News & Opinion

The next time you watch a MARTA bus driver make a squeaky-tight turn with ease, you can thank Howard Harris, who teaches novices to navigate Atlanta’s labyrinthine streets.

Once a week, Adaptive Climbing Clinic, a volunteer-driven clinic offers climbers with physical disabilities the resources and equipment they need to participate. It is, unfortunately, a rare opportunity. Despite the recent boom in rock climbing’s popularity, lack of representation and support infrastructure remain daunting obstacles

While Josef Martinez was a franchise icon and one of Major League Soccer’s greatest-ever players, he was first and foremost a diehard Atlanta United fan. He felt the same passion and pettiness we did—the club, the city, and the fans meant everything to him. And we loved him in return.

Joyland is a historic South Atlanta neighborhood not far from Atlanta Technical College and an unpaved section of the BeltLine’s Southside Trail. It was named after a short-lived amusement park that opened here in 1921 to serve Black residents, who were excluded from nearby whites-only Lakewood Fairgrounds—site of today’s film studios and Lakewood Amphitheatre.

For many in attendance, it was a fitting way to spend Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “They arrested Dr. King 29 times—29 times!” Kamau Franklin told a crowd of around 70 protestors assembled in front of the DeKalb County courthouse, many of them part of a loose coalition of activist groups, environmentalists, and concerned citizens united against a planned 85-acre, $90 million Atlanta police and firefighter training facility in the South River Forest.

It was a busy first week back for Georgia’s elected officials. Freshmen lawmakers were sworn in, new congressional leadership was elected, and Governor Brian Kemp was inaugurated for his second term. Now, with the 2023 legislative session in full swing, here are five new developments that will likely shape this year’s lawmaking agenda.

The new 32-minute original documentary, produced by the Atlanta History Center under its new Atlanta History Center Originals banner, premiered Wednesday night at AHC and illustrates the history of the world’s largest confederate monument by tracking the timeline of its birth.

Georgia is home to the fourth-highest number of dams in the country: over 5,400. These dams dot the state—in backyards, near playgrounds, beside breweries. They are owned by individuals, homeowners associations, and state organizations. Over a third of the riskiest dams in the state are in the metro Atlanta area. Fulton, home to more than 1 million Georgians, has more high-hazard dams in poor condition than nearly any other county in the state.

The installations at the Museum of Design Atlanta’s new exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, include experimental visualizations, development proposals, facade studies, and building designs. Each riffs off of hip-hop’s methodologies—deejaying, emceeing, b-boy dancing, graffiti, remixing, sampling—to translate hip-hop’s energy into built form.

Local governments rely on property taxes to maintain infrastructure and provide public services—to fill potholes, pay schoolteachers, and build affordable housing. In Atlanta, funds always seem to come up short. Julian Bene—a retired management consultant who served on the board of Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency—believes he knows one reason why: By his estimate, the city, county, and school system are being shorted millions of dollars a year by high-value commercial property owners not paying their fair share in property taxes.