Odd Man Out

Yesterday was a just awful day here in Atlanta. A gunman shot three people in the food court at Peachtree Center and in a separate, unrelated incident, another person hijacked a MARTA bus, of all things, and took it on a police chase across three counties and left one person dead.

Four shot, one dead, in two separate acts of senseless gun violence. 

The suspect in the Peachtree Center shooting is a convicted felon who has served prison time for armed robbery and has 11 previous arrests. The suspect in the hijacking case is also a convicted felon who had been arrested 19 times. 

I've been at the food court at Peachtree Center many, many times. It's an integral part of architect John Portman's design, which has been rightfully criticized for turning it's back on the city streets to create its own insular environment. It's most notable feature is a series of skywalks at various levels that connect the different buildings so that people don't have to step outside of the buildings and onto the street. The food court is intended as a substitute for the street-side restaurants and shops one usually finds in a downtown, and you pass through the court on your way from the parking deck or the MARTA station to the first bank of elevators.

To be fair, it's quite pleasant - well lit, easily accessible, lots of seating, and a wide range of dining options on three levels. It's a veritable shoppers' paradise inside, while on the outside, the buildings are non-accommodating, intended to keep motorists driving on past, and they seemingly haven't even considered the possibility of pedestrians. It's a classic urban canyon of tall office buildings surrounding traffic-clogged streets. The trick is to actually find an access point - I usually use a parking deck a block away.

Anyway, the supposed appeal is that white suburbanites can drive in, park in a secured deck, walk through the skyways, and pass through the food court on the way to their white-collar office jobs without ever having to deal with the physical and demographic realities of downtown Atlanta. The irony of yesterday's shooting is that even the cloistered, sequestered food court isn't exempt from the specter of gun violence and urban problems. 

The MARTA bus got hijacked a mere two or so blocks away from Peachtree Center on those mean streets the food court was meant to avoid. Like the streets surrounding the food court, the site of the hijacking is designed to accommodate car-driving commuters more than pedestrians. Sure, there are sidewalks, but there's nothing along the streets that one would want to walk to - it's "pass-through" territory, and you'd do it faster in a car than on foot. The 12- to 16-lane I-75/I-85 Intown Connector is just a block away, and most traffic is either on its way to the highway or just getting off, heading to other places.  

I'm not blaming the poor urban design for yesterday's violence, but I will say that the poor design does nothing to avoid this kind of violence. It's no-man's-land, or the first oasis past no-man's-land. If I were to point a finger of blame, it would be at the proliferation of guns, and a criminal-justice system that allows 11- and 19-time felons to be out on the street and armed.

Anyway, R.I.P to the victim of yesterday's outbreak of gun violence. Impermanence is swift.