Kevin Ward has studied how cities remake themselves on two continents, and in a new column he makes the case that downtown Atlanta is at the kind of moment urbanists wait decades to see. Ward, director of the Urban Studies Institute in Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, wrote the piece for Atlanta Business Chronicle's Georgia State–sponsored "We Are Atlanta's University" section. The argument below is his.
The Manchester lens. Before joining Georgia State, Ward was a geography professor at the University of Manchester and founding director of the Manchester Urban Institute. He draws a direct line between the two schools: both are universities in the heart of a city shaped by decades of postwar disinvestment, and in Manchester, he writes, the university earned trust in neighborhood renewal by listening to residents, working with local groups and investing alongside communities rather than imposing change on them. Universities, in his view, are now employers, investors and civic partners whose futures rise and fall with the neighborhoods around them.
He points to Georgia State's BluePrint to 2033 strategic plan, and projects like the GSU Blue Line and new public spaces tying the downtown campus together, as the university's version of that role.
Why South Downtown stands out. Ward has spent recent months walking South Downtown, and his most pointed observation is about what survived. Much of the district's historic architecture escaped the clearance of the 1960s and 1970s, and he calls Atlanta lucky for it. Those buildings, he argues, carry history that investors, tourists and would-be residents value, and that new construction can't manufacture. He cites Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Philadelphia as cities that built lively mixed-use districts by pairing preserved blocks with new investment.
Summerhill's harder test. In Summerhill, where Georgia State helped turn Turner Field into Center Parc Stadium and set off a wider redevelopment, Ward sets a different bar. Success, he writes, can't be counted only in new buildings or rising property values; it has to include whether longtime residents can still see themselves in the neighborhood's future alongside newcomers.
Undoing the car-first city. Both neighborhoods, in Ward's telling, are attempts to repair the fragmentation left when postwar planners built around commuters and parking structures instead of walkable streets and destinations. Atlanta has been slowly weaning itself off the car for decades, he notes, and unlike many American downtowns, it has MARTA to build on. His bottom line: cities thrive when people choose to stay, not just pass through, and that takes parks and gathering places alongside offices and restaurants, plus investment that strengthens communities instead of displacing them. Those qualities, he argues, are no longer just planning ideals but economic advantages.
Ward closes on optimism, contending that Atlanta can do more than repeat familiar redevelopment patterns and can show how growth, innovation and inclusion advance together, if universities, businesses, government and communities pull in the same direction.
Guest column by Kevin Ward for Atlanta Business Chronicle.