Spring Break Postcards on Social Connection
For spring break year, my family embarked on an epic southern road trip to look at colleges (daughter), take in NBA basketball games (son), and eat barbecue and ice cream (mom). My wife (and I) just wanted the togetherness of our family, especially since our daughter’s college search has made us acutely aware that she won’t always be a daily presence in our lives. With my work on social connection, I was thinking about both our family’s togetherness and how the cities we visited shape social connection for their communities. This shaping clearly matters for the degree of community, and I tried to capture bits of each place in the postcards below.
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Atlanta, the first stop on our trip, had a surprisingly empty downtown. Though I have passed through Atlanta innumerable times and spent a few days at various events in the suburbs, I had not spent time downtown since the 1996 Summer Olympics. I remember the big international crowds of the Olympics and using the MARTA, the light rail system, to travel from place to place. It felt vibrant and metropolitan. Now, downtown Atlanta is not.
I picked a downtown hotel to be near major tourist spots, but the people downtown did not have the lighthearted joy of tourists. Many of the people we saw downtown appeared to be suffering the ravages of serious mental illness, substance use disorders, and a lack of housing. Handfuls of young people hurried from one place to another and did not linger outside. The night we got there three people were shot a couple of streets over. It was not a place of lost glory.
I grieved for the Atlanta I remembered. Various remnants of the Olympics were scattered downtown like artifacts of a once triumphant civilization. The MARTA’s entrance gaped like some foreboding entrance to the underworld rather than a passage to rapid travel to other exciting places. The Olympic torch sat extinguished.
Even as we left on Monday morning, Atlanta felt more like lost Atlantis. The surrounding office buildings, parking decks, and coffee shops, I imagine, were once filled by workers and now languished quietly. I wondered what had happened to this place to make it so toxic.
Yet, there was more to Atlanta elsewhere. Cars clogged the interstates. The aquarium and Coca-Cola Museum were busy. The Atlanta Hawks crowd descended on the arena en masse from parts unseen and energized an enormous stadium before dissipating back into the shadowy surrounding streets. The possibility of rebirth was there.
Not until we ventured into the neighborhoods outside downtown did I see the Atlanta of which so many people are fond. On a bike tour through various neighborhoods, we see not only many of the historic spots of the city but also the communities that make Atlanta one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. It was pretty and felt much safer.
While I admired many of the neighborhoods, I noticed Atlanta is a car-based city. Few of the neighborhoods have corners that feature stores, restaurants, or churches. Instead, buildings where people might intersect were on the edges of the neighborhoods on major roads. Everything you might want was a close car ride away, yet too far away for an easy walk. This design explains the traffic and also why people might be feeling less connected. When you drive up to a place, pop in, and drive away, you are less likely to have serendipitous encounters that build community like seeing a neighbor, making an unplanned stop, or discovering something new. Car-based communities undermine social connection.
And, Atlanta exemplified how connection might be able to be rekindled. The Beltline is a rails-to-trails project where a 22-mile rail line that encircled the city is being converted into a paved path that connects various commercial districts. 11 miles have been completed over a dozen years of the project, and, so far, it appears to be a huge success. A few years ago, I ran on a section of the Beltline in the northern suburbs. There, it circled past the parking lot of an old shopping mall and through a neighborhood. It was pretty but sleepy with only a few other travelers on it.
On this trip, my experience on the Beltline was different. The path was packed with walkers, runners, and various non-motorized vehicles. Restaurants, shops, and other businesses bustled alongside the path. People looked happy, both to be outside and to be around other people. I never liked the metaphor of America as a melting pot, but, here, I could see the diversity of Atlanta playing and interacting with each other.
The Beltline was a stark contrast with downtown, and it gave me hope. At the Beltline, vibrancy had been constructed by creating walkable spaces that got people out of cars, had them feel safe, and connected them to their fellow community members and local businesses. Meanwhile, Downtown had become territory to quickly pass through via car or mass transit. It was easily left behind, perhaps because it was built for rapid transit. On the Beltline, I wanted to linger.
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Our next stop was Nashville, the biggest tourist destination city of our trip. Nashville’s downtown is dominated by the music venues of Broadway. At almost any hour, music spills out of bars as visitors flock in to celebrate. Here, a setting for connection has been created for people from all over the world.
But, Broadway’s not the real Nashville, or at least not the world of Nashville residents. Broadway is theater, a play in which we all enjoy having a part. I wanted my family to see the real Nashville. We stayed in an Air BnB about a mile and a half from Broadway so we got a more authentic feel for the city.
Not surprisingly, I like to walk on vacation because you get a better sense of a place. While we walked many places in Nashville, clearly it is also a car-centered city. The tourist center was packed with walkable places of interest like restaurants, shops, and entertainment, but our immediate neighborhood was all houses. If you lived there, you would likely need to drive (though shout out to the intrepid bikers).
We drove to several stretches in the city where locals go to eat, and these places clearly depended on car travel. I was struck by how organized the parking seemed. Most places had posted limits on the time you could park and required you to pay or register in some way so that you did not stay too long. The message seemed to be: please drive to our establishments then drive away as soon as you have spent your money. I understand the business rationale for turning over the parking space, and I also think something is lost when people hurry to leave.
I also saw a rebirth in Nashville. Centennial Park was created in the late 19th century for Nashville’s 100th birthday and includes a full-scale replica of the Parthenon. The last time I visited it was about 25 years ago. As sundown approached, my wife wanted to head there. I agreed cautiously and was pleasantly surprised. With Vanderbilt on one side and what appears to be low-income high rises on the other side, the park was a lively convergence of people from across the strata of Nashville. People enjoyed the beautiful evening air and were in no hurry to leave. Again, a place had been repurposed to create a connective, walkable space for the community.
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We then headed to Memphis, the place of my upbringing. I had only been to Memphis briefly in the past 20 years. Like Atlanta and Nashville, Memphis is a sprawling, old southern city where the growth of car travel in the middle of the last century led to people fleeing downtown for the comfort of the suburbs. Much smaller than Atlanta, Memphis has less of Atlanta’s huge city problems of traffic and superconcentrated ravages of poverty. Memphis is also not the tourist mecca that Nashville is. Memphis is more off the radar, which placed it on a sneaky path toward redeveloping its community better than its comparators.
Memphis’s downtown has struggled for decades yet seems to have turned a corner. Anchored by Beale Street and a sports arena, the downtown area is expanding. A trolley line runs for a mile along the river and connects the cultural and entertainment sites. Ubiquitous cameras, new to me, monitored all the areas frequented by pedestrians. I felt safe, and people seemed comfortable walking through the quieter areas.
Because the downtown was not saturated with tourists yet still felt safe, I could see new housing being occupied or nearing completion. Local businesses seemed to be thriving. People walked by carrying groceries and other sundries.
To be clear, Memphis has a long way to go to have the vibrancy of Atlanta or Nashville. But, Memphis has great bones. Unlike Atlanta, which felt like its downtown was going in the wrong direction, Memphis felt like it was on an upswing. Unlike Nashville, which has surrendered its downtown to tourists, Memphis feels like its downtown is being revitalized by both tourists and local residents. I am intrigued to visit again.
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These three historic southern cities demonstrate how built spaces can drive or hinder community and how this community makes those spaces special. Atlanta has the convening space of the Beltline. Nashville has tourists flocking to Broadway while locals congregate elsewhere. Memphis has the burgeoning redevelopment of downtown. Seeing these places with my family and through the eyes of my children, I was certain that any place could become special. I also saw that being special was not guaranteed and took ongoing work.
One last note: I mentioned looking at colleges with my daughter this week. We were unfortunate that her spring break and the spring breaks of these colleges overlapped so we missed the full experience of having students on campus. It was not the same. We looked for artifacts of what a full campus might be like — student newspapers, postings for activities, and evidence of recent parties. She and I want her to have a fulfilling college experience, and the people she spends time with are essential to that. As she worries about where she will go, I have assured her that it’s not where she goes, but what she does when she gets there. That seems mostly true for life in general though the places around us definitely matter, too.