Nature as Corporatized Space: Photos 45-61
The South Fork flows through Lullwater Preserve, a 185-acre showcase of “environmental sustainability” owned and managed by Emory University. Lullwater is a textbook case of how and why powerful corporations appropriate the symbolism of sustainability to cultivate a progressive and profitable public image. It also unmasks some of the most glaring contradictions at the heart of sustainability discourse and practice.
“Always historicize!” advised the recently departed Marxist literary critic Frederic Jameson, and so I shall, perhaps in greater detail than might seem necessary. But the details are important as they illustrate the larger point I want to make about the false promises and internal contradictions of the sustainability model that has been enthusiastically embraced by real estate interests and pro-growth governing regimes throughout the capitalist world.
Emory University is a tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code. It encompasses a sprawling network of educational and medical enterprises, including two college campuses with over 14,000 students and 1,402 instructional employees, eleven hospitals, scores of clinics, and battalions of physicians and healthcare professionals. To appreciate its gravitational pull in the economy, consider that Emory began the calendar year 2022 as metro Atlanta’s largest employer with a full-time workforce of over 33,000.
But this only hints at the full extent of Emory’s economic clout. In addition to the tax-exempt revenue streams that helped fund a complete physical makeover of the Atlanta campus in recent years, Emory University boasts an investment portfolio that would be the envy of any institutional high roller in the Age of Global Finance. In fiscal year 2021, Emory ranked 15th on the endowment list of U.S. colleges and universities, posting a whopping $11 billion on the books, much of it provided courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company via its founder Asa G. Candler, his children and its long-time CEO Robert W. Woodruff. Were it not for perennial rival Duke University topping out at $12 billion, Emory would have claimed the prize as the most amply endowed institution of higher education in the South.
The impact of Coca-Cola on Emory’s institutional culture goes well beyond money. Like its brand-conscious corporate benefactor, the university learned early on the importance of having a good communications and public relations department. To this day, the university spares no expense in promoting its public image as a liberal, cosmopolitan and high-minded center of learning and culture, as can be seen in its well-publicized wooing of two global celebrities, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and President Jimmy Carter.
Lullwater Preserve is an integral part of Emory’s obsession with its image. In 1958 the university paid in the neighborhood of one-million dollars for the land that would become the preserve. The seller was Walter T. Candler, the son and heir of Coca-Cola's founder Asa Candler. The heavily wooded tract of land that Candler bought in 1925 and on which he built his home spilled over both sides of the South Fork and would eventually include the following amenities: his 11,000 square-foot Tudor mansion called Lullwater House; the 11-acre reservoir later renamed Candler Lake; pasture land for the cattle he raised as a gentleman farmer; dams on both the lake and the South Fork; a hydropower plant providing electricity for the big house and the pool houses; and a running track for Candler's stable of prize-winning race horses.
The tract adjoined the main campus to the west, providing the institution with ample room for expansion and valuable real estate for future development and sale. Within a few years Emory had sold 26 acres of Lullwater to the Department of Veteran Affairs for the new hospital we have already discussed, and set aside an equal amount for the Yerkes National Primate Research Center which was looking for an institutional home after leaving Yale.
There things stood until 1986, when a perfect storm of controversial business deals and questionable land management decisions put Lullwater and its first-growth forest in the political limelight. In that year, Emory bought another 44 acres next to Lullwater for student housing which would eventually anchor its residential Clairmont Campus. It also sold off a small but symbolically significant piece of Lullwater to an educational accreditation organization, igniting suspicions that larger plans for developing the preserve were afoot.
Then came the last straw: the university administration went forward with a plan to dredge the thirty-year-old reservoir, which was (and remains) subject to chronic siltation owing chiefly to the rapid development around the preserve and the erosion of several small creeks that empty into the reservoir. Over the objections of environmentally-conscious faculty, the sediment deposits were dumped behind an earthen spoils dam on the slopes above the lake. When the dam breached and tons of contaminated silt went pouring down the hillside and back into the lake, all hell broke loose. Overnight, the administration found itself on the defensive as critics questioned its commitment to what would soon come to be known as environmental sustainability.
In an effort to contain the political fallout, the president and his team signed off on a new campus governance structure designed to head off future embarrassments by steering political dissent into bureaucratic channels that could be managed from the top. A Faculty Senate Committee on the Environment was created, which would soon be serving as Emory’s semi-official green conscience and institutional watchdog of the administration's environmental policies. Any future decisions regarding Lullwater's development would now have to run a gauntlet of not only student environmental activists whose numbers and visibility were growing rapidly but also faculty sympathizers who rallied around the Committee on the Environment.
The balance of political forces on campus was clearly shifting as the environmentalist cause gathered momentum. Chastened by the 1986 imbroglio, the university administration set out to find a workable balance between two competing priorities: (1) pushing forward with the expansion and modernization of the campus, and (2) repairing its damaged reputation with a show of managerial competence and environmental sensitivity.
Ten years after the dam broke, there materialized a golden opportunity to put itself on the right side of the environmental issue. In the vicinity of the ill-fated earth works were two hazardous waste sites. In 1996, spurred by a recommendation from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the university successfully remediated both sites to the satisfaction of state authorities, removing a stockpile of 55-gallon drums containing hazardous chemical waste products which had been buried there in the 1970s, and replacing soil contaminated by radioactive materials used in botanical experiments at its cinder-block Radiation Research Field Station.
The photos show what these sites look like today (45-49). I see them as a memento mori for the atomic age. At the time the remediation work was being done, the university administration could point to these projects as proof that it was resolved to atone for and clean up the mistakes of the past.
But if the leadership assumed that it had garnered enough good will among campus environmentalists to revisit the issue of Lullwater's development, it was sorely mistaken. In 1998 it released a breathtakingly ambitious master plan that would in short order bring to campus an army of cranes, jackhammers, and hardhats working on 14 separate capital projects at the same time. Without question, the most controversial component of the megaproject was a new, 2,000-space parking deck on the Clairmont residential campus which would be connected to the main campus by a shuttle road and bridge spanning the CSX railroad tracks. While the administration did not deny that the proposed road, if approved, would cut through Lullwater, it argued that the route chosen minimized damage by hugging the western edge of the preserve, and that the environmental benefits of getting drivers out of their gas-guzzling cars and into battery-powered shuttle buses would outweigh the cost of losing a small slice of the forest.
The local student chapter of the Southeastern Environmental Coalition immediately cried foul and circulated a petition against the proposed project which gathered over a thousand signatures. For its part the Committee on the Environment was prepared to accept the parking deck, but the road and bridge were another matter. There were other ways to integrate the two campuses which did not involve cutting a swath through Lullwater and replacing it with an impervious surface guaranteed to worsen the erosion/siltation problem. By a vote of 12 to 0, the Committee recommended placing a five-year moratorium on any further discussion of the road and bridge, during which data would be collected for a comprehensive assessment of the project's potential costs and benefits.
The president’s team was not deterred. Determined to implement the master plan in every particular, the administration mustered enough support on the Campus Development Committee and Traffic and Parking Committee to win the approval of the Senate, after which the shovel-ready projects proceeded without delay.
You can see the results in the photos: the gated entrance to the controversial shuttle road, christened "Starvine Way" in recognition of a rare plant native to the Lullwater Preserve (50); the sinuous bridge used by shuttle buses to carry their passengers to the main campus and back (51); the parking deck on Clairmont Campus which forms a steel-reinforced backdrop to Hardman Cemetery, established in 1826 by the earliest white settlers of the wooded lands that would ultimately become part of Emory’s real estate portfolio (52); and highly eroded Richardson Creek that flows under the Starvine bridge, carrying silt and debris toward Candler Lake, including a discarded Goodyear tire (53).
What, then, was the legacy of the shuttle road controversy? Hard feelings in the short run; cultural hegemony in the long run. Over the last two decades the administration has overseen a cultural makeover of the university that is no less all-encompassing than the physical makeover it trumpeted in its 1998 Campus Master Plan. The official designation of Lullwater as a "preserve" in 2000 signaled the consolidation of a new hegemonic bloc, to use Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci's terminology.
In lockstep with many other institutional power centers of contemporary capitalism, Emory has embraced the ideology of "sustainability" and refashioned its identity around it. Sustainability is the dominant development discourse of the Neoliberal Age, according to which economic growth, social equity, and respect for the environment lie at the root of a brighter future for all. These days, the language of sustainability supersaturates policy-making circles on the Emory campus, which is testimony to the administration's success at incorporating the environmentalist challenges of the years 1986-1999 into the routines and disciplines of bureaucratic governance.
In 2006 the university established an Office of Sustainability Initiatives which is tasked with "helping to restore the global ecosystem, fostering healthy living and reducing the University’s impact on the local environment." The Office’s website touts its 10-year "Sustainability Vision and Strategic Plan," and points with pride to a 2016 study of over 100 research universities in which Emory was named No. 5 in terms of "greenness of campus." The website is itself a diverse documentary ecosystem of initiatives, action plans, projects, programs, info sheets, check lists, guidelines and frameworks. In this imagined community of forward-looking policymakers committed to sustainability, there seems to be a place reserved for every Emory student, faculty and staff member.
This is precisely the unifying effect that hegemonic ideologies aim for. Sustainability presents itself as one big tent under which the most diverse range of experiences and outlooks can find shelter; it is the environmentally-sensitive metastory into which everyone affiliated with the institution can insert their own personal narrative of aspiration, achievement and self-actualization.
But there is one telling omission. What you won't find on the Office of Sustainability Initiative's website is the word capitalism, much less a serious consideration of how the dynamics of accumulation run counter to any meaningful notion of sustainability.
Having woven the ideology of sustainability into every facet of formal governance, it would appear that by the first decades of the new millennium Emory’s top brass were in a good position to manage Lullwater as it saw fit, keeping a loving eye on the hardwood forest that is the preserve’s biggest selling point (54, 55). Yet this assessment would ignore the limits and contradictions of capitalism itself, against which corporate Emory was powerless.
The photos examine this point by focusing on how Emory's attempts to translate the rhetoric of sustainability into a coherent program of habitat restoration are undermined by the reproduction requirements of capital. The safety-vested man is treating the hillside between Lullwater House and Candler Lake with a pesticide that kills invasive plant species, the most prevalent of which are English ivy, Chinese privet, and kudzu (56, 57). The problem is that pesticides like those being used here have been shown to kill desirable things as well, such as pollinating bees and even human beings, if the carcinogenic effects of Roundup and other herbicides are any indication. I will leave the scientific debate over the hazards of these chemicals to the experts, and note only that the removal of invasive species and the protection of pollinators, both of which are university policies applauded by the Office of Sustainability Initiatives, seem to be working at cross purposes.
A similar contradiction is evident in the photo of a privately-contracted team of aquatic specialists removing the invasive alligator weed from Candler Lake, a plant native to South America that thrives in the shallows (58). The truth is that Candler Lake is fast on its way to becoming nothing but shallows due to the systemic problem of siltation. The predictable environmental consequences of boosting the bottom line by scaling up Emory's main campus, rebuilding Clairmont Campus from the ground up and running Starvine Way through Lullwater and across the creek that flows into Candler Lake—all of which have contributed to erosion and siltation—are now being remediated by an alligator-weed removal project packaged as a sustainability initiative.
Another way to appreciate the contradictory nature of habitat restoration in Lullwater is to put the spotlight on Canada geese (59) and their favorite grazing area: the world-class lawn that spills down from the president's mansion to the shores of Candler Lake (60). In the Lullwater Comprehensive Management Plan of 2002, we find this statement: “Geese have detrimental effects on Lullwater: They graze on the shoreline of vegetation and destabilize the soil; and their excrement discourages recreation on grassy areas around the lake.” The report recommends that “appropriate control measures” be taken to reduce the number of Canada geese on campus greenspace, which presumably includes trapping and relocating them to more suitable spots a safe distance from humans. I observed this catch-move-release procedure being carried out over several weeks in 2022. It didn’t take long for new geese to replace the old ones, much to the chagrin of Lullwater’s managers who seem to have admitted defeat and dropped the clearance campaign.
Treating geese as an invasive species comparable to English ivy and alligator weed raises questions about just what kind of nature Lullwater’s managers think they are sustaining. How is it that a flock of migratory birds which gather at an open grazing area alongside a protected body of water is considered a threat to environmental sustainability, yet the entirely make-believe country estate conceived and executed by Coca-Cola money is given a free pass as if it were part of the natural environment?
The Committee on the Environment seems uneasy on this score, as well it should be. Its conception of nature is fundamentally incoherent. For example, consider the “grassy areas” that are allegedly under siege by the troublesome geese. These areas are covered by turf-type tall fescue, which is the last thing you would see in a “natural” Piedmont woodland untouched by human hand. The plant itself originated in Europe, migrated to North America in the 19th century, and has been carefully cross-bred during the 20th and 21st centuries to produce varieties adapted to Georgia growing conditions. To keep this ornamental landscape accessory happy and healthy Lullwater’s ground crew are engaged in a year-round regimen of seeding, fertilizing, spraying and manicuring (61).
The emerald carpet looks like it has been cut and pasted from a gated suburban development on the northern edges of metro Atlanta. It reminds me of Augusta National Golf Course just up the road, which hosts a famous tournament that one writer for the nonprofit Friends of Animals has dubbed “The Masters of Poison.” The moniker seems apt when we consider that the fertilizers and herbicides which keep Lullwater’s lawn in tip-top shape flow into Candler Lake whenever it rains, with predictable results: the deoxygenation of the reservoir and the growth of the invasive alligator weed. But that’s not the end of the story. Overflow water contaminated by these toxins is channeled from the reservoir back into the South Fork and, ultimately, into the Gulf of Mexico. I’m no authority on pollutants, but it seems to me that the contamination resulting from such misguided efforts at habitat restoration represent a more serious threat to Lullwater's environmental sustainability than goose shit.
At Emory’s Lullwater Preserve, nature is in the eye of the beholder.
Nature as Green Space: Photos 62-72
The Great Recession came to an end in 2009. Since then, the South Fork has undergone a physical makeover paralleling broader spatial transformations in central Atlanta. The result is a network of dirt trails, boardwalks, multi-use concrete paths and pedestrian bridges which have opened up large sections of the riparian corridor to the public. Thanks to this “green infrastructure,” a creek that was once viewed as a polluted eyesore and a physical obstacle to development has become a highly valued urban amenity. According to its proponents, green infrastructure is an unqualified good, connecting people to each other, to public parks and private green spaces like Lullwater, and to nature. Connectivity, the argument goes, lies at the heart of sustainable urban development, enabling residential communities to live in harmony with the natural world around them.
What this argument fails to recognize is that the South Fork’s green infrastructure brings the natural world into closer contact with the capitalist law of value. No less than the older infrastructure of sewer systems and highway bridges, the new generation of green infrastructure entails the production of a natural landscape suitable for the circulation and accumulation of capital.
The natural qualities of the South Fork have captured the attention of developers, home buyers and sellers, local governing regimes, urban planners and environmental nonprofits. Directly and indirectly, these actors are unified by their shared interest in property values. They see a buoyant real estate market as the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats, generating profits for developers, equity for homeowners, tax revenue for municipalities, projects for planners and donations for nonprofits. That this same market is a major driver of socio-spatial inequality is of little concern to this pro-growth coalition. Taken as a whole, the groups that have closed ranks around green infrastructure belong to what radical planner Samuel Stein calls “the real estate state, a government by developers, of developers.” To understand this marriage between green infrastructure and the real estate state in neoliberalizing cities, I need to put both in the context of the Great Recession and its aftermath.
Not only was the Great Recession an economic crisis originating in the subprime housing market before spreading throughout the global financial system; it was also a legitimacy crisis for the neoliberal political order as a whole. The response to this systemic breakdown was orchestrated by central banks, the financial fire brigade of capitalism and the institutional epicenter of the capitalist state.
On the economic front, the US Federal Reserve bailed out overextended financial institutions with taxpayer money, injected unheard-of amounts of liquidity into the system and undertook to resuscitate the real estate markets where the troubles began. Home prices clawed their way back to pre-crisis levels by 2011, and the real estate speculation that triggered the recession was not far behind, much of it fueled by private equity operators like Blackstone, on its way to becoming the world’s largest holder of commercial real estate and the third-largest owner of single-family homes in the US.
On the legitimacy front, capitalist class interests launched a slick public relations campaign to counter charges that the masters of the financial universe were bunglers at best, criminals at worst. When the COVID-19 Recession of 2020 dealt another major blow to their image, high-profile actors like BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, had their Damascus moment. They wrapped themselves in the mantle of sustainable investing in environmental, social and governance assets (ESG). The “sustainable transition” had finally arrived, proclaimed one of BlackRock’s executives in December 2020. “The tectonic shift we identified earlier this year has really taken hold,” he enthused, “as the convergence of political and regulatory pressures, technological advancements and client preferences have pushed sustainability into the mainstream of investing.” Carried along by the ESG wave, the South Fork’s green infrastructure was one small part of this tectonic shift.
In sum, the resolution of the economic and legitimacy crises in recent years has forged new links between real estate investment and sustainable investment, between the value of property and the value of nature. This has had major implications for the built environment of the South Fork, as you will see in the photos below.
Let’s go for a nature walk with me as your guide. I’ll be pointing things out along the way, telling you lots of stories. If you find that you’re having trouble seeing the forest through the trees, remember what we are trying to understand: the relation between capitalism, green infrastructure and the real estate state.
One of the first things you will notice are the bridges and stairways designed for pedestrians as they cross the creek, wetlands and railroad tracks. What is the backstory of these critical pieces of infrastructure? How did they come to be?
Consider the boardwalk stairs and pedestrian railroad bridge on the South Peachtree Creek Trail, a 3.6-mile corridor built in several phases between 2010 and 2018, and extending east from the campus of Emory University along the South Fork and its tributary Burnt Fork Creek (62, 63). The land through which the trail runs is legally owned, managed and maintained by DeKalb County. Yet the trail itself is the brainchild of the PATH Foundation, a private nonprofit organization which claims to have spearheaded the construction of over 300 miles of multi-use trails in Georgia since its establishment in 1991.
This infrastructure reveals two important features of the real estate state. First, this is a state of interlocking public-private partnerships, which have risen to become the paradigmatic form of governance in neoliberalizing cities everywhere. Second, nonprofits play a prominent role in these partnerships as stand-ins for the “private.” This division of labor is advantageous to both parties. On the public side, by delegating to PATH the task of planning and overseeing the trail, county government avoids being drawn into NIMBY-fueled controversies that invariably flare up when the interests of private homeowners seem threatened by decisions regarding public land use. On the private side, in return for providing some measure of political cover for elected officials, PATH garners positive publicity that will translate into more donations from deep-pocket foundations and corporate philanthropists. Wary of DeKalb’s racially supercharged politics and reluctant to entrust their money to county government, the donor class effectively funnels its dollars through PATH, a much more amenable and manageable partner.
Another party that brings plenty of political muscle to negotiations over green infrastructure are homeowners. A case in point is the Cheshire Farm pedestrian bridge that crosses the North Fork of Peachtree Creek in the shadows of the Interstate 85/Georgia 400 interchange (64). In 2014 this interchange was expanded by the Georgia Department of Transportation to include a flyover ramp. Nearby homeowners and businesses, which had been on the receiving end of disruptive GDOT projects in the past, launched the Lindbergh LaVista Corridor Coalition, a local nonprofit whose stated mission is “to protect our homes from out-of-control redevelopment.”
Local homeowners concerned over property values found themselves in negotiations with both state and municipal officials, revealing the complicated political dynamics at play in any major infrastructural project. This fluid situation created a political opening for a nonprofit newcomer, the South Fork Conservancy, which was founded in 2008. In contrast with PATH which campaigns for boardwalks and hard-surface paths on which both pedestrians and bikes can move, the Conservancy is dedicated to protecting the creek’s banks, removing invasive species, restoring natural habitat and expanding the network of undisruptive dirt paths. The two organizations are natural competitors, but for the most part they keep their differences from public view.
The Conservancy jumped into the horse trading over the controversial flyover and emerged with two concessions from GDOT: a half-mile trail extension that included the Cheshire Farm bridge, and the inclusion of the most directly impacted homeowner neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. A few years later the Conservancy would score another, equally significant victory with the unveiling of the nearby Confluence Bridge (65).
A variation of the homeowner-nonprofit dynamic can be seen at Lullwater Bridge that spans the South Fork on the property of nonprofit Emory University (66). Installed by Emory in 2008 so that medical personnel, faculty and staff could take a pleasant 10-minute walk between the VA Medical Center and the campus, the bridge has come to be regarded by the residents of nearby neighborhoods as a public asset because it gives them access to Lullwater and its natural (and not so natural) beauty. But this isn’t the bridge’s only selling point. Accessibility to Lullwater also raises the market value of their homes, or so homeowners and real estate agents believe. The decision to build Lullwater Bridge was in part a response to public criticism occasioned by the removal of an earlier bridge, an act which reinforced the perception of Emory as a bastion of Coca-Cola privilege, gated off from the larger community. Homeowners were able to leverage Emory’s image consciousness to secure an amenity that pays them tangible dividends in terms of property values.
Green infrastructure has value multiplier effects that help consolidate the real estate state, making it easier to keep the peace among groups that don’t always see eye to eye. It serves to connect city-owned parks in areas that have been gentrifying since 2011, thereby reinforcing an uneven pattern of spatial development as fortunate neighborhoods are locked into a virtuous circle of higher property values and larger tax bases. Gentrification is not a failure of urban policy; it is urban policy. This is how officials generate tax revenue to fund municipal services. But the benefits of such municipal services go disproportionately to real estate interests and homeowners of substantial means.
Take the example of the pocket-size Armand Park, squeezed between the South Fork and the gentrifying neighborhood of Lindridge-Martin Manor. This new green space caters to the influx of younger, whiter and higher-income households that are moving into the area (67, 68). The official opening of Armand Park in 2018 was greeted as a collaborative victory for the Lindridge-Martin Manor Neighborhood Association, the City of Atlanta Office of Parks and Recreation and the nonprofit South Fork Conservancy—in other words, the familiar alliance of neighborhood homeowners, local businesses, municipal government and environmental nonprofits which lies at the heart of real estate state.
Another example of the rich getting richer is the older Mason Mill Park adjoining the South Fork and Burnt Fork Creeks, about four miles away. It is a behemoth compared to .77-acre Armand, weighing in at 132 acres and offering a full menu of community amenities and services on which neighborhoods near and far depend: an all-the-bells-and-whistles playground, a 17-court tennis complex and club house, a brand-new community garden, a senior citizen center and a beautiful and well-used public library within easy walking distance of the senior center (69-72). Being within walking or biking distance of a public park, big or small, is a significant selling point when it comes time to put the house on the market, as any real estate agent will attest.
I have discussed the real estate state largely in terms of the role played by homeowners, governing regimes and nonprofits in promoting green infrastructure and transforming the natural environment of the South Fork. But the real estate state is, as Stein says, a “government by developers, of developers.” It’s time to introduce you to the South Fork’s developers.
Nature as Development Space: Photos 73-86
Spread out along the South Fork like beads on a necklace, and within easy walking distance of its green infrastructure, are three new developments that speak to the capitalist production of urban nature. All of them required the demolition of earlier physical structures dating to the 1960s and the displacement of the original tenants who lived or operated small businesses there. Two of the three developments are all wrapped up and open for business as I write; one has completed the demolition phase but has put construction on hold for the time being. What the developers behind these projects have in common is their belief that accessibility to the creek via the green infrastructure of paths, trails, boardwalks and bridges described in the last section will drive up the value of their properties and justify the sizable investments they have made.
Let’s start with the dense, multi-family housing development that includes the independently-owned and operated Piedmont Heights Apartments, Sorelle Apartments and Sera Townhomes (73-76). They are built on the site of what used to be Lindmont Apartments, a post-World War II complex that in its final years housed an immigrant colonia from the small Mexican town of San Marcos in the state of Guerrero. You’ll learn more about San Marquitos, as it was called by its Mexican residents, in the gallery Mundo Atlanta. For now, believe me when I tell you that the up-scale development that has replaced it, packaged as a youth-and-fitness oasis, looks nothing like the working-class colonia I remember from the turn of the century.
Four miles east of this development, Burnt Fork Creek flows into the South Fork. It is here near the confluence of the two creeks that we find our second development, Parkside at Mason Mill (77-81). The original apartments, opened in 1965, were bulldozed to make way for this townhouse complex which, if the signage is any indication, is being marketed to the work-live-play hardbody crowd. It must also be a well-heeled crowd. The last time I looked, the starting price of a Parkside townhome was $699,859.
The final development is located on the South Fork, two miles east of Parkside (82-86). It will replace North DeKalb Mall, which opened in 1966 as the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned mall in metro Atlanta. Most of the old structure has been demolished. An exemption was made for the movie theater, perhaps in recognition of its political-cultural symbolism as being one of the few places in DeKalb County where the races feel comfortable mixing and mingling, not just black Atlantans who live south and east of the mall, and white Atlantans who live north and west of it, but also Indian Atlantans who spill across the biracial spatial divide. When completed, this mixed-use project will be the largest of the three developments considered here, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to “revitalize” the area, according to one member of the county commission who has been cheerleading the project. The developers predict that in eight-to-ten years the 70-acre tract will boast 1,700 multi-family apartments, 100 townhomes, a 150-room hotel, a grocery store, and more than 500,000 square feet of office and retail space.
Nature, the creek and green infrastructure are big selling points at these properties. The real estate developers who acquired the land, secured the financing and managed the construction of these developments are in business to make money. If they have chosen to give their South Creek projects a “green sheen,” it is because this marketing strategy enables them to charge higher prices for their townhomes and higher rents for their apartments and commercial space.
As part of this green marketing strategy, developers target the Millennial niche for obvious reasons: this age cohort seems to epitomize the irrepressible vitality of nature itself. It’s hard to miss the Millennial vibe in promotional billboards at the South Fork projects, such as the yogi in full lotus at Piedmont Heights or the youth and beauty brigade sharing a drink at Parkside (73, 79). The real estate industry is betting big bucks that Millennials will pay top dollar for the natural lifestyle of the new “live-work-play” developments, where shopping, dining, entertainment, recreation and work are all close at hand. In these wholistic oases, young professionals will be able to trade in their cars for bicycles, scooters, rollerblades. Goodbye road rage and gas-guzzling commutes, hello centeredness and connection with the natural world! Here's a typical sales pitch: “Parkside at Mason Mill, located in-town, with plenty of outdoor amenities. This new construction community is made for city and nature-lovers alike.” The best of both worlds is the promise of green capitalism, South Fork-style.
Developers know that the pitch won’t sell without a slice of greenspace within walking distance of their properties. Remember the photo of the $2.5 million Confluence Bridge (65)? The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on December 14, 2021, giving the residents of Sorelle, Piedmont Heights, and Serra access to the South Fork’s network of paths and trails. On a smaller scale, the Parkside development has a rusticated entryway to the South Peachtree Creek Trail (80), courtesy of DeKalb County as part of its larger effort to open up the trail to apartment and townhome developments along the Clairmont Road and North Druid Hills Road corridors. The stairs and hand-hewn stepping stones that cross Burnt Fork Creek are designed to withstand flooding without obstructing water flow. The county has installed an identical structure a few miles downstream for the homeowners of the nearby Medlock neighborhood who demanded easier access to the creek and Mason Mill Park, in no small part because such access promised to lift property values which were still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession.
The strategy of leveraging the creek to subsidize commercial development and satisfy developer, homeowner and nonprofit demands for greenspace is evident in the recent announcement by the county commission that it will pony up a half million dollars to extend the South Peachtree Creek Trail from Medlock Park, where it currently ends, to the future mega-development at North DeKalb Mall. For developers, the county, renters and homeowners, the creek is a win-win-win-win. Green capitalism has no place for losers.
Yet these green developments embody a contradiction. While marketed as models of environmental sensitivity and sustainability, they put the creek’s health and well-being at risk by overloading the carrying capacity of infrastructures that cannot handle existing demands, much less those of densely packed, live-work-play clusters that seem to be the wave of the future. As we have seen, a developer seeking an immediate return on her investment, and subject to what Marx calls “the coercive laws of competition,” has powerful incentives to offload environmental costs on the community rather than budgeting for them. Of course, elected officials are well aware that continued growth along the creek will increase the strain on an already buckling watershed management system, but none of them is going to question the growth imperative, which is a sacred cow for private developers and public officials alike.
And what are the consequences of this grow-or-die logic? Consider the stormwater discharge pipe that is located at the lowest point of the steeply sloped Parkside property and empties directly into Burnt Fork Creek (81). The Parkside developers tout their “storm water quality program” in sign postings on the site, warning building contractors and workers that any damage done to “sediment and erosion control measures” is punishable by fines and imprisonment. Strong words indeed. But this ominous-looking pipe, which seems to be biding its time until the next downpour sends a messy discharge down the concrete embankment and into the creek, does not inspire confidence in the storm water management measures that have been put in place by the Parkside developers and approved by the county. Every single-use plastic bottle that finds its way into the creek by way of this pipe is an externalized cost of green capitalism.
Offloading the environmental costs of private development is not the monopoly of green capitalism or any particular regime of capitalist accumulation, golden or neoliberal. Nor is it symptomatic of some moral failing on the part of capitalists and officials. Externalizing costs is what capitalists do, and must do, if they want to turn a profit. It is what county officials accept, and must accept, if they want to balance their budgets and keep their jobs. And it is what most of the rest of us ignore, and must ignore, if we want to get a good night's sleep, comforted by the belief that everything will work out because capitalism benefits everyone in the end. Not to put too fine a point on it: this is how the capitalist mode of production works.
Nature as Contested Space: Photos 87-103
