Amplifying Atlanta

Emerging from Atlanta’s historical rail line infrastructure, the Atlanta Beltline, a twenty-two-mile ring of multi-use trails, parks, and light rail system is shaping a new way of life within the city’s urban core. The Beltline is challenging critical issues such as suburban sprawl and traffic congestion through strategies of connectivity, walkability, and environmental sustainability. This thesis embraces these challenges, amplifies the city’s existing urban fabric and capitalizes on emerging infrastructure to provide a possible framework for the city’s future growth. This speculative framework provides a platform for a scalar approach to increasing density, implementing a patchwork zoning strategy, preserving prominent characteristics of the city, and prioritizing space within the urban core for a new type that represents the “missing middle”