Another day on the Beltline: Park Pride, an Atlanta greenspace advocacy group, held its annual Beltline tour today. I had gone last year and got to see many parts of the city I hadn't been to before, so I went again this year to see what's changed. Our tour guide was the Georgia representative for the Trust for Public Land.

The Beltline, as I've said here numerous times, is a 22-mile loop of mostly unused railroad tracks circling downtown Atlanta that is going to be built into a system of transit, trails and parks. Our hosts, given their organization's missions, were more interested in the trails and the parks aspect, but it's hard to overlook the transit when you're walking old railroad tracks.

Our buses covered just about the entire Beltline loop by surface streets in a little over four hours. That didn't leave us too much time to linger in any particular area, so my pictures are a little random - it seemed that whenever I saw something of interest, we were passed it by the time I got my camera out, turned on and focused (one of the disadvantages of digital photography. The advantage, of course, is that I can post them on my blog the same day as the tour).

It takes a certain amount of imagination to picture the Beltline. The property below has been bought by TPL to sell back to the city when they're ready to start building a park. It's actually a part of a larger parcel, and when it's all assembled it will become the new North Avenue Park.

The whole project is hoped to revitalize a lot of underutilized parts of the city like this area and others. The old railroad depot below was once a major freight station, but is now just victim to graffiti and fencing. Plans are to incorporate the historic design of old buildings like these to preserve the individual character of the various neighborhoods the Beltline will pass through.

To the south of town, where the Beltline crosses Boulevard (that's the name of the road, not "Something Boulevard" or "Boulevard Something," just "Boulevard"), another new park is planned called, appropriately Boulevard Crossing. Here the Beltline is a stretch of track that is used by only one train a day to deliver sand to a ready mix plant.

Like a lot of other marginalized parts of a lot of other towns, much of the Beltline is currently home to artists and other marginalized sorts. You may need to click on the picture below to read, it, but the graffiti below reads " Make Life, Not Art," "Food" and "Feeding Frenzy," sure signs that struggling artists habituate the Boulevard Crossing area.

Here's an old train station that's already been pressed into commercial use in Atlanta's West End:

Finally, the tour got over to the northwest side of the Beltline, where the City has already purchased an active quarry operated by Vulcan Materials of Birmingham, Alabama, and plans to transform it into a reservoir (it can hold a 20-day supply of water) and a major new park. There's even talk of constructing an artificial kayak course.

As I said, the project takes a lot of imagination, and there's a lot of work still left to be done. I've been doing a lot of volunteer work recently trying to get the resident's voices heard in the planning and execution process, and also to stay involved myself in what is arguably one of the furthest-reaching civic revitalization projects in the country.