Whitenesses in the city: A history of place-making in Little Five Points, Atlanta, USA

Atlanta has been known for decades as a center of Black culture and Black-owned development in the American South and in the nation. In the past 15 years, the city has begun shifting back toward a whiter residential base. As in other American cities, this trend is being driven by a move from the suburban fringe back to the center by relatively mobile, middle- and upper-middle class white residents. While literature has examined the mechanics and locational preferences of mobile white residents, the characteristics of white urban identity are often overlooked. This paper examines the case of Little Five Points, a retail and entertainment district sitting between affluent neighborhoods east of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. We identify multiple and competing whitenesses articulated and operationalized around Little Five Points over time and show how these multiple whitenesses retain key shared attributes of racial privilege grounded in property and exclusion.