the Old Fourth Ward — from Kirkwood? Does this scale of identification change something about how we look at Atlanta? Are there lessons to be learned from Los Angeles — a city that seems both our junior and our senior? Is it time we stop thinking of our city as the [fill in the blank] of the [fill in the blank]? Maybe we’re just the Atlanta of the South? Or the Little Five Points of the world?
