As part of ongoing Best of Atlanta 2022 coverage, Urbanize’s second-annual Best Atlanta Neighborhood tournament is kicking off with 16 places vying for the prestige of being called the city’s greatest. (Note: Seeding from 1 to 16 was determined by reader nominations this month, so no pitchforks, please.)

For each Round 1 contest, voting will be open for just 24 hours. Please, let’s keep the tourney fun and positive, as one neighborhood rises above the rest in very public fashion. The eliminations begin now!

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VIRGINIA-HIGHLAND (4)

Va-Hi's tony housing stock near Piedmont Park. Google Maps

Highest home sale of 2022: $3.05M, for a six-bedroom behemoth on Amsterdam Avenue

Lowest: $175K, for a 575-square-foot condo

Median sales price increase year-over-year: 47.5 percent (November)

When it comes to development controversy and buzz, elegant old Virginia-Highland may have taken the cake in 2022. News emerged in June that a mysterious but powerful developer was snooping around the neighborhood’s southwesternmost flank, with intentions to wipe out a row of businesses (beloved stalwarts like MJQ and The Local among them) and build a much denser replacement on Ponce. As time unfolded, Portman Holdings was revealed as the mystery land-assembler, and those rumors of a Ponce mini-city vision turned about to be true. Whether that qualifies Va-Hi as ATL’s best neighborhood this year is up for debate, but like the neighborhood’s median home sales price last month ($900,000), it certainly means it’s relatively desirable.

Other Va-Hi happenings of note included the Roycraft condo building topping out along the neighborhood’s BeltLine stretch, and possible signs of life for a boutique development that would finally wipe out a vibrancy-killing parking lot.

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PEOPLESTOWN (13)

How the 250-unit Skyline project will front Hank Aaron Drive in Peoplestown. Rendering courtesy of Exact Capital

Highest home sale of 2022: $679K, for an updated four-bedroom near the Southside Trail corridor

Lowest: $142K, for a 1,144-square-foot house that somehow offered three bedrooms

Median sales price increase year-over-year: 22 percent (November)

For what’s probably the David in this Best Atlanta Neighborhood equation, 2022 has been a year of headline-grabbing news—most of it positive. Development wonks of Atlanta turned their attention to Peoplestown back in February, when ground broke on a subsidized, 250-unit BeltLine affordable housing venture that promises to stand like an 11-story statement piece near the Southside Trail corridor—with all rents capped at 60 percent of the area median income or less. Immediately west of there, plans for an adaptive-reuse food hall and office project in Peoplestown came to light last month. Also on the bright side, a decade-long land battle over a flood zone came to a copacetic ending in Peoplestown in '22. But the outlook for MARTA’s first bus-rapid transit line serving the area was pushed back, for several reasons.

Peoplestown’s BeltLine segment—currently open for public use in an unpaved, interim state between the Connector and Boulevard—is scheduled to be bid out for construction in September next year. Which helps explain why the neighborhood’s median sales price in November had climbed to $479,900—but still, that’s about half the cost of the competition.

Now, please cast a vote below!  

(POLLING HAS CLOSED AFTER 24 HOURS. Thanks to all who participated, and congrats to Virginia-Highland.)