Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Robert Adelman, committee chair; Charles Jaret, Dawn Baunach, committee members. Electronic text (92 p. : ill., col. maps) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 25, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-92).

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The research segment of this thesis creates the first comprehensive repository of the current and proposed elements of public transit that will potentially operate in Atlanta. Beginning with a base GIS map of Atlanta Regional Commissions [ARC] Regional Transit Plan Mobility 2030, other GIS shapefiles from MARTA and Georgia Regional Transit Authority [GRTA] were added to complete the map of what Atlantas public transit might soon become. Working within this framework, the analysis provides the potential locations for ten nodes of transference located within Atlanta and its outlying areas - all classified by their relative locations within the city. This thesis analyzes methods of connectivity within these nodes and attempts to arrive at successful conditions of transference between various transit modes; resulting in a series of conceptual design proposals that create both modular efficiency and a standardized aesthetic language.

This thesis is focused on the commercialization of the Atlanta Pride Festival during the years 1992-1997. Through personal interviews, I have concluded that the Atlanta Pride Festival produced complicated experiences for participants who had mixed feelings about the commercialization.

The concept of food deserts, as a measure of low-income neighborhoods with limited access to affordable and healthy produce, can be helpful as a tool to quantify and compare food vulnerabilities, as many recent studies have demonstrated. However, the term masks the role that systems of racism and capitalism have played in producing food vulnerabilities. To explore this gap in the literature, this dissertation addresses two central research questions. The first central research question asks, what are the influential demographic and spatial patterns that have shaped supermarket access in low-income neighborhoods across Atlanta from 1980 to 2010? This study addresses this question using geo-spatial and quantitative analytical methods. The second research question asks, how have the movement of capital, the influence of urban political regimes, and community-based organizations shaped food environments in historically black neighborhoods in Atlanta from 1980 to 2010? These relationships are explored through a qualitative analysis of community redevelopment plans for two case study neighborhoods. The study reveals several findings. First, race, poverty, and population density spatially overlap with shifts in Atlanta's supermarket locations. Atlanta has a clear racial and income dividing line that splits the city into higher-income and majority white neighborhoods to the north and low-income/poor and majority black neighborhoods to the south, which has intensified over the thirty-year study period. Second, racial segregation and the concentration of poverty reinforce the vulnerability experienced by low-income neighborhoods, and produces limited access to supermarkets and other neighborhood retail outlets. Third, even though neighborhood redevelopment plans contained resident's concerns about limited supermarket access, the plans' visions often required both the public sector and private investment. Fourth, the concept of food deserts is too limited. Instead, a new conceptual understanding is needed to identify processes and structures that have produced whole communities of people that have been food deserted.