Reimagining the Role of City Owned Assets as Multifunctional Infrastructure: Serving Community Needs Through Collaboration

Abstract

This thesis investigates how city governments can reconceptualize infrastructure to reshape value creation for communities, using the City of Atlanta as a case study. By examining various departments and executive offices within Atlanta’s municipal structure, the research highlights the complexities of urban governance, where value is not uniformly defined or understood even within a single city. The central question guiding this work is: How can Atlanta’s city agencies collaborate across departments to identify opportunities to create more value through city-owned assets?

Through stakeholder interviews and a mapping of publicly owned assets, this thesis explores an alternative, strategic approach to infrastructure one that supports not only urban planners but also city practitioners seeking to enhance residents’ quality of life through a value-based lens. The study also acknowledges the often overlooked, expanded value of built assets, which remains difficult to capture through conventional metrics. In doing so, it argues for a broader, more inclusive understanding of infrastructure’s role in urban life.

This research offers a framework to view and explore infrastructure and values in a more comprehensive and holistic way compared to traditional methods. The framework centers strategy around prioritizing infrastructure planning, its relative outcomes, the spatial relationships and function of infrastructure, and the relationships that influence how people interact with infrastructure from a value-based lens.