Where can I find the Young, Black, heterosexual, professional crowd in Atlanta? (Marietta: home, to buy)
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Well, sort of. I was actually replying to your statement that club owners and restaurateurs didn't choose white neighborhoods, it's that they chose to be in the central city and the areas they picked just happened to be inhabited mostly by whites. I believe this occurred by choice, not happenstance.
I'd have to differ on that. Virginia-Highland is just as suburban as other neighborhoods of its vintage. They're all oriented around single family homes with the automobile as the primary mode of travel. And they're all close to the city's main commercial districts. As in these other areas, the commercial strip in Virginia-Highland evolved to serve the immediately surrounding residential neighborhoods. If anything, the most urban in form and history of these neighborhoods is West End.
You're getting closer to the question I'm trying (not very artfully) to tease out. As Atlanta has developed large and prosperous black neighborhoods, why hasn't there been a corresponding growth of nightlife in those areas that appeals to the young professional crowd?
And I appreciate the argument that well to do blacks have tended to locate in suburbs on the south and west side and in DeKalb, but in a sense that begs the same question: why live there, rather than in communities where their preferred nightlife is?
Va-Hi may be suburban in form, just as Inman Park, Candler Park, and even parts of midtown are. But in terms of geography, they are closer to the City of Atlanta's CBDs than any of the black neighborhoods you mentioned. People want to be where there is more concentrated nightlife and commercial offerings, so these areas tend to be more frequented by professional black folk.
The larger question that you seem to be asking is why black professionals just didn't create these communities themselves and create similarly professional urban options.
To answer your specific question about why Blacks moved to the suburbs (which in turn lowers the existence of black affluent neighborhoods in the city). A number of reasons. A perception that education was better in the white suburbs was one. Two, jobs left the city and followed whites outside of Atlanta. With jobs and education being better outside the city, a family of any race would be more inclined to be closer to it. And that's what happened to many black affluent families. They went wherever they could find decent education and safety for their kids at an affordable cost (home buying in the burbs had always given more bang for the buck than the city) and consequently affluent blacks scattered.
Without concentrations of affluent blacks (outside parts of Dekalb and Cascade Rd), who would form nightlife options to serve a neighborhood lacking a concentration of such a specific clientele base? Outside of the areas mentioned (parts of Dekalb and Cascade Rd), there are few neighborhoods concentrated by affluent blacks. They scattered everywhere from Cobb, to Dultuh, to Buford, to Stone Mountain (in its early days) and Lithonia.
Aside from that, it's a lack of progressive vision. Most of the intown hoods that are now hotbeds had been populated by blacks at one point, experienced a downturn upon desegregation, and have been gentrified over the last 10-15 years. Instead of sticking it out in those hoods during those tumultuous years or being among that wave to repopulate it and take advantage of the lowered costs, we simply stayed put in the suburbs. Now, we are continuing to play catch up and finding the suburbs becoming more "hood" as the City continues to push away poor, middle and working class blacks.
From a different perspective, if you look at another wave of black folks entering the suburbs, many were from outside the state and wanted safe, affordable neighborhoods that offered a lot of home for the money. Many of these folks are NYC and LA transplants who wanted to escape the squeezing of the middle class in their respective cities. My family was among that wave of non-native Southerners who moved to the South in the late 80s because of the cheap housing stock, and that housing stock is more likely found in the suburbs.
While that suburban cost of living is attractive to anyone, we still have urban tastes. When you add that (black professional suburbanites hanging out in the city) to the gentrifying of Atlanta's urban core and the fact that our urban hoods are more mixed income than "affluent" (therefore lowering the economic vitality of a strictly professional hangout in a black urban hood) voila, you have predominately white neighborhoods hosting black clientele in the central city.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
Last edited by bizchick86; 09-06-2010 at 04:08 PM..
The larger question that you seem to be asking is why black professionals just didn't create these communities themselves and create similarly professional urban options.
That's certainly part of the issue, and I appreciate your good post. The issues are complex.
It obviously doesn't fall exclusively on black professionals to create nightlife or similar urban options. That would be a heavy load to carry indeed!
But it would be a very good thing (in my opinion) to see increased involvement in living in the areas where they party. As I mentioned in the Castleberry Hill thread, people who merely work in an area have a different level of investment in the community from those who live there, and folks who simply drive in to party have an even lower level of community investment. If you live somewhere on a daily basis, have your family or primary relationship there, and have made a major financial and civic commitment to that area, you tend to feel a much more personal stake. You want the area to be safe, you want it to be clean. You're glad to have the bars, restaurants and similar amenities of urban life, but you're also interested in seeing that it's not disruptive. Most likely you are pleased to feel all the good things that urban energy brings but you want also want a balance that honors your privacy and convenience. And if you've stuck your neck out to make a home in a formerly dicey place, you probably don't want night-clubbers telling to you stuff it because you're a racist fuddy-duddy who can't handle life in the city.
It's great to see the bars hosting crowds that integrate people of different races and cultures. That's what cities are all about. In my opinion, however, we've got to do a lot better than that. We need to heal our residential patterns and schools and community businesses.
A truly diverse city means more than just going to a hot club somewhere in Buckhead or Midtown. We need more people to start putting down roots. While it's nifty that gays and young white couples have gentrified some neighborhoods that fell into decline and that trendy clubs have sprung up, we won't get where we need to be if the partiers just drive back to the burbs. I'd love to see more people say, "I like to hang out here so much I'm going to make it my home and start working to make this community better."
This can work both ways, too. Many of the areas I mentioned on the south are just as convenient as the northside, and we'll never have a healthy city if any part of it is neglected. Whites and blacks (and Asians and Hispanics) all need to help bring back the areas that have suffered neglect.
Pie in the sky? Maybe. Yet it seems to me that if we're ever going to bridge the divides that have split our society there's no better place to start than with making our social lives part of our home.
That's certainly part of the issue, and I appreciate your good post. The issues are complex.
It obviously doesn't fall exclusively on black professionals to create nightlife or similar urban options. That would be a heavy load to carry indeed!
But it would be a very good thing (in my opinion) to see increased involvement in living in the areas where they party. As I mentioned in the Castleberry Hill thread, people who merely work in an area have a different level of investment in the community from those who live there, and folks who simply drive in to party have an even lower level of community investment. If you live somewhere on a daily basis, have your family or primary relationship there, and have made a major financial and civic commitment to that area, you tend to feel a much more personal stake. You want the area to be safe, you want it to be clean. You're glad to have the bars, restaurants and similar amenities of urban life, but you're also interested in seeing that it's not disruptive. Most likely you are pleased to feel all the good things that urban energy brings but you want also want a balance that honors your privacy and convenience. And if you've stuck your neck out to make a home in a formerly dicey place, you probably don't want night-clubbers telling to you stuff it because you're a racist fuddy-duddy who can't handle life in the city.
It's great to see the bars hosting crowds that integrate people of different races and cultures. That's what cities are all about. In my opinion, however, we've got to do a lot better than that. We need to heal our residential patterns and schools and community businesses.
A truly diverse city means more than just going to a hot club somewhere in Buckhead or Midtown. We need more people to start putting down roots. While it's nifty that gays and young white couples have gentrified some neighborhoods that fell into decline and that trendy clubs have sprung up, we won't get where we need to be if the partiers just drive back to the burbs. I'd love to see more people say, "I like to hang out here so much I'm going to make it my home and start working to make this community better."
This can work both ways, too. Many of the areas I mentioned on the south are just as convenient as the northside, and we'll never have a healthy city if any part of it is neglected. Whites and blacks (and Asians and Hispanics) all need to help bring back the areas that have suffered neglect.
Pie in the sky? Maybe. Yet it seems to me that if we're ever going to bridge the divides that have split our society there's no better place to start than with making our social lives part of our home.
Pardon the ramble.
Are you associating "investment in your community" with where people party? (Or am I reading you wrong?). Most people don't want to live near a club/bar. These are not things I'd look for in a home purchase. I don't mind driving 15-30 mins to get into the city to party.
I definitely see what you're saying. At the same time, the suburbs continue to attract blacks for the same reasons they continue to attract whites, Asians, and Latinos. One would have to have the desire of trading the compound they get for 500k in the suburbs for a bungalow (and higher taxes) just to "live where they party." To get a home of an equivalent size, you'd have to be rich, not simply affluent.
Financially, for blacks, whites, and Asians, many who fled expensive cities for a higher quality of life in the first place, it would be counterproductive.
I would trade my house for an apartment in the city any day of the week. However, it would be unrealistic for me to expect that of professional black families with kids and a quality education for them in mind. Sure, they can tough it out, but who wants to experiment with their kids' futures?
And trust, since we're talking about professional class here, those affluent black folk aren't the one's making the Castleberry Hill residents up in arms, at least according to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
That's certainly part of the issue, and I appreciate your good post. The issues are complex.
It obviously doesn't fall exclusively on black professionals to create nightlife or similar urban options. That would be a heavy load to carry indeed!
But it would be a very good thing (in my opinion) to see increased involvement in living in the areas where they party. As I mentioned in the Castleberry Hill thread, people who merely work in an area have a different level of investment in the community from those who live there, and folks who simply drive in to party have an even lower level of community investment. If you live somewhere on a daily basis, have your family or primary relationship there, and have made a major financial and civic commitment to that area, you tend to feel a much more personal stake. You want the area to be safe, you want it to be clean. You're glad to have the bars, restaurants and similar amenities of urban life, but you're also interested in seeing that it's not disruptive. Most likely you are pleased to feel all the good things that urban energy brings but you want also want a balance that honors your privacy and convenience. And if you've stuck your neck out to make a home in a formerly dicey place, you probably don't want night-clubbers telling to you stuff it because you're a racist fuddy-duddy who can't handle life in the city.
It's great to see the bars hosting crowds that integrate people of different races and cultures. That's what cities are all about. In my opinion, however, we've got to do a lot better than that. We need to heal our residential patterns and schools and community businesses.
A truly diverse city means more than just going to a hot club somewhere in Buckhead or Midtown. We need more people to start putting down roots. While it's nifty that gays and young white couples have gentrified some neighborhoods that fell into decline and that trendy clubs have sprung up, we won't get where we need to be if the partiers just drive back to the burbs. I'd love to see more people say, "I like to hang out here so much I'm going to make it my home and start working to make this community better."
This can work both ways, too. Many of the areas I mentioned on the south are just as convenient as the northside, and we'll never have a healthy city if any part of it is neglected. Whites and blacks (and Asians and Hispanics) all need to help bring back the areas that have suffered neglect.
Pie in the sky? Maybe. Yet it seems to me that if we're ever going to bridge the divides that have split our society there's no better place to start than with making our social lives part of our home.
I am a 26 yr old single, african American male who stay in atlanta time after time and I want to know where can I meet single professional women or single women at in atlanta?
I definitely see what you're saying. At the same time, the suburbs continue to attract blacks for the same reasons they continue to attract whites, Asians, and Latinos. One would have to have the desire of trading the compound they get for 500k in the suburbs for a bungalow (and higher taxes) just to "live where they party." To get a home of an equivalent size, you'd have to be rich, not simply affluent.
Oh, there are lots of middle class (and professional class) people who've elected to live in the city in places like Peachtree Park, Midtown, Springdale, Underwood Hills, Virginia-Highland and so forth. You may not have a suburban palace but you can unquestionably get a very nice house in the city for $500K.
Quote:
However, it would be unrealistic for me to expect that of professional black families with kids and a quality education for them in mind. Sure, they can tough it out, but who wants to experiment with their kids' futures?
Why is that unrealistic? That's precisely what tens of thousands of young families who've decided to bring back the city have done. They could have chucked it in and headed for the burbs, but they said, "No, we're taking a stand. We like this neighborhood and we're willing to do what it takes to make it strong and vibrant again."
Several of the young people in my own family have done this, and I've had the good fortune to meet many of their friends and families. And their hard work and commitment is paying off. Many intown schools are now superb. Look at Sarah Smith (I and II), Mary Lin, Springdale Park, Morningside, Garden Hills, and others. Those are tremendous success stories. Parks are being built and refurbished in the city. Shopping has come back in a big way. Neighbors band together to clean up vacant lots, get trash off the streets, and keep things safe. They have museums, concerts, sports, transit and all the amenities a big city has to offer at their fingertips. There's a high level of civic involvement and lots of community activities.
Yes, you "play it safe" and move to the suburbs, but that's hardly the only option. And not necessarily the best one. Many have made very significant personal and financial investments in the city. It's not merely a place they drive to party and then leave behind. It's their risk and hard work that made their neighborhoods vibrant, successful and attractive. That is what pulled them out of decline and what keeps them from falling back.
So I'm hopeful that the black professional crowd will see the city as home and not just a place to get totally whack. That would move the city forward in some awesome ways and give those who do it a powerful claim on being Atlantans.
Quote:
And trust, since we're talking about professional class here, those affluent black folk aren't the one's making the Castleberry Hill residents up in arms, at least according to them.
I agree, and the Castleberry Hill residents made that clear.
Most people don't want to live near a club/bar. These are not things I'd look for in a home purchase. I don't mind driving 15-30 mins to get into the city to party.
Well, the fact that a lot of people are willing to live near a club or bar is what makes a city. If that weren't the case, we could just stick all the bars and clubs in an abandoned strip mall on the I-75 Frontage Road and be done with it.
But not many people would like that. For most of us, a big part of what makes an entertainment venue deisrable is the way it blends into the urban fabric. We want to go to an area that is considered hip, fun and trendy. It's even better if it offers a variety of restaurants, bars and clubs within walking distance. We prefer places that have a cool look and feel, and that have a reputation that will draw in other people as well.
Those conditions don't just materialize by magic. Most of the time they occur when a community has gotten its act together to the point where restaurants, bars and shops feel comfortable opening up. As we know, they typically won't open in places they perceive as too dangerous, too trashed out, or that have suffered too much neglect.
So these areas need to be cultivated and nurtured, usually over a period of years. And they need to be protected. The collapse of the Buckhead bar scene -- which had a national reputation -- due to violence is a classic example of how that can happen.
One of the points I'm raising is that to really make the club scene in Atlanta thrive is for at least some of the people who go there to develop a sense of ownership and investment in the neighborhood. Put down roots. Make it your home. Know what people in the community think and be part of it yourself. Understand the issues and resolve them instead of blowing them off.
can anyone make a suggestion to myself because I am an Electronics Technician at a base and I am currently in college going for Engineering. I am looking for single women can anyone tell me where to go in Atlanta?
I agree with you completely. I am only referring to the mentality of black professionals who continue to move to the suburbs. If their desires are to move to neighborhoods with better public education and/or more house for their money, I cannot blame them, not that I would do the same.
Besides that, we're going off track. Of course middle class folks are moving more into the city, which is why it's growing. That's not up for debate. We were discussing why blacks move to the suburbs and why they're not forming urban nightlife options in black urban neighborhoods. The places that you mentioned are predominately white urban neighborhoods. I fail to see how this is relevant to the topic at hand.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
Oh, there are lots of middle class (and professional class) people who've elected to live in the city in places like Peachtree Park, Midtown, Springdale, Underwood Hills, Virginia-Highland and so forth. You may not have a suburban palace but you can unquestionably get a very nice house in the city for $500K.
Why is that unrealistic? That's precisely what tens of thousands of young families who've decided to bring back the city have done. They could have chucked it in and headed for the burbs, but they said, "No, we're taking a stand. We like this neighborhood and we're willing to do what it takes to make it strong and vibrant again."
Several of the young people in my own family have done this, and I've had the good fortune to meet many of their friends and families. And their hard work and commitment is paying off. Many intown schools are now superb. Look at Sarah Smith (I and II), Mary Lin, Springdale Park, Morningside, Garden Hills, and others. Those are tremendous success stories. Parks are being built and refurbished in the city. Shopping has come back in a big way. Neighbors band together to clean up vacant lots, get trash off the streets, and keep things safe. They have museums, concerts, sports, transit and all the amenities a big city has to offer at their fingertips. There's a high level of civic involvement and lots of community activities.
Yes, you "play it safe" and move to the suburbs, but that's hardly the only option. And not necessarily the best one. Many have made very significant personal and financial investments in the city. It's not merely a place they drive to party and then leave behind. It's their risk and hard work that made their neighborhoods vibrant, successful and attractive. That is what pulled them out of decline and what keeps them from falling back.
So I'm hopeful that the black professional crowd will see the city as home and not just a place to get totally whack. That would move the city forward in some awesome ways and give those who do it a powerful claim on being Atlantans.
I agree, and the Castleberry Hill residents made that clear.
can anyone make a suggestion to myself because I am an Electronics Technician at a base and I am currently in college going for Engineering. I am looking for single women can anyone tell me where to go in Atlanta?
There are dozens of these posts already in existence. Go to the search bar and have your fill. Or just read this thread for the black professional nightlife options.
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