Planning & Analysis Category

The Atlanta Beltline Arboretum - MERIT AWARD
The Portico Group

Jury Comments:
The Atlanta Beltline Arboretum is recognized for its strategic planning intervention.

This plan nicely illustrates how relatively modest interventions contribute to the realization of a grand vision. The Atlanta Beltline plan is one of the more ambitious regional urban initiatives in the past decade. The arboretum concept helps achieve the broader effort, one tree, one neighborhood at a time. The plan presents specific implementation concepts for the 14 “natural neighborhoods” along the 22-mile corridor.

The jury appreciated the strategic thinking in this plan. The jury applauds the team’s goal to have everyone in Atlanta identify their neighborhoods by the surrounding trees. This plan will help the client, Trees Atlanta, to achieve this goal. The jury noted that this project has the potential to have an enormous beneficial effect.