After nearly 4,000 votes, it all comes down to this, Atlanta.
With two weeks of hard-fought faceoffs in the books, two contestants have risen above the rest to sniff Mount Olympus. Both are relatively strong bets this year, in terms of seeding. But only one can be proclaimed the greatest in Urbanize’s fourth-annual Best Atlanta Neighborhood tournament.
Will it be the higher-seeded powerhouse Old Fourth Ward? Or the feisty, funky, proud place that is East Atlanta?
Without further ado ... Welcome to The Championship!
This being the final contest, voting will be open until 3 p.m. Thursday, allowing anyone who’s actually on vacation sufficient time to chime in.
We ask that you keep the tourney fun, fair, and positive as one great intown neighborhood surges to everlasting glory—with the whole city (and beyond) watching.
Now, let’s go!
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(3) Old Fourth Ward
Round 1: Escorted Adair Park to the door
Elite Eight: Edged Summerhill
Final Four: Soundly defeated neighboring Inman Park
Views to Midtown over Fourth Ward Project's three-building first phase.
Beltline-connected Old Fourth Ward has been a hotbed of supersonic growth for what seems like ages. As usual, O4W happenings this year were too numerous to list here, but a few highlights: Two high-rise hospitality concepts—New City’s diamond-patterned Forth hotel and the Scout Living tower over Ponce City Market—drew back their curtains in 2024, as rare for-sale condos debuted nearby at The Leon on Ponce.
Speaking of Ponce, a Complete Streets overhaul came together as an effort to improve pedestrian and bike connections between Boulevard and John Lewis Freedom Parkway. Elsewhere, the Atlanta Civic Center redo edged toward groundbreaking, and the relatively affordable evolution of Boulevard continued to rise. Nonetheless, this eastside powerhouse hasn’t claimed the (nonexistent) trophy in one of these contests since 2012. But could that change in ’24?
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(4) East Atlanta
Round 1: Breezed by College Park
Elite Eight: Narrowly slipped past downtown
Final Four: Overcame West End
Courtesy of Adams Commercial Real Estate
Usually a tough out in criteria-free, year-end neighborhood tourneys (and the overall Champion in 2016), East Atlanta garnered enough reader nominations to land a strong No. 4 seed. Which makes sense, given the buzz around several EAV projects this year—and what could have been the most rollicking East Atlanta Strut festival to date in September.
Artist Greg Mike transformed a 1980s church into a modern-gothic temple to creativity, while commendably old-school designs for mixed-use development on a small scale came to light on a vacant East Atlanta corner. Elsewhere, frequent village investors Pellerin Real Estate are bringing an infill project (see above) with dozens of new homes to a site where little more than a void in EAV’s vibrancy existed before. As always, East Atlanta remained a proud and diverse community that embraces the weird and shuns too much polish. But was it the best neighborhood this city has to offer in 2024?
