Urban Renewal and Private Redevelopment
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Photograph of Atlanta architect John Portman standing by a model of a skyscraper.
Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech Photograph Collection (VAC375).
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This 1969 photograph shows a view looking north on Peachtree Street of the Peachtree Center complex in downtown Atlanta.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Buford Burch Photographs, 1969-1974.
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View of the ice skating rink inside the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Cortlandt F. Luce, Jr. Photographs, 1948-1988, undated.
Following the desegregation of public schools and the removal barriers to residential integration, affluent Atlantans of both races continued migrating into the suburbs. In response, city leaders and developers began to seek ways to attract people back downtown. Compared to earlier urban renewal and public housing projects, private developers did not seek federally sponsored urban renewal funding, and thus their redevelopment plans were less regulated. Beginning in the early 1970s, two prominent Atlanta real estate developers, John Portman and Tom Cousins, competed with each other using privately funded development projects to transform downtown. Their projects were intended to bring suburban commuters, as well as tourists and convention-goers, into downtown. Portman’s Peachtree Center project was billed as a “city within a city” that catered mainly to affluent white-collar commuters and tourists. Similarly, Cousins’ Omni Complex and Georgia World Congress Center were designed for visitors but did little to improve the living conditions in surrounding neighborhoods, which were predominantly poor and Black. While private developers in Atlanta sought to revitalize downtown both economically and socially, the benefits were not shared equitably among all groups of people living in the city.