What will Atlanta 2050 look like?

Consider this: Should Atlanta Regional Commission’s forecasts prove accurate, our current metro by the year 2050 will add another 1.4 million residents, give or take. That’d be like packing on another DeKalb and Cobb counties to the ungainly behemoth of a metropolis that exists here today. 

And that’s just the ARC’s 21-county region—not the 29-county swath of North Georgia the U.S. Census Bureau considers the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell Metropolitan Statistical Area, where population growth numbers could be significantly higher.  

Which is to say: If you feel like Atlanta’s full today, as the questionable slogan goes, just wait, per the experts. 

It’s now the middle of 2025—and the halfway point to 2050 this century. If you were alive and not a small child during the year 2000, you probably realize that two and ½ decades can slip by like a finger-snap of time. In an amorphous place like Atlanta, which seems to change by the week, a quarter-century has potential to fundamentally alter many things. 

In 25 years, as available land in Midtown and downtown becomes scarcer, could Atlanta see it’s first 100-story building, or a bonafide supertall structure? Will the Stitch and similar freeway-capping parks come to fruition, remediating urban highway scars and creating fresh, healthy social environments? Will light-rail transit options exist, anywhere? Will the Beltline and its multimodal-path cousins create a web of transportation and recreation options spanning from, say, Peachtree City to Cumming, from Lithonia to Carrolton? Could one more MARTA rail station be built—whoa, hey now, let’s not get insane here! 

Let’s ponder for a moment what that 2050 version of Atlanta could look like from ground level, and how it will function (or not)? Are we doomed by our own attractiveness—or poised for a prosperous golden era? Will we choke on growth or manage to thoughtfully weave the city and region together, following decades of questionable (if not deplorable) land-use decisions? 

For our latest Friday Fun Bag installment, it seemed like an appropriate time to ask. 

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