Atlanta, like St. Louis, grew up around railroad lines. And, as in St. Louis, some of those lines are now abandoned or underused as industry has moved out of the center city. And Atlanta has an ambitious, $2.8 billion plan to redevelop a 22-mile railroad loop around the center of the city. The plan includes affordable housing and a dedicated bus corridor in addition to trails and parks.

James Langford, Georgia state director of the Trust for Public Land, says Atlanta needs the greenspace badly. Just 3.6 percent of its land area is devoted to park space, the smallest slice of any major U.S. city. The trust is helping to acquire the corridor for the city, but doesn’t control all of it yet.

Valarie Wilson, executive director of the BeltLine Partnership, which is raising $60 million in private funds as part of the project. She said planners have identified 20 likely redevelopment areas along the route, some of them near where it crosses a major road or transit line. “Some development has already occurred in the BeltLine area, just knowing that it’s coming,” she said. The BeltLine plan calls for creating 60,000 new jobs along the corridor, along with increasing the city’s greenspace by 56 percent.

I should mention, as I haven’t done since a couple of posts ago, that I’m on a leadership trip organized by the RCGA. It’s focusing on challenges that St. Louis has in common with Atlanta, or on things they’ve done here that we’re still trying to accomplish. But several trip participants — including David Fisher, executive director of Great Rivers Greenway District — mentioned that greenspace is one area in which St. Louis is ahead of Atlanta. Great Rivers was established six years ago, with a dedicated sales tax that’s intended to eventually establish a 600-mile network of trails. Among its future projects, the Chouteau Lake and greenway is seen as having tremendous development potential.

Twenty years ago, Fisher said, trail developers like him talked only about recreation and the environment, not about economics. “What we’ve become is economic development gurus, and social workers with land,” he said. “Green infrastructure is a marketing tool that we must use in our regions.”