City on the Verge

What we can learn from Atlanta's struggle to reinvent itself in the 21st Century

Atlanta is on the verge of either tremendous rebirth or inexorable decline. The perfect storm for failed American urban policies, Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the entire country; urban renewal attempts that unwittingly destroyed neighborhoods; highways arrogantly blasted through the city center; the longest commutes in the nation; suburban sprawl that impairs the environment even as it erodes the urban tax base and exacerbates a long history of racial injustice. While many cities across America suffer from some or all of these problems,, nowhere but Atlanta have they so dangerously collided.

City on the Verge is a dramatic story which reveals a troubled American city daring to imagine a better future even as it struggles to define how such a future will look. The most promising symbol of Atlanta's potential for rebirth is the Beltline. A twenty-two mile ring of defunct rail lines, running through forty neighborhoods that encircle Atlanta's downtown, the Beltline is being transformed into a stunning pedestrian walkway and street-car line. The hope of its backers is that it will spur redevelopment, urban activism, community organizing, and environmental awareness. Many see it is a model for the next American city: walkable and accessible, diverse both economically and racially. If it works, I will be a remarkable turn of events: the Beltline's rail beds once served to segregate the city by race. Yet as with all projects of massive social change, the Beltline faces countless obstacles and fierce opponents, including from those who see the Beltline serving to displace the city's poorer black residents with wealthier white ones. But by daring to confront these challenges head on, and to plan so far into the future, Atlanta's Beltline exemplifies the very best American cities have to offer its citizens. City on the Verge is the remarkable story of a city using its greatest obstacles as tools to remake its entire way of life. If Atlanta can reinvent itself using the very tools that heralded its decline transforming divisive railways into new public transit, decaying housing stock into a thriving tax base, abandoned industry into new centers for innovation then the city can serve as a model for countless other cities left behind in recent years. City on the Verge offers a moving narrative of ordinary Americans taking charge of their local communities and daring to dream of a better future for all.

“"Pendergrast, an Atlanta native, devotes this detailed study to how the city [Atlanta] might be revived and reimagined for the 21st century. Mixing planning, history, and personal anecdotes, he describes an urban renewal project's path from grassroots idea to $4 billion project.... Pendergrast has an obvious love for both the city and the energy behind the BeltLine project." -- Publishers Weekly”

"City on the Verge is a must read for city-builders, urbanists, and anyone who cares about our future. Sunbelt cities like Atlanta are booming, attracting people from across the country and remaking themselves from sprawling suburban areas to more dynamic urban centers. With a journalist's eye for detail and a writerly knack for great story-telling, Mark Pendergrast takes us inside the forces and actors that are transforming Atlanta and the urban world we live in."
--Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and of The New Urban Crisis
"City on the Verge is a deeply researched effort to capture [the city's] history and, along the way, paint a portrait of Atlanta's neighborhoods, from the still elite area where the author spent his childhood to bustling zones of gentrification and immovable pockets of desperation."
--Douglas Blackmon, Wall Street Journal
"A lively urban history, charting Atlanta's growth and linking it to political developments over time... [Pendergrast] is generally optimistic, even in a time when taxpayers are reluctant to shoulder the burden of improving the commonweal: 'Change is in the air in Atlanta, ' he writes, 'mostly for the good.'... A welcome look at a city-a mass of cities-not often heard from in the urban-studies literature and of wide interest well beyond the I-95 corridor."

--Kirkus Reviews

"An enchanting story of a Sunbelt city that will captivate both urban planners and the general public. An Atlanta native, the author brings an engaging and insightful voice to this work, and his research is meticulously thorough."
--Library Journal
"Atlanta colleagues used to joke that Atlanta was the "Public Health Capital of the US" because it had CDC, the Carter Center, and good hospitals. "No," I would argue, "There aren't enough sidewalks, scarcely anywhere to walk, and parks are too few and poorly accessible. The place seems built only for car drivers and country club members. In Mark Pendergrast's excellent book, we see how Atlanta is going from a fat city to a healthy one with the help of the BeltLine and good leadership."
--Dr. Richard Jackson, former Director, CDC National Center for Environmental Health, and author of Designing Healthy Communities
"Offering both an account of Atlanta's tumultuous history and an anatomical breakdown of the BeltLine project so far, Pendergrast situates City on the Verge within the larger context of urban America's future. A must-read for urban-planning junkies, it should also appeal to those interested in community building and the oft-charged politics of the built environment."
--Seven Days
"Pendergrast, an Atlanta native, devotes this detailed study to how the city [Atlanta] might be revived and reimagined for the 21st century. Mixing planning, history, and personal anecdotes, he describes an urban renewal project's path from grassroots idea to $4 billion project.... Pendergrast has an obvious love for both the city and the energy behind the BeltLine project."

--Publishers Weekly

Mark Pendergrast was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and is the author of eleven books, including Uncommon Grounds and For God, Country and Coca-Cola. He lives in Vermont.

Atlanta is on the verge of either tremendous rebirth or inexorable decline. The perfect storm for failed American urban policies, Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the entire country; urban renewal attempts that unwittingly destroyed neighborhoods; highways arrogantly blasted through the city center; the longest commutes in the nation; suburban sprawl that impairs the environment even as it erodes the urban tax base and exacerbates a long history of racial injustice. While many cities across America suffer from some or all of these problems,, nowhere but Atlanta have they so dangerously collided. City on the Verge is a dramatic story which reveals a troubled American city daring to imagine a better future even as it struggles to define how such a future will look. The most promising symbol of Atlanta's potential for rebirth is the Beltline. A twenty-two mile ring of defunct rail lines, running through forty neighborhoods that encircle Atlanta's downtown, the Beltline is being transformed into a stunning pedestrian walkway and street-car line. The hope of its backers is that it will spur redevelopment, urban activism, community organizing, and environmental awareness. Many see it is a model for the next American city: walkable and accessible, diverse both economically and racially. If it works, I will be a remarkable turn of events: the Beltline's rail beds once served to segregate the city by race. Yet as with all projects of massive social change, the Beltline faces countless obstacles and fierce opponents, including from those who see the Beltline serving to displace the city's poorer black residents with wealthier white ones. But by daring to confront these challenges head on, and to plan so far into the future, Atlanta's Beltline exemplifies the very best American cities have to offer its citizens. City on the Verge is the remarkable story of a city using its greatest obstacles as tools to remake its entire way of life. If Atlanta can reinvent itself using the very tools that heralded its decline transforming divisive railways into new public transit, decaying housing stock into a thriving tax base, abandoned industry into new centers for innovation then the city can serve as a model for countless other cities left behind in recent years. City on the Verge offers a moving narrative of ordinary Americans taking charge of their local communities and daring to dream of a better future for all.

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