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A Community Approach Helps Transform Atlanta Neighborhood

Students head to class at the Charles R. Drew charter school in Atlanta's East Lake neighborhood. The school is part of a neighborhood-revitalization effort in that community that is being seen as a national model.

—Pouya Dianat for Education Week

East Lake went from 'war zone' to a national model

By Alexandra Rice

Residents of Atlanta’s redeveloped East Lake community say the history of their neighborhood is a real-life Cinderella story.

East Lake, once known as “Little Vietnam” to the local police because of its sky-high crime rates, is now a paradigm of community revitalization that serves as a national model for Purpose Built Communities , a consulting group on neighborhood turnarounds that is gaining traction, primarily across the Southeast. Now in East Lake, mixed-income housing is woven between shops, local eateries, schools, a family center, a YMCA, and two golf courses.

Purpose Built Communities, based in Atlanta, grew organically out of the undertaking of East Lake’s revitalization. The nonprofit organization, now officially in its third year, is financed by three philanthropists: Tom Cousins, an Atlanta real estate developer; Julian Robertson, founder of the now-defunct Wall Street hedge fund Tiger Management Corp.; and Warren Buffett, the well-known chairman and chief executive officer of the Berkshire...