Urban Restructuring in Atlanta: A Nexus of Race, Class, Power, and Growth

The terms urban restructuring and growth are political economy terms meant to signify positive recreation of urban space within the urban imaginary. While this idea may actually produce positive benefits for some, the urban restructuring products like urban renewal for low-income people of color, have come to represent the way in which inequality is spatially articulated in the urban landscape. Using the city of Atlanta as a case study, four examples of urban restructuring in the last century is explored to further this argument: segregation and zoning (1913–1931); The Downtown Connector (1946–1950); Federal Urban Renewal (1950's – 1960's); and the 1996 Summer Olympics (1990–1996). Here, I will discuss how power and capital interact with race and class to determine how these restructuring projects differentially affect spatial arrangements along class and racial lines in Atlanta. In doing so, the article will consider how urban restructuring has been a mechanism of power by the state and the private sector to advance capitalists interests of growth and profit, and while also to achieving goals of racial and class segregation, thereby displacing low-income people, often of color, with little to no access to power in order to advance their own economic interests.