Above is the route that my GSU Honors Mapping class took on our walk to the civic center today! We learned about Atlanta’s mixed-use properties, Buttermilk Bottom, a “poor, black” neighborhood, in the 1950’s, the transition to “grandiose” almost suburban-like structures in the 1970’s, and the transition back to mixed-use properties in the twenty-first century due to the failure of the architectural structures from the 1970’s and beyond. Today, the buildings of the modern century look drastically different from the 1950’s. The buildings in Atlanta during the 1950’s were predominantly mixed-use where a commercial business connected with a residential building. As the years passed, the government deemed such mixed-use buildings as “undesirable” and started constructing new architecture that dismantled any form of mixed-use properties. A prime example, the Civic Center, embodies this change. The Civic center used to inhabit a community called Buttermilk Bottom, a poor, black neighborhood that the government eventually saw as a “slum.” Because of this negative attitude, the government yearned to demolish Buttermilk Bottom and construct a grandiose super-structure where the wealthy elite could attend social gatherings. This transition lead to African American communities being dislocated to the outskirts of the city in government housing which ultimately negatively impacted their way of life. Contrastingly, in present day, Atlanta has endured the failures of the 1970’s era of architecture and is now attempting to rebuild the city as mixed-use property again. Ironically, the government spent incredible amounts of money to achieve something that inevitably didn’t succeed and now Atlanta desires to develop the structures that were prominent in the 1950’s.