The Best Thing My City Did This Year

Cities change so fast that it can be hard take stock of the changes that really mattered. So we've asked a collection of professional city observers to do just that. Writers, urban planners, and local governmentistas in 20 U.S. cities shared with us the best thing their city did this year. The 'thing' could have been anything, from a great new business, to a successful anti-poverty program, to a collective cultural moment, like Batkid. We've compiled their answers below; be sure to share yours in the comments.

"I think that Atlanta has really done a great job harnessing the power of alternative transportation this year, even more so than it has in the past. The Atlanta BeltLine has brought in a billion dollars of investment in apartments and adjacent parks. The downtown Atlanta Streetcar will travel through the historic neighborhood where Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up. That community has seen disinvestment for decades, now it's changing and even being forced to look at re-zoning. The other big things are transit-oriented developments around some of these park-and-ride MARTA sites." - Darin Givens, Editor of Atlanta Urbanist