Atlanta?s BeltLine brought new transportation options ? but with it, displacement and increased policing. | Photo by Jonathan Phillips

?Who are we city-making for" These ?experts?" Or is it the other human beings who call that place home"? In a metropolitan area bisected by highways, the Atlanta BeltLine certainly looks like a good way to undo decades of damage wrought by cars. Over the past decade, the former railway right-of-way has been repurposed as a walking and biking trail encircling nearly the entire city, threaded with new rail lines, new parks, and new housing developments.
But along the way, the project that was intended to connect communities started upending them ? particularly the Black neighborhoods on the project?s western flank. During the year after the ribbon was cut on the Westside Trail extension, the last section to be completed, Tea Troutman, a planner and community organizer who lived in Atlanta?s West End, had the rent on their two-bedroom apartment nearly doubled, effectively evicting them. ?It?s not to say conceptually the BeltLine is bad design. It?s not ? it?s world-shifting,? says Troutman, who is Black and uses they/them pronouns. But there was no question to Troutman?s mind that it was designed for wealthier, whiter residents to move in. ?Neighborhoods adjacent to railroads were always Black communities because no one wants to live somewhere that toxic.?
The BeltLine is one of the most well-known (and copied) urba...