Atlanta City Studio Pop-Up Launches at Ponce City Market

With the well-received debut of Atlanta City Studio in May, ideas to enhance the city are closer to reality.

This is Atlanta’s first pop-up urban design laboratory, where visitors, residents, urbanists and professionals can brainstorm ideas that could contribute to shaping the area’s future. Atlanta City Studio asks, “How should Atlanta grow for the future?”

A team of city planners, architects and urban designers are on hand to interact with visitors at the studio. But the pop-up space also hosts lectures, book talks, film series, open forums, urban art presentations and other neighborhood and design components that will involve the community in creating the city’s landscape.

“The Atlanta City Studio is already helping manage the design elements of our changing city, and community engagement and involvement is an integral part of this process,” says Tim Keane, Commissioner for the Department of Planning and Community Development, City of Atlanta. “To date, 1,500 Atlanta residents and visitors have come to the studio since we opened in late May.”

These community engagement events include Design Over Coffee on the first and third Friday of the month, book club meetings on the second Wednesday of the month and “Good Urbanism”—a lecture series discussing the 10 principles of urban design— on the fourth Tuesday of the month.

Every six months, the pop-up will move to a new location in the city, giving residents of different neighborhoods a chance to connect with like-minded individuals. Next up? Still TBD, but city insiders say somewhere on the Westside.

atlantaga.gov

STORY: Alexa Lampasona