Peachtree City: "Suburban Living at its Finest"

The NCR move brings three Georgia places to our attention.

1. Columbus, the small industrial city 100 miles south of Atlanta on the Alabama line

2. Duluth, in suburban Gwinnett County, northwest of Altanta

3. Peachtree City, southwest of Altanta

Peachtree City is the most interesting, as it's a rare example of a sucessfull attempt at creating a new town.

Why a sucess? Perhaps the location. The land was bought because of all the areas around Atlanta in the 1950s Fayette County land was the cheapest. But the site was also close to Hartsfield airport during an era when Atlanta was developing into a major regional air hub.



So an easy commute for people and business needing to be close to the airport. The obvious ones would be pilots and others directly connected to aviation, but also a good location for what NCR wants to put here, which is a training center and customer service operations.

Suburban Living at its Finest

This was the title of a section in the 1957 prospectus for Peachtree City. And this would be very fine indeed as this was one of the first mixed-use planned postwar suburban communities. The only two predecessors that come to mind are Park Forest, south of Chicago and Lakewood, near Long Beach, California. Niether of these approach Peachtree City in sophistication.

And, at 1957, this scheme is well before the iconic 1960s-era new communities of Columbia, Reston, and Irvine. Yet it was not developed or planned by outsiders, nor was it subsidized by the government (as in the later new towns). Peachtree City was a totally home-grown private sector project by Georgia developers and designers (with some site planning contributions from an emigre German-Swiss designer working for a golf-course desgn firm).

A quick look at the overview (north to the right) shows a commercial and office center clustered around a lake, with residential areas (in yellow) strung out to the south, seperated by belts of open space along creeks and watercourses and with little convenience shopping areas.

An industrial park is arranged around a railroad and highway, but seperated from the residential areas by more greenbelts.


A close-up of, perhaps, Phase I, showing how generous open space belts and corridors seperate the various land-use functions, but also how things sort of cluster around the lake and highway.

A birds eye view of the proposed town center on the lake, and some residential areas, also showing the start of the industrial and office park at the upper part of the image.
This rendering is rather fetching. One notes that this plan has a church as the centerpiece of the composition on the lake, perhaps a nod to the more observant regional religous culture of Dixie. The retail (?) along the lake are a loose interpretation of the Sarasota School of modernism (the South did have a little-known regional take on modern design).


Interesting to see a forerunner of Reston's Lake Anne Village, proposed 9 years earlier in the exurbs of Atlanta.

And, finally, the industrial park. One notes here the mix of grade seperated railroad and highway access, what we might call"multi-modal logistics" today. Back then railroads where still in the carload freight business (vs the bulk hauling they do today), puling boxcars up to factories on industrial sidings.

A private airport is proposed at the upper right hand corner.




Peachtree City, Dayton, and Failure to Execute.

Dayton could have had a Peachtree City in Don Hubers' failed Newfields project. In fact there are a lot of parallels, especially the open space system, the mixed-use concept, and the choice of a site in an area with lower property values but still somewhat close to the city.

The difference was, of course, a mix of timing and economic capacity. Newfields came online during an era of economic difficulty and regional stagnation. Peachtree City was at the edge of a booming metropolitan area, near an airport that was becoming a major US air hub for both domestic and international travel.

Next, Daytonlogy will take a quick look at modern Peachtree City.