Housing

Why Soccer Fields Are Sprouting Up at Atlanta’s Transit Stations

Swaths of MARTA’s empty space are being turned into athletic fields for kids and adults. The goal is to build a transit-oriented soccer league.
People play soccer on a new field below train tracks at Atlanta's West End station.Courtesy of Soccer in the Streets

In 1978, Atlanta’s public transit operator built an amphitheater at the Five Points station, the nexus of its rail network, hoping that people would take transit to attend events there.

They didn’t. As the decades passed, MARTA’s amphitheater went unused due to a lack of programming, and it took up valuable real estate in the heart of downtown. But over the past two years, that space has finally become the gathering place that was envisioned decades ago. It’s now the site of a soccer field, which planners claim is the world’s first inside of a transit station. It’s also the first step in what the city hopes will be an entire network of fields that host a transit-oriented soccer league.