In the past week, several of our classes have discussed the idea of the city. In Dr. Fernandez’s class, our assigned comic book “New York: The Big City” illustrates much of the culture and social interaction that exists in a big city such as New York. We discussed how the layouts of cities and the history of their existence have affected humanity and the way we live. In our Mapping class, we read some of “Where We Want to Live”, and talked about how the author, Ryan Gravel, describes the causes and effects of urban sprawl, specifically in the metro Atlanta area. We also discussed other geographical urban issues such as “white flight” and the destruction of multiple residential neighborhoods in the mid-late 1900s. In both classes, we considered the impact the automobile has had on cities and on the country as a whole. Atlanta itself has gone through multiple transformations, from being the locomotive capital of the Southeast, to a city riddled with confusing and complicated highway systems to benefit the individual automobile, to, now, an urban area that is attempting to bring ease back to the pedestrian lifestyle. For example, the multiple expansions of sidewalks and bicycle lanes throughout downtown, or the invention of the Atlanta Beltline and the streetcar system.