Where Is Atlanta’s Town Square? 

We’re a big city. An international city. A dynamic city. A creative city. A city with roots. A city of communities. Always on the move. A city with plans.

People find themselves in Atlanta, fall in love with it, decide to stay. People come up in Atlanta, take off to make it big, and find their way back. Some folks wouldn’t think to think of leaving the A.

We all rally around the idea of Atlanta, but is there a place—one place—that brings us all together? One place we look to gather when we need to meet up, celebrate, speak our minds, bare our souls, duke it out? When the grind overtakes our better angels, where do we go to take a collective breath and reground?

It has a classical ring to it, but let’s call it a “town square.” Does Atlanta have a town square?

In most cities, people look to a Downtown for the town square. But Atlanta seems to have many Downtowns sprinkled across its cityscape: Centennial Olympic Park, Colony Square, the Buckhead financial district, and Perimeter Center in Sandy Springs—to name only the most obvious suspects. Today, the “centerless city” is a common metropolitan state of affairs. Thirty years ago, however, when celebrated Dutch architect, urbanist, and provocateur Rem Koolhaas deemed “centerless” Atlanta exceptional, it wasn’t quite yet a thing. 

In 1995, the very year that André 3000 proclaimed to the world “the South got something to say,” Koolhaas published an essay in a book of photographs about Atlanta. In it, he observed the city’s apparent immunity to the “apocalyptic atmosphere of downtown doom” that most of America’s big cities experienced in the 1970s. He credits John Portman’s Downtown strategy with “trigger[ing] Atlanta’s rebirth,” which made it a “test case” for the recovery of Downtowns across the country. 

Koolhaas also credits Portman’s reinvention of the atrium—as an architecture of exclusion and spectacle rather than opening and light—with triggering the demise of Atlanta’s Downtown proper. “With atriums as their private mini-centers, buildings no longer depend on specific locations,” Koolhaas argues. “They can be anywhere. And if they can be anywhere, why should they be downtown?” 

(If you haven’t made your pilgrimage to the atrium in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis downtown, add it to your bucket list.)

But Koolhaas was writing in 1995, the year before the Olympics came to town, and the BeltLine—not to mention the worldwide web—was barely a sparkle in our eye. Today, his description “distributed downtowns” resonates with a fully networked meaning. But that is just stating the obvious. We want to revisit his atrium theory. 

In our last post, about our city’s graffiti and mural culture, historian Curt Jackson noted that he’s heard people call the Krog Street Tunnel “the atrium to the neighborhood.” If Atlanta’s atriums are showing signs of returning to their classical function—the “hole in a house or a building that injects light and air—the outside—into the center,” as Koolhaas puts it—could a classical town square make a comeback, too? If Atlanta reclaimed a center—making it the vanguard, the influencer of everything, the exceptional city all over again—what would it be? Where could it go?

Nominate your pick for Atlanta’s town square or just add your two cents with a comment below, @perkinswill_atl on IG, or email us at designandourcity@perkinswill.com. 

As our series continues, we will share what we hear from you along with our takes on Atlanta’s town square, and oh by the way where all the green in our city fits into this scenario.

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