field notes: rough reflections on the ever-evolving city of atlanta

Examining labor from the vantage point of the American South allows me to see what’s now, what’s next, and of course, what was.

Atlanta is an ever-evolving city where the new is always grown from both the seeds and the ashes of the old. Atlanta is an ever-evolving city where the new leverages and exploits what was to construct what could be. If FOMO or fear of missing out were embodied by a place, that place would be Atlanta. Physical things like buildings or streets don’t always last here, but the intangible qualities of heritage do. Old Atlanta is as much a feeling as it is a person, place, or thing. New Atlanta is easier to see as embodied by people, places, or things, but it is also a feeling, a sense among those who have known no other home that a change has occurred, that what is will never be like what once was.

The neighborhood blocks in Atlanta feel disjointed. It is very common to walk or drive by modern, box-shaped new build homes next to older bungalow-style dwellings, next to empty lots with “sold” signs planted down in the dirt signaling a new possible future place that will most likely not look like the old, now demolished home and filled with new people that will most likely not look like the old, now relocated people.

I took this photo on my phone while I was walking down a block in the neighborhood of Oakhurst. Oakhurst is a historic neighborhood in the southwest corner of Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Decatur is located in Dekalb County and Atlanta is located in Fulton County. King Williams, an Atlanta-based documentary filmmaker, journalist, and podcast host who I interviewed in Season 2 of my podcast “The BLK IRL Podcast” described the two counties, Dekalb and Fulton as “feuding cousins” which from my experience now living in the Atlanta metropolitan area feels like an accurate description. After all, historically speaking, part of Marthasville* (the “old” name of Atlanta before it was named Atlanta, but after it was born as Terminus, a point on the railroad) was in DeKalb County before that part was cut to create Fulton County.

*Source: Shavin, Norman. 1969. Old Atlanta [1st ed]. Atlanta: Century House.