District 3 Westside Revive

Proposed plan at the confluence of the Atlanta BeltLine Westside Trail, MARTA Green Line, Proctor Creek, and Maddox Park where a large area of vacant and abandoned land is destined to be dramatically transformed in the coming years.

Westside Revive is the master plan for Atlanta’s Council District 3, which encompasses more than 4,800 acres on the west side of Atlanta. D3 is a community-based vision and strategic roadmap for how the District should grow and prosper, and it is also the first of its kind. While many areas of the Westside have struggled with disinvestment and population loss since the 1960s, city-wide projects like the BeltLine and Proctor Creek have elevated the planning discourse in Atlanta and revealed how strategic, inclusive goals can create transformative change for communities. The construction of Mercedes Benz Stadium and its associated redevelopment have renewed urgency to develop a district-wide plan. Westside Revive is a master plan that is long been overdue for the area.

Approach: The district called for a community engagement process that focused on each neighborhood while keeping the relationship to the district in mind. To do this, the district was divided into nine subareas which drove the planning and engagement process. More detailed planning was conducted in Subareas 1-5. The Westside Land Use Framework Plan, adopted in November 2017, covers Subarea 6. Other planning efforts included Subareas 7-9.

The D3 planning process included thirteen workshops, several stakeholder interviews and reached over ten thousand people.

The engagement process focused the conversations around the Quality of Life Index which included seven categories: housing, jobs and services, education, the environment, health, safety, and community / civic engagement. The findings helped both reveal deficiencies and celebrate the strengths worth preserving in each community and lead to recommendations in land use and development, housing, and transportation.

The planning team used a mixed-method approach where both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered under each category. This was done by using GIS data and conducting and exhaustive survey with answers geo-located on a gridded online platform. In the example shown below, the map depicts three layers of information overlaid on each other and extrapolated per grid square:

1) Proximity to parks (calculated using GIS);

2) Tree coverage (open data from the city);

3) Survey answers to the question of how satisfied community members are with their local parks.

Each category was treated with the same rigor and helped the team gain an in-depth understanding of the district. Learn more about the survey here.

Each subarea had two workshops. In the first one, general information about the neighborhoods was gathered. In the recap, the planning team presented land use and transportation ideas to the community, followed by an exercise where participants placed images of different development types on a large-scale map. The images and comments served as the basis for each subarea framework plan which included recommendations on development character areas.

Development Character Areas: In order to address existing conditions and propose new development opportunities, this plan utilized development classification system that codifies a number of typical urban living and working conditions into distinct development character areas seen across District 3 (these are not Future Land Use Categories). The nine categories that are used describe varying degrees of building density layered on top of different building uses and form. The categories include: Single-Family Stabilization / Infill; Twin, Row + Courtyard Housing; Multistory Multifamily; Neighborhood Centers; Area Activity Centers; Regional Urban Core; Industrial / Innovation Space; Community Facilities; and Heritage Resources