Abstract
Abstract. There is a need for sustainable infrastructure planning that includes environmental, social, economic, and transportation management consideration. A portion of a former railway corridor around Atlanta, Georgia was converted to a multi-use trail called the Atlanta BeltLine to provide walking and bicycling access to businesses and homes. Although the pedestrian-transit trail brings renewed development and services, it also triggers increases in home values and displaces existing communities. This study uses remote sensing and geospatial analysis to focus on changes in the structural conditions of housing along the Westside segment of the Atlanta BeltLine. The first segment of the Beltline, the Eastside Trail completed in 2007, demonstrated an alarming influx of development. Increases in property values opened the doors for private investors to purchase properties and open new businesses in communities adjacent to the BeltLine. The proposed Westside segment of the BeltLine has raised concerns by community members who fear the impacts of gentrification. An assessment of housing conditions was conducted by researchers ranking the structural conditions of homes adjacent to the Westside BeltLine. To conduct an estimate of green spaces along both segments of BeltLines, Sentinel-2 Earth Observation Satellite was used to calculate the percentage of green spaces in. A preliminary concept agent-based simulation model (ABM) is being developed to forecast human movement and housing condition around the BeltLine. Combined, the housing survey, green space inventory, and ABM model provides a baseline method to record and identify social and the environmental impacts.
Highlights
With an alarming population increase of over 35% and 75,000 per year within the last ten years, the Atlanta Metropolitan area is among one of the top ten in population growth in the U.S (U.S Census Bureau, 2019)
Georectified cloud-free Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) images from Summer 2017 were downloaded from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) using EarthExplorer
To prepare for the survey, parcel maps from Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) data sets for Fulton County were used to identify residential housing units that are within one block or adjacent to the Beltline (Pippin et al, 2017)
Summary
With an alarming population increase of over 35% and 75,000 per year within the last ten years, the Atlanta Metropolitan area is among one of the top ten in population growth in the U.S (U.S Census Bureau, 2019). The concept of the Atlanta BeltLine began in 1999 as a Master’s Thesis project proposed by Ryan Gravel. Gravel himself stated in a 2005 addendum to his 1999 Master’s Thesis, “The grassroots support built so early for the Beltline rests not on abstract theory, but on the intuitive nature of the proposal,” and describes how it has expanded beyond his original vision into values of communities (Gravel, 2005). The installation of the Atlanta BeltLine provides walking and bicycling passage to thousands of businesses and homes. In 2017, the Westside Trail was completed and it is expected to generate similar effects of increased home restoration, rent rates and influx of commercial services in the traditionally African American community of the Eastside
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