How An Atlanta Neighborhood Became a Blueprint for Energy and Urban Renewal
The East Lake model shows the lasting impact when renewal is built on coalitions, not just construction.
Step into Central Park on a summer day and you understand the power of design. Children splash in fountains, joggers wind through shaded paths, and the air feels a few degrees cooler beneath the canopy of trees in the middle of Manhattan. Beauty isn’t just aesthetic; it’s survival, sanity, and social glue. Research shows neighborhoods with more green space report lower crime, lower stress, and better health outcomes.
The principle is simple: the way we design neighborhoods shapes the lives of the people who live there.
Still, in too many cities, poor and minority neighborhoods lack trees, parks, and safe gathering spaces. Instead, they live with food deserts, highways, and pollution at their doorstep. The result: hotter streets, higher energy bills, and heavier health burdens. Inequity is built not just into housing maps, but into infrastructure.
But what if design itself could help repair environmental inequity? That idea is now reshaping conversations about urban planning in American cities. It's a vision that Atlanta entrepreneur and philanthropist Tom Cousins, with his wife Ann, helped bring to life when he purchased the city's struggling East Lake Golf Club in the 1990s. The allure of the massive greenspace drew mixed-income housing, a YMCA, Drew Charter School, and the East Lake Foundation. Crime fell. Families stayed. Businesses returned.
What had been one of the city’s most distressed areas became a model for urban renewal and the impetus for a community reimagined. Cousins, who died this summer at age 93, left a legacy that Southern Company CEO Chris Womack described in a statement as ‘The Miracle at East Lake.'
This model of community renewal carries timeless lessons: the power of design that puts people at the center, and the impact of cross-sector partnerships—when developers, civic leaders, and corporate responsibility align to spark lasting change.
Why Green Space Is Essential Infrastructure
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that neighborhoods with more green space report lower rates of stress and respiratory illness. By contrast, in historically redlined neighborhoods where tree cover is sparse, summer heat can feel punishing. In places like Houston or the Bronx, the difference between leafy blocks and bare ones can reach 12–14°F.
That heat isn’t just uncomfortable — it drives up utility costs and magnifies chronic health problems.
For decades, low-income and minority neighborhoods bore the brunt of environmental injustice. People-centered planning flips that script: ensuring those same communities get priority for clean energy upgrades, community solar, and reliable infrastructure.
Cousins understood this decades ago. His development work, which helped reshape the Atlanta skyline, also pioneered a neighborhood approach that blended housing, education, and public space.
“Tom’s vision and tireless work transformed East Lake into a model of urban renewal that provided hope and opportunity to the community and its residents and dramatically improved the quality of life for this now thriving neighborhood,” Womack said in a statement.
Today, utilities are following a similar playbook — treating tree cover, weatherization, and resilience hubs not as extras, but as essential strategies for public health and community well-being. But the example of East Lake also shows that no single investment — not even in green space — is enough on its own. Real transformation requires coalition.
Cross-Sector Partnerships
Transforming a neighborhood isn’t a solo act. It requires a coalition — housing authorities, schools, nonprofits, businesses, and eventually corporate leaders all aligned toward a singular mission. East Lake worked because it built that kind of coalition, the sort experts say is essential for lasting change. And the community’s success isn’t an outlier.
The Urban Institute notes that coalitions that move the needle on poverty and inequity share several traits: a clear vision, trusted relationships, shared data, and coordinated investment.
Chris Womack saw those pieces come together in real time during his tenure as chairman of the East Lake Foundation. “Tom set a precedent for urban renewal that prioritizes inclusivity and sustainable growth,” Womack recalled in a statement. “He continued his work with Purpose Built Communities, expanding the successful model developed at East Lake to neighborhoods nationwide, demonstrating the scalability and profound impact of his approach.”
Purpose Built Communities has since applied the same coalition model in neighborhoods from Birmingham to Spartanburg to New Orleans. In each, the coalition approach produced similar outcomes: crime fell, schools improved, and investment followed.
Today, East Lake’s home values hover between $485,000 and $587,000 — proof of its resurgence, but also of the market pressures that often follow renewal. The rise underscores a tension every city faces: how to grow and improve while keeping communities inclusive. At its heart, the East Lake example is about how thoughtful planning can build equity into renewal — through mixed-income housing, strong schools, and public spaces where families can thrive.
The same principle applies in today’s energy transition. Utilities cannot deliver equity alone.
Lowering household energy burdens or building resilience hubs requires collaboration with housing developers, school districts, city planners, and neighborhood groups.
East Lake proves the power of united coalitions — and the partnership between Cousins and Womack shows how entrepreneurial vision and corporate responsibility, working together, can turn renewal into resilience, and inequity into opportunity.