The Atlanta Beltline Paves a Path Toward a Healthier, More Connected City
Early on a weekday morning in Atlanta, a familiar choreography unfolds along a landscaped path: High school students stream north to class; middle schoolers head south, backpacks bouncing as they bike; electric scooters zip past joggers and dog walkers, while parents stroll with coffee in hand. Just a generation ago, these scenes didn’t exist.
Once an abandoned freight rail, the Atlanta Beltline — which opened its first section in 2012 — is now a 22-mile loop that’s become a vibrant network of trails, parks, affordable housing and local businesses.
"Before the Beltline, Atlanta was not the kind of place you wanted to be on a bicycle," said Ryan Gravel, an urban planner whose graduate thesis sparked the Beltline’s creation. Now, things are different. "If it were earlier in the morning, we'd see my son riding his bike to school. It's crazy that you can do that," he said.
For a fast-growing city long defined by traffic and sprawl, the question of how Atlanta develops has outsized stakes. But the Beltline is showing how rapid urban growth can be healthy, climate-friendly and joyful.
‘Your Favorite Place of Joy’
Each year, more than 2 million people experience the Beltline, a connective spine linking 45 previously fragmented neighborhoods. For decades, highways and rail lines sliced through the city, often isolating historically Black communities. As sprawl and car dependence accelerated in the 1990s and 2000s, families found themselves disconnected from jobs, nature and essential services. What started as an ambitious vision to repurpose defunct rail lines has grown into a far-reaching effort to heal historic divides, restore public space and chart a healthier city.
“If you’ve never been to Atlanta, just think about your favorite place of joy,” said Clyde Higgs, president and CEO of Atlanta Beltline, Inc. (ABI), the quasi-public organization that leads the project. “All the things you care about as a person, the Beltline provides that for you. It connects everything you love without having to get into a personal vehicle.”
Higgs described the Beltline as “the people’s project” — an initiative shaped by community input and designed to support healthy living, bringing green infrastructure, affordable housing, economic opportunity and transit together along a shared corridor.
“The days of developing green space in isolation are gone,” he said. “This is a truly comprehensive redevelopment project.”
Making Health the Heart of the Beltline
Health is central to the Beltline’s success. By design, it encourages walking, running and cycling as part of daily life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the corridor became a lifeline for many city residents, one of the few places where people could move, connect and breathe freely.
“One of the unsung heroes of the Beltline is health,” Higgs said. “And we’re talking about the whole spectrum of that word.”
The Beltline hosts the largest free fitness program in the southeastern U.S., offering residents a range of classes, from yoga to Zumba, held in public parks and along the trail. Health fairs bring mobile clinics and screening vans directly onto the Beltline through partnerships with the American Heart Association and local health departments. Programs support mental well-being and social connections, too.
“We get to see folks lose weight through our programs,” said Tamia Goodman, associate director of Engage Programs for ABI and an Atlanta native. “We connect people to health resources, allowing them to get screened for the first time for chronic issues they didn’t realize they had.” Walking, she added, is more than exercise — it’s a tool for mindfulness and community connection.
The Beltline’s health benefits also extend to nature. Through a long-standing partnership with Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the city’s urban forest, more than 7,000 trees have been planted, transforming former industrial land into a vibrant ecosystem. Once completed, it's projected to be the world's longest linear arboretum.
“The corridor was once a place of dumping and invasive plants like kudzu,” said Greg Levine, executive director of Trees Atlanta, who lives along the Eastside Trail. “Now it’s becoming a healing ribbon through the city.”
To date, the Beltline has cleaned up more than 73 acres of contaminated former industrial land and created 470 acres of new green space, bringing shade, stormwater retention and safe recreation to neighborhoods that long lacked them.
Learning from the Past
The Beltline’s success has not come without cost. As neighborhoods grew more desirable, real estate prices went up, putting affordability pressures on longtime residents and small businesses — impacts not fully anticipated at the project’s start.
“Affordable housing was always a goal,” said Dennis Richards, vice president of housing policy and development for ABI. “But folks didn’t understand how to get there.”
In some areas, rapid appreciation fueled displacement, especially in historically Black communities. Acknowledging this, Atlanta sharpened its policy response, requiring affordable homes in new developments. To date, more than 6,300 affordable units have been created or preserved along the Beltline corridor. Organizations were also set up to help finance new homes and provide property tax relief to longtime residents.
Developments like Madison Reynoldstown, a 116-unit affordable apartment building along the Beltline’s Southeast Trail, serve as an example of what’s possible.
“With the affordable housing, they’re bringing people who built the community back into the community,” said community manager Najah Eskridge. “People who once had to move away can come back home.”
A Place Where Community and Businesses Thrive
Deep community engagement is embedded in the Beltline’s DNA. Guided by City Council Resolution 06-R-1576, the Beltline is required to hold quarterly briefings, host project-specific and neighborhood-based check-ins and provide regular public reporting. Residents serve on advisory bodies for housing, finance and implementation, ensuring community voices inform every major decision.
“We don’t chew gum without having a conversation with the community,” Higgs said.
This commitment goes beyond rhetoric. At Murphy Crossing, a 20-acre mixed-use redevelopment project along the Southwest Trail, ABI has built trust, accountability and partnership by working closely with community members since 2025 to co-create a vision for the site that reflects both local priorities and market realities.
This inclusive approach extends to the Beltline’s focus on shared prosperity. Through its land acquisition strategy and programs like the Atlanta Beltline Marketplace, a small business incubator, the project helps local entrepreneurs and women- and minority-owned businesses secure commercial space and remain rooted in their communities.
For Makeisha Robey, who lives in the Pittsburgh neighborhood along the Beltline’s Southside Trail, that visibility has been essential. Robey is the founder of Happy Black Parent, a small business offering programming for children and families, much of it outdoors.
“We have a minuscule marketing budget,” she said. “Being near the Beltline means people can find us just by being out here. That’s been crucial to keeping our business alive.”
That experience reflects a broader pattern the Beltline has enabled along the corridor.
“Businesses want to be on the Beltline because that’s where the people are,” said Natalie Jones, project manager for ABI’s Business Solutions Office.
The results are visible: More than 29,000 jobs are now located within a half mile of the corridor, reflecting how the Beltline has become an economic engine as well as a thriving civic space.
“You have no city without small businesses,” said Sarah Pierre, a Beltline resident and owner of 3 Parks Wine Shop, which has two locations along the trail. “The energy of the city is small businesses.”
A Model for Cities Everywhere
The Beltline’s influence now stretches far beyond Atlanta. City leaders, planners and delegations from across the U.S. and around the world come to walk the trail, looking for lessons in how to reimagine neglected infrastructure, combat sprawl and build livable cities around people, not cars.
“The Beltline is a different way of growing,” said Jill Johnson, vice president of government affairs for ABI. “It was a project that came about when people of Atlanta spoke up and really latched onto the idea that we could grow differently, that barriers built up over decades could be knocked down.”
One reason the Beltline succeeded where others have stalled is its unique governance model. ABI was created in 2006 as a quasi-public agency whose sole mandate is to plan, coordinate and deliver the project. That dedicated structure and singular focus has given the Beltline the momentum and continuity that most city departments struggle to sustain.
But even a strong organization needs secure, long-term funding. The Beltline’s financial engine combines a Tax Allocation District, which captures growth in property tax revenue to fund public improvements, with a Special Service District, a levy on commercial and multi-family properties established in 2021 that has generated over $100 million to help complete the trail by 2030. Together, these tools ensure steady investment insulated from elections, while requiring transparency and ongoing community buy-in.
As a result, more than $9 billion in private investment along the corridor is fueling new businesses, homes and public spaces.
Yet the Beltline’s spirit is measured not just in dollars, but in how the project brings people together. Arts and culture have animated the corridor from the start. The annual Atlanta Beltline Lantern Parade, which began as a grassroots art project, now attracts more than 70,000 people each year.
“We used to wonder if anyone would use the trail, if Atlantans would ever get out of their cars and go for a walk together,” said Chantelle Rytter, founder of the Lantern Parade and a Beltline resident. “That seems crazy now.”
A Future Still in Motion
The Beltline remains unfinished. Street-level rail transit — central to the original vision — still lies ahead, and affordability challenges persist. But the project’s durability, shaped by institutionalized community engagement, dedicated governance and secure funding, gives many Atlantans reason for optimism.
“Even in its unfinished condition,” Gravel said, “the Beltline gives people confidence that Atlanta is going to grow into the kind of place they want to be.”
For cities around the world, the lesson is not to copy the Beltline, but to emulate its values and approach.
“We tell cities all the time that you don’t have to mimic exactly what we did,” Higgs said. “But you should mimic our principles: being comprehensive in community development and making sure that every part of your community can see themselves in the project.”
Along a corridor that once divided Atlanta, these values are visible from morning to night — in the steady, hopeful rhythm of people moving through a city that is learning to grow better, together.
The Atlanta Beltline was selected as one of five finalists for the 2025-2026 WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities, which celebrates projects and initiatives catalyzing healthy cities. The Grand Prize Winner, which will be selected by an independent jury and will receive a $250,000 grand prize, will be awarded in April 2026.
Projects
WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities
Launch PlatformLaunch Platform Visit ProjectTransformative projects, igniting citywide change.
Part of Cities