I keep in mind watching Michael Johnson dash across the observe in Atlanta, his gold chain swinging with each stride and his gold sneakers flashing below the stadium lights. To a younger viewer, he appeared nearly bigger than life, gliding across the oval with a confidence that made the not possible look easy. Like hundreds of thousands of Individuals, I watched the 1996 Olympics believing I used to be witnessing not simply extraordinary athletic achievement, however a defining second for a metropolis on the rise.
Thirty years later, I nonetheless keep in mind Johnson’s race. What I perceive otherwise is the town that surrounded it.
In the summertime of 1996, Atlanta launched itself to the world because the capital of the New South: fashionable, various, formidable, and able to compete with the world’s nice cities. By many measures, the Olympics had been precisely the success Atlanta’s leaders envisioned.
The Video games accelerated funding in downtown, expanded infrastructure, attracted companies, strengthened tourism, and elevated Atlanta’s worldwide profile. Within the a long time that adopted, the area grew to become one of many fastest-growing metropolitan areas in America. It emerged as a middle for movie manufacturing, know-how, logistics, greater training, and Black entrepreneurship. Atlanta solidified its popularity because the nation’s Black cultural capital, residence to thriving traditionally Black faculties and universities, Fortune 500 corporations, influential church buildings, artists, filmmakers, and political leaders.
The Olympics made Atlanta larger. However they didn’t make it extra equitable. That contradiction has turn out to be one of many defining tales of contemporary Atlanta.
Lengthy earlier than the opening ceremony, the town was reworking itself for a worldwide viewers. Complete neighborhoods had been redeveloped. Public housing tasks had been demolished or essentially reshaped. Tens of 1000’s of residents had been displaced within the years surrounding the Video games, a lot of them poor and disproportionately Black. The town additionally intensified efforts to take away homelessness from public view, looking for to current guests with a picture of prosperity and order.
These selections weren’t distinctive to Atlanta. Cities all over the world have typically used mega-events as catalysts for redevelopment. However in Atlanta, the prices fell closely on communities that had already spent generations navigating segregation, city renewal, freeway development, and discriminatory housing insurance policies.
The Olympics didn’t create these inequalities. They accelerated them. The sample that emerged has since turn out to be acquainted throughout America. Public funding attracts personal capital. Property values rise. New eating places, flats, workplaces, and leisure districts comply with. Longtime residents, a lot of whom endured years of neglect earlier than redevelopment grew to become worthwhile, all of a sudden discover themselves priced out of the neighborhoods they helped maintain.
Atlanta grew to become wealthier. Many Atlantans didn’t. Nowhere is that this stress extra obvious than within the metropolis’s altering demographics. Neighborhoods that had been as soon as predominantly Black have skilled speedy gentrification. Some have gained grocery shops, parks, trails, and new funding. They’ve additionally misplaced most of the households who gave these communities their identification.
The query will not be whether or not Atlanta improved. It clearly did. The query is: improved for whom?
That query deserves specific consideration as a result of Atlanta occupies a novel place within the American creativeness.
For generations, it has represented chance for Black Individuals. It grew to become the headquarters of the fashionable civil rights motion. It nurtured generations of Black political management. It supplied alternatives unavailable in lots of different main cities. Its universities educated nationwide leaders. Its church buildings formed public life. Its companies helped construct one of many largest Black center courses within the nation.
That legacy stays actual. So does one other. The identical metropolis celebrated as a Black Mecca has additionally witnessed widening inequality, rising housing prices, and the displacement of many Black residents from neighborhoods their households known as residence for many years.
Each tales are true. One doesn’t erase the opposite. Three a long time because the Olympics, Atlanta affords an necessary lesson for cities making ready to host main worldwide occasions or pursue large-scale redevelopment tasks.
Development, by itself, will not be the identical as shared prosperity. A metropolis can turn out to be extra well-known with out turning into extra reasonably priced.
It may appeal to billions of {dollars} in funding whereas longtime residents battle to stay. It may construct world-class stadiums, parks, and leisure districts whereas leaving most of the individuals who constructed the town questioning whether or not there’s nonetheless a spot for them.
Let me be clear: Atlanta’s expertise shouldn’t be seen as a cause to reject development. Cities want funding. Infrastructure issues. Financial improvement creates alternatives that profit complete areas.
However development shouldn’t be measured solely by skylines, company headquarters, or worldwide rankings. It must also be measured by whether or not academics, nurses, sanitation employees, retirees, and households who’ve lived in a neighborhood for generations can nonetheless afford to name that neighborhood residence.
Thirty years later, Atlanta stands as considered one of America’s nice success tales. It’s extra globally linked than anybody may have imagined in 1996.
But the anniversary of the Olympic Video games ought to invite greater than celebration. It must also invite reflection. The best legacy of the Olympics was not merely the stadiums they left behind or the vacationers they attracted. It was the mannequin of city transformation they accelerated.
As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Olympics, and as cities throughout America compete for main occasions, know-how campuses, sports activities franchises, and billion-dollar redevelopment tasks, Atlanta reminds us that success shouldn’t be judged solely by what will get constructed. It must also be judged by who will get to remain.
The Olympics made Atlanta larger. The following era of civic management ought to make it extra equitable.
