Taylor Davis, Buckhead Skyline from Vinings. 6 Oct 2007. This image is free to use with attribution under Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic. 

The community of Buckhead in north Atlanta represents a rather important distinction from the rest of the city. The community was established some time in the mid-1800s and by the end of the Nineteenth Century it would see great use as a vacation spot for wealthy Atlantans. Starting with the Twentieth Century, the area became a site for massive residential development and significant commercial development following the second World War. It was during this period that the association of the area with the South’s wealthiest became solidified. Anna Rohleder, writing for Forbes, describes how Buckhead saw continued develpoment, “even after the stock market crash of 1929, new mansions continued to go up,” (Rohleder 1). With the development of the Lenox Square area, the area began to integrate elements of commercial business into the profile of the community. The community was officially annexed by the city of Atlanta in 1952.

            Today, the community is seated in between the “V” formed by Interstates 75 and 85, with Midtown and Downtown Atlanta to the south. The community is now greatly centered around the commercial developments of the mall at Lenox Square. That being said, the area is still very much a residential area for the South’s wealthiest people. As of 2018, according to the website Livable Buckhead, the current demographics show that the community is around 75% white and with the income of Buckhead residents “greater than the City of Atlanta overall in every age cohort,” (Liveable Buckhead 1). The website also brings attention to the fact that around 98% of the workforce in Buckhead commutes from other areas of Atlanta because most of the workers’ incomes do not match the housing prices in the area.

            In many ways, Buckhead reminds me of the London neighborhood Highgate, as depicted in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. The London neighborhood is a wealthy residential space north of and very much distinct from London proper. The geographical relationship of Buckhead to Midtown and Downtown Atlanta mirrors the relationship between Highgate and the rest of London. Both Highgate and Buckhead are places with a great deal of wealth concentrated within residential areas and you get a similar sense of seclusion or isolation from each of the communities’ city proper. This feeling of isolation seems to be derived from the desire of the wealthy to be in proximity of urban space without being subject to the less glamorous elements like industrial production (historically) and the urban poor. This desire for separation from the urban space can be gleaned from a 2008 petition from the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation that calls for an incorporation of Buckhead into its own city to “significantly reduce the tax burden on Buckhead residents by over fifty percent and…vastly improve the quality of services,” (Delk 1). This desire for absolution from tax responsibility demonstrates a desire for separation from the rest of Atlanta, while still benefiting from that proximity. An important distinction between Highgate and Buckhead is that Buckhead’s local economy has transformed into a primarily commercial economy, providing high-end services and goods. Meanwhile, Highgate does not have much of its own economy as it has not developed much passed its residential roots.

Comparing these two places is valuable in that it demonstrates a commonality in the social and class construction of urban space historically. Much like the seemingly concrete socioeconomic divide of Highgate in London, Buckhead shares a very similar divide with the rest of the city of Atlanta. It is possible that this sort of geographic class striation is more common in Western urban spaces, but it is interesting to see just how similar the city construction is even after more than one hundred and fifty years.

Works Cited:

Delk, Glenn. “Incorporate the City of Buckhead.” Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation. Special Edition 2008, June 2008,  https://web.archive.org/web/20110726050507/http://fctf.org/media/June2008-2.pdf. Accessed 19 Nov 2020.  

“Demographics.” Livable Buckhead, Livable Buckhead, 28 Nov. 2018, livablebuckhead.com/community/demographics/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.

Rohleder, Anna. “Buckhead, Atlanta.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 June 2013, www.forbes.com/2000/12/12/ppbuckhead.html?sh=2211c1d7ff6c. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.