[eschaton]

I spent some time in Savannah about a year and a half ago. It's beautiful, but I don't think people realize how small the "urban" part of the city really is. The downtown area proper only has about 3,400 residents. If you add in the historic, but slightly newer/less walkable areas surrounding Forsyth Park, there's another 40,000 or so. The walkable area is tightly restricted by the river to the north, and really unfortunate urban renewal decisions (along with large heavily black housing projects) to the east and west. The only place it seems to organically merge with the surrounding fabric is to the south, where it's racially mixed and seems to be gentrifying, forming a straight up "white corridor" directly to the more suburban areas like Chatham Crescent.

Still, there really isn't all that much upside potential for Savannah I think. Housing is already pretty damn expensive, unless you're looking for a non-historic home in one of the ghetto neighborhoods. The city is pretty set on not densifying the core area - for good reason I think - but it still limits the ability to build major new apartment areas. It's kinda a shame the city never developed a second downtown the way New Orleans did (French Quarter the original downtown), because it would be helpful if there was an area wide open for development just a short walk from the core.