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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Initially envisioned in 1999 as a transit solution for the notoriously auto-centric Atlanta, the BeltLine vision has kept growing ever since. City and Regional Planning student Ryan ravel (MCRP ’99) wrote a master’s thesis entitled, “Belt Line–Atlanta: Design of Infrastructure as a Reflection of Public Policy.” Gravel challenged the city’s reliance on the automobile and proposed to upend that norm by creating light-rail stations along historic freight lines to connect with bus routes and MARTA. Today, the sheer scope of the project is probably best comprehended in numbers: It includes four abandoned rail beds transformed into 22 miles of streetcar transit and bike and pedestrian paths. This greenway circles the urban core and connects 45 historic neighborhoods and more than 20 parks. To do it, 1,000 acres of brownfields will be remediated, and 3,000 acres of impervious surfaces will be broken up and given back to native plants. The result is more than 1,300 acres of green space, increasing the city’s parkland by 40 percent.
