Perimeter Center: The Second Downtown

Lyrics

[Intro]
You were just a line on a map once.
A circle. A promise of speed.
I-285.
They called you the Perimeter.
But a perimeter isn't a wall.
It's a beginning.

[Verse 1]
Before you, just red clay and pine.
The smell of hot Georgia summer.
Then the diesel exhaust, the shouts of men.
Nineteen sixty-something.
The fresh asphalt, black and steaming.
You laid yourself down, sixty-three miles of concrete ribbon.
A loop around a city that thought it knew its own heart.

[Chorus]
You didn't just circle a downtown.
You made another one.
Born of off-ramps and cloverleafs.
A second heart, beating outside the lines.
This is the edge city.
This is the great divide.
Inside, Outside.
The line you drew in the dirt.

[Verse 2]
Your first children were humble.
A shopping mall, a low-slung office park.
The constant hum of air conditioning in glass boxes.
Then the towers started to rise.
Reflecting the endless sky, the endless traffic.
The developer's dream sketched on a napkin.
The home builder's sign hammered into the lawn.
John Wieland's brick, Ben Carter's steel.

[Chorus]
You didn't just circle a downtown.
You made another one.
Born of off-ramps and cloverleafs.
A second heart, beating outside the lines.
This is the edge city.
This is the great divide.
Inside, Outside.
The line you drew in the dirt.

[Bridge]
And then they drew a line around your line.
Two thousand and five.
Sandy Springs.
A city born to claim you.
To keep the tax dollars close.
Then the MARTA line came.
A silver nerve reaching out from the old center.
Connecting Dunwoody station to the core.
An admission, maybe.
That two hearts need the same blood.

[Outro]
At night, from your lanes,
the towers are just constellations.
A city that wasn't supposed to be here.
And you, the concrete river that fed it all.
I-285.