Yo @atlantaciviccircle.org, this is pretty gross, especially on a story about such an important topic. Can we just not?

"Policies that rely on profit-seeking developers will always be compromised by the incentive to extract value rather than provide it. Real-estate greed cannot be regulated out of existence so long as private landlords and developers remain central to the system."

‼️ Join my team ‼️ @cplusc.bsky.social is hiring a Housing Policy Manager to help advance progressive housing and climate solutions alongside some of the best tenant unions, labor unions, policymakers, and researchers in the field. Apply here by Oct 5! climateandcommunity.org/careers/

Today is somehow the 10th anniversary of my dissertation defense, aka the time one of my committee members made a point of telling me that they were "highly offended" I hadn't cited my advisor

I see that the YIMBY/Abundance crowd still loves to rely primarily on non-peer-reviewed working papers from economists in order to support their nonsense rather than looking at the mountain of actually peer-reviewed work showing that corporate landlords are, in fact, as bad as many assume them to be

Shoutout to the back parking lot at Manuel's Tavern for its multiple cameos in Weapons

I'm really excited to publish this excerpt from Gus Wood's new book in @atlstudies.bsky.social, which provides a whole new lens on Atlanta history. Like how had I never heard about a citywide, multi-sited strike by Church's Chicken workers over discrimination, pay and community benefits before?!

In this excerpt from his new book, Augustus Wood examines one chapter in the long-neglected history of Atlanta's Black working class, telling the story of strikes against unjust labor practices and housing conditions by working class Black women in the 1970s atlantastudies.org/2025/08/06/t...

My dad sent me the latest Paul Krugman newsletter about Atlanta and for some reason his citation for the idea that you "aren't allowed to build multifamily housing" in Atlanta is an editorial from a high school student newspaper 🤦‍♂️

Very cool that my employer is finally switching from Webex to Zoom about five years after it would have made a meaningfully positive difference in our lives #betterlatethannever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The wife is out of town and not able to watch Love Island at the same time, so she just received 17 consecutive texts with my play-by-play of tonight's episode before finally responding

We’re delighted to share our latest article, an excerpt from Hannah Palmer’s latest book “The Pool is Closed”. As she writes in the introduction, this piece “feels like the emotional heart of my book and it isn’t even about pools.” Check it out 👇👇 atlantastudies.org/2025/07/02/f...

Today, Renee Tapp argues that recent attempts to solve the affordable housing crisis rely on a flawed understanding of housing economics and landlord business practices. To address the high price of housing, we must recognize it for what it is: an antitrust issue.

Through an open records request, the Atlanta Community Press Collective obtained a list of City of Atlanta-owned surveillance cameras and automated license plate readers. Geographer Taylor Shelton mapped the locations of those cameras, showing which neighborhoods are most heavily surveilled.

Atlanta is the most surveilled city in the United States. But because the Atlanta Police Department claims that releasing the locations of these 60,000+ cameras will lead to terrorism, we’ve not been able to map their locations... Until now. Read more 👇👇

very upsetting when your wife, who studies environmental conservation, refuses to study prairie dog habitat conservation even though this organization has the cutest logo in the entire world

Across the country, new "squatting laws" are being weaponized against tenants. In Atlanta, Bolden Capital Group is using this law to force out families who paid rent—after leaving them in units with no power, collapsing ceilings, and rampant mold. Landlords are terrorizing people with impunity.

Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, formed to bankroll housing initiatives, is now being used to cover bond debt and staff salaries — a shift that’s alarmed advocates and city officials. For @atlantaciviccircle.org: atlantaciviccircle.org/2025/05/26/i...

Was literally just at a wedding where I made a joke to an actual medical doctor about being the wrong kind of doctor on a plane and he told me that being a critical social scientist was more important.

Every Louisvillian ought to read and sit with this for awhile. Kind of hard to do anything but just sit with something this heavy. Fuck.

I don't care what people have to say about SGA, because I say CAYUTS. #BBN

THEN WHAT THE FUCK WAS COP CITY FOR?!?!?!

Metro level stats provide an average, but as @jtsphd.bsky.social shows in his work, it is the intra-metro geography here that is key. Institutional investor owned single-family rentals are over 80-90% in some Metro Atlanta neighborhoods atlantaciviccircle.org/2025/02/26/g...

There's a talking point out there that the financialization of housing has no significant impact on the housing costs that tenants struggle with. That talking point is incorrect.

Do I, as a tenured college professor, feel bad about going to another university for an event run by a student group and eating their free pizza? No I do not, because this university is RICH and my university is POOR. 🍕

Now that I've had a full day to recover from the finale, allow me to express my disappointment that Righteous Gemstones never had any Christian puppetry components

If you're a candidate for local elected office - especially in Atlanta - wearing these boots is a major 🚩🚩🚩

Whatever the potentially valid reason may be, the symbolism here is... something.

Don't forget to register for next week's 12th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium! We hope to see you at Morehouse on May 2nd! Program: atlantastudies.org/2025/04/08/a... Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

This makes me die inside

New research out from friends at @pestakeholder.bsky.social shows that private equity firms own 10% of all apartment units across the United States, and upwards of 20% of all apartments here in Georgia, the highest share of any state pestakeholder.org/reports/priv...

How is it that me *being in* Pittsburgh right now is keeping me from watching the season finale of The Pitt? Cruel, cruel irony.

Not sure if I've got any friends in Pittsburgh who don't already know about this, but I'll be giving a talk at Pitt this Friday, 4/11 at 10:30am on my research into the geographies of absentee housing ownership in Atlanta. Come thru if you can!

📣 We are excited to announce the program for the 12th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium, to be held May 2, 2025 at Morehouse College! Be sure to check out all the awesome sessions we have planned and register for the symposium at the link below! atlantastudies.org/2025/04/08/a...

In honor of tonight's home opener for the Atlanta Braves, revisit Andy Walter’s ATLS classic “Mapping Braves Country” to learn more about how the Braves used maps to justify their move out of Atlanta's urban core and into to the suburbs of Cobb County atlantastudies.org/2015/09/09/m...

Couldn't have said it better than @brian-goldstone.bsky.social in this new interview... www.thenation.com/article/cult... Some of my dearest friends & family live in California, but if your analysis of housing starts and stops there, I'm really not interested in anything you have to say

I've gotten four fundraising emails from my employer today and it isn't even noon yet.

Advisor and advisee not beating the "they dress the same" allegations at #AAG2025

It’s almost like this asshole read the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force report from the 1980s and said, “the real problem is that all these absentee land owners don’t have enough political power!” 🤦‍♂️

I'm learning some hard lessons about what happens when you share your work with policymakers and they use it to advocate for weak-ass half-measure policies that you explicitly told them weren't going to be all that useful 😑

State lawmakers’ eyebrows jumped at a House committee hearing Tuesday, as Georgia State University geographer Taylor Shelton shot off a barrage of statistics about institutional investors’ staggeringly high level of home ownership across Georgia. atlantaciviccircle.org/2025/02/26/g...

tfw shapefiles get mentioned in a state legislative hearing and it isn't by the only geographer in the room ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

who needs economists or lawyers or b-school profs when you've got geographers writing in Compact about how academia needs more conservatives 🙄🤮

Like with everything in the world, there's a geography to Girl Scout Cookies...

Talking shit about students on the internet is usually a big no-no, but finding out that the grad student you caught using AI to plagiarize a paper in your class ALSO plagiarizes their LinkedIn posts is deeply, deeply hilarious and vindicating

We're also excited to publicly announce the appointment of Taylor Shelton @jtsphd.bsky.social as the new executive editor of Atlanta Studies! You can read Taylor's editorial introduction and more about his vision for Atlanta Studies at the link below 👇

With just a couple of days delay, we are so excited to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Atlanta Studies by launching our new website! 🎂🎉🥳 A huge thanks goes out to Bailey Betik of @ecds-emory.bsky.social for her work in leading the redesign and providing the journal with a new look and feel

Landlords everywhere think that they’re being oppressed by the tiniest modicum of regulation or responsibility. Back in my hometown they want to be able to poison you *and* make you pay them for the privilege.

Hannah Palmer is a writer and artist from Atlanta’s Southside who will deliver our other keynote address. A longtime friend of Atlanta Studies, Hannah’s latest book “The Pool Is Closed: Segregation, Summertime, and the Search for a Place to Swim” was published this past fall by LSU Press.