Blueprints for Successful Communities: NPU-G Atlanta Update

In the summer of 2018, the community leaders of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit-G (NPU-G) reached out to the Georgia Conservancy to assist in the updating of their 2010 Master Plan, which is a component of The City of Atlanta Comprehensive Development Plan. This plan update is tasked with addressing 9 years of community changes, but also with examining the area from a natural resource, green infrastructure, and recreation perspective. Through a rigorous planning process, including thoughtful and frequent engagement with NPU-G leadership and citizens, the Georgia Conservancy made several updated recommendations that could help NPU-G's unique neighborhoods to build their own future as a welcoming community for Atlanta families of all kinds.

Updated recommendations for NPU-G fell into three broad categories: connectivity, redevelopment, and environment & natural resources. This area of northwest Atlanta has witnessed a wave of new interest from policymakers, planners, landscape architects, and developers, as discussions continue around the environmental restoration of Proctor Creek, the completion of the Proctor Creek Greenway, the development of Westside Reservoir Park, and future recreational opportunities along the Chattahoochee River. Recommendations focused on ways to promote the economic, environmental, and social health of NPU-G's neighborhoods so that current residents and new neighbors alike could enjoy a higher quality of life.

Many of the finer-grained recommendations emerged from a parcel-level analysis of susceptibility to development certain areas of the neighborhood were likely to face. The planning team identified aspects of new development favorable to NPU-G leadership and provided guidance on how to channel appropriate development into appropriate places, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to essential goods and services and providing high quality of life. These aspects included using redevelopment as a chance to increase connectivity between neighborhoods, as well as utilizing development proposals to help restore vital environmental resources.

The Georgia Conservancy worked closely with Georgia Tech's College of Design throughout the project to understand how ecological design could benefit residents in NPU-G. During the fall semester of 2018, graduate students studying architecture and urban design at Georgia Tech specifically examined three Atlanta Housing sites within the neighborhood for their redevelopment potential, and how such redevelopment could have as minimal an impact on the watershed as possible. The work performed in this studio was examined and iterated upon by an interdisciplinary class of graduate students in urban design, architecture, civil engineering, and urban planning in the spring of 2019. Finally, in the fall semester of 2019, graduate students in urban design and architecture adopted a similar approach to the Atlanta Industrial Park, which forms NPU-G's western boundary. These findings lent a greater understanding of how thoughtful redevelopment could work in tandem with environmental restoration and community strengthening efforts. The students' work, while conceptual in nature, has provided a lens and process through which to understand other parcels in NPU that was fully incorporated into the full Master Plan Update. 

The NPU-G Master Plan Update was formally approved by NPU-G leadership during summer 2021 and by the Atlanta City Council in fall 2021.

This project was generously supported by The Turner Foundation, The Wells Fargo Foundation and The Coca-Cola Foundation.

Click here to read the approved NPU-G Master Plan Update

To learn more about our NPU-G Blueprints project, please contact Georgia Conservancy Senior Planner Nick Johnson at njohnson@gaconservancy.org