Stride ATL maps the real condition of Atlanta's sidewalks — and the real experiences of the people on them — to make the case for streets that are safer, greener, and built for the people who walk them.
The problem
Across interviews, the same three failures show up — not random potholes, but predictable gaps in how Atlanta plans, builds, and repairs the spaces people walk in.
The city largely waits for a 311 complaint before it fixes a sidewalk. So the worst, least-reported corridors — the ones students already avoid — stay broken the longest, while backlogs pile up.
Neighborhoods are told to protect the tree canopy, then handed rigid concrete that roots buckle into a tripping edge. The result is heaved slabs, ADA barriers, and bare concrete that traps heat.
Vehicle lanes come first; sidewalks are an afterthought, or missing entirely. In car-dependent areas there's simply nowhere to walk — so a trip to the store means a car or an Uber.
Walking Atlanta
Four areas, mapped from first-hand interviews. Tap any stop to see what people said, the trade-offs, and who it affects most.
Who it affects
The same cracked slab means different things depending on who's standing on it. Pedestrian-first design is, at its core, an access and dignity question.
A heaved, root-buckled slab is an ADA violation in practice — a wheelchair, walker, or cane can't get past it. The canopy stays; the access disappears.
Atlanta's scooter density rivals New York's — yet riders get no space of their own. They're pushed onto cracked walks that endanger pedestrians, or into fast car lanes that endanger them. Boston's answer was a ban; the better answer is room to ride.
When secondary sidewalks crumble, downtown students get pushed into the road. Congestion spikes at food-pickup hotspots and around campus chokepoints.
Interviewees described feeling safe in busy, diverse, well-used corridors — and exposed on empty ones, where emergency boxes felt like little comfort. Presence and design matter as much as lighting.
In car-dependent areas there's no sidewalk to the store, the bus stop, or the shopping center. That quietly excludes anyone who can't, or chooses not to, drive.
Storefronts on broken or missing sidewalks lose the foot traffic — and the customers who literally can't reach the door. Their fate is tied to the pavement outside.
Bare concrete absorbs and radiates heat, making walking miserable in summer. Protecting the canopy while paving smarter cools the street for everyone.
The equity gap
The same crack means two different things on two different blocks. In a well-off area it's an annoyance. In a disinvested, low-income area it's a wall — and the system meant to fix it is built to look the other way.
A complaint-driven system rewards the neighborhoods that know how to file a report, have time to follow up, and trust the city to show up. Residents working two jobs — or who've watched past reports go nowhere — file far fewer. So the worst sidewalks sit exactly where they're least likely to be flagged.
Investment has long flowed to newer, wealthier developments — the ones that got sidewalks, ramps, and amenities by default. Disinvested areas inherit walks that were cracked, narrow, or never finished to begin with, and the gap compounds with every year of deferred repair.
In a wealthier area a broken walk is a detour: drive, call a ride, go around. Where money is tight, the sidewalk often is the transportation system — no second car, no rideshare budget, a longer walk to the bus. When it fails, there's nothing to fall back on.
For a disabled resident of a low-income area, every gap above lands at once, on the person least equipped to absorb it. Here's how the barriers stack.
A heaved slab, a missing curb cut, no ramp at the corner — for a wheelchair, walker, cane, or a low-vision resident, that's a hard stop, not a bump. You don't "go around." You turn back, or you take a real risk.
When the walk is impassable, the road becomes the alternative — and it's far more dangerous for someone who can't move quickly, change direction fast, or see a car coming. On bare, exposed concrete the summer heat turns a slow, forced detour into a health risk of its own.
An accessible private vehicle, paratransit they can afford to use regularly, the option to simply move to an accessible home — these soften the blow for some. Accessible housing is scarce and costly, so for many in disinvested areas they're simply out of reach.
Disability often pushes people toward poverty — through medical costs, lost income, and employment barriers — while lower-cost housing concentrates in the areas with the worst-kept streets. So the residents who most need accessible sidewalks are the most likely to live where the sidewalks are worst.
If you can't reliably reach the bus stop, the pharmacy, the grocery store, the clinic, or your job, then your income, your health, and your independence all contract with the pavement. A single broken block stops being about walking and starts being about access to a life.
This is the strongest case for everything we've proposed. A need-based predictive map — not a complaint-based one — is an equity tool by design: it surfaces the corridors no one ever reported. Sending ADA-first retrofits and protected rolling lanes to these neighborhoods first is where the plan does the most good for the people with the least room to wait.
The fix
Atlanta's biggest lever isn't more concrete — it's better timing. Map condition once, predict failure early, and retrofit with materials that actually fit the city's trees and people.
Crowdsourced and audited sidewalk data, scored and ranked — so crews go where the need is highest, not just where the loudest complaint came from.
Pull sidewalk condition, type, and pedestrian experience into one open dataset. This app is that first layer.
Replace the reactive 311 backlog with a condition-and-risk model that ranks corridors by how badly they're failing and who depends on them.
Use root-tolerant, flexible paving, wider walks, shade, and ADA-first ramps — so the canopy and the pedestrian can finally coexist.
Reallocate a sliver of car-first road into a protected rolling lane for scooters and bikes — pulling them off the sidewalk and out of fast traffic.
Prioritize the car-dependent areas with no sidewalk network at all, starting where need is highest.
Track foot traffic, storefront revenue, and ADA compliance — so the wins keep the funding coming.
The rolling lane
Today a rider has two bad choices: crowd the cracked sidewalk and endanger pedestrians, or take the fast car lane and get endangered. A protected rolling lane — a strip reclaimed from the car-first road and shared by scooters and bikes — fixes both at once. The sidewalk gets cleared for walkers, the rider gets a safe path, and the lane becomes a buffer between people and traffic.
Moving scooters into their own lane ends the weaving and food-pickup gridlock people described around GSU and downtown — and hands the path back to the wheelchair users, seniors, and strollers who can't get past a crowded, broken walk.
Atlanta's scooter density rivals New York's, so the answer isn't Boston's ban — it's room to ride. No more choosing between cracked sidewalks and fast car lanes the way riders have to on the car-dependent edges.
The lane and its thin planting strip sit between walkers and traffic, shading the bare concrete that traps summer heat — and giving the tree canopy a place to live without buckling the sidewalk.
The same condition map decides where lanes go first: the corridors with the highest scooter density and the worst sidewalk scores. Measurable, fundable, and fair.
For businesses on the block: add scooter corrals at lane endpoints and the abandoned-scooter clutter outside storefronts disappears, doors stay clear and reachable, and more riders can actually stop, park, and spend.
For business
Walkability isn't a civic nicety for shops and restaurants — it's the front door. Here's the direct payoff for the businesses these streets run through.
People who can comfortably walk a block stop, browse, and spend. The Wednesday green-space markets drew crowds for exactly this reason — walkable space pulls people in.
Sidewalk-served, walkable addresses command a premium — buyers and tenants notice. Homes with sidewalks and amenities have drawn extra attention for decades.
ADA-compliant walks mean wheelchair users, seniors, and parents with strollers can actually reach the entrance. Accessibility is addressable revenue.
A heaved slab outside your door is a trip-and-fall claim waiting to happen. Maintained, predictable walks reduce risk for the businesses that line them.
The long view