[ethbro]

If you don't need a decent school zone, can confirm.

38 minutes from downtown. 3 acre wooded lot. 1900 sq ft house (currently refinishing full basement). $135 when I bought, probably $200 now. In the process of selling a much more expensive intown house, because there's no point.

The biggest things suburbs need to do these days is revolutionize malls. Tear up all the parking and retrofit empty store space into community-centric things people actually want.

Big box -> co-working space, as new anchor tenant.

[paul_f]

Interestingly, if you go north of Atlanta, you can find examples of the new "downtown" areas that have been built in the last few years to replace malls. Avalon: https://www.experienceavalon.com/ Halcyon: https://www.visithalcyon.com/ Alpharetta City Center: http://www.citycenteralpharetta.com/ All 3 within 5 miles of each other

[ethbro]

Used to live down the road from Avalon. I'd say it's better than a mall, but still too profit-first to be when I'd hope we're pivoting towards.

As context for others, Avalon is a mixed-use development, with restaurants and shops on the first floor (of ~3). Definitely still anchor-tenant focused (movie theater, larger clothing retailers) & restaurant weighted.

IMHO, the type of place you visit to do things, then leave. Not the type of place you live.

But then, my opinion is that Atlantic Station should be nuked from orbit for the sin of isolating itself from the transit grid, so I'm probably on the get-off-my-lawn side of the planner/developer split.

[naveen99]

In a world of remote k-12 schooling, hopefully real estate values tied to school zones will be history.