What’s Up Dunwoody is a local media platform created by Matt Weber focused on living in Dunwoody, moving to Dunwoody, and staying connected to the community. What started as a podcast in 2018 has grown into local social media content, community guides, and one of the most active Dunwoody communities online.

Matt is a Dunwoody REALTOR who uses the reach of the platform to help sellers get more exposure for their homes while helping buyers better understand Dunwoody neighborhoods and schools.

Check out the latest podcast episodes, restaurant openings, local business features, and Dunwoody updates below.

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Honest Questions and Answers About Living in Dunwoody

What makes Dunwoody feel different?

To me, Dunwoody feels different because it knows exactly what it is.

A lot of suburbs around Atlanta seem focused on becoming bigger, denser, or trendier as quickly as possible. Dunwoody has taken a slower and more intentional approach. The city has stayed around 51,000 people for most of the time we've lived here — basically the same as when my wife and I moved from Gwinnett in 2010.

Most of the neighborhoods still feel established and residential. Mature trees. Homes from the 60s and 70s that have been renovated instead of constantly torn down. Parks that actually get used. The swim clubs have waiting lists. The neighborhood groups are active.

At the same time, you can drive five minutes from a quiet neighborhood and suddenly be around office towers, MARTA, restaurants, hotels, and Perimeter Mall. That contrast between the neighborhoods and the Perimeter is a huge part of what makes Dunwoody work. Dunwoody isn't trying to become something else. It feels comfortable being Dunwoody. That's rarer than it sounds.

Why do people stay in Dunwoody for so long?

I think people stay because they slowly build a life here that becomes hard to leave.

I've seen it happen over and over. In our Dunwoody North neighborhood alone, I can think of around 30 different families who bought another home in the exact same neighborhood after already living here once. Not because I moved them there — because they genuinely wanted to stay.

People move here for schools, commutes, or convenience. Then they build friendships, join swim and tennis teams, get involved in youth sports, and start seeing the same people everywhere. The 4th of July Parade. Lemonade Days at Brook Run. Soccer at the park. Drop-off at school. You're constantly running into the same people.

My family moved here in 2010 thinking it would be a five-year house. Fifteen years later, we're still here.

Why is the Perimeter area such a big advantage?

The Perimeter area is one of the biggest reasons Dunwoody works so well long-term.

You can live in a quiet neighborhood with mature trees and good schools, then drive five minutes and have access to some of the best restaurants, shopping, hotels, offices, and healthcare anywhere in Metro Atlanta. Between Northside, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Saint Joseph's, and all the surrounding medical offices, a huge percentage of Dunwoody residents actually work nearby.

There's also something most people overlook: taxes. The concentration of hotels and businesses around Perimeter generates significant commercial tax revenue, which is a big reason Dunwoody has one of the lower city millage rates in DeKalb County.

Most importantly, Perimeter gives you options without requiring you to be part of it. You can live quietly in your neighborhood and ignore the whole thing — or you can be five minutes from everything you need.

What is the commute actually like from Dunwoody?

Traffic here sucks. Let's just start there.

But Dunwoody's location minimizes a lot of the pain. The city sits right between I-285 and GA-400, with two MARTA stations nearby — Dunwoody Station inside city limits and Medical Center Station just across the Sandy Springs line. That gives residents more real options than most Atlanta suburbs.

A huge percentage of Dunwoody residents work somewhere around Perimeter, Buckhead, Midtown, or along the 400 corridor — and for those people, the commute can be almost nothing. The census data actually backs this up: the average commute time for a Dunwoody resident is 24.9 minutes, which is slightly below the national average.

What have you personally watched change the most in Dunwoody since 2010?

The three biggest transformations have been the police department, the parks system, and the restaurant scene — and they're all connected to the same story.

Before 2008, Dunwoody was unincorporated DeKalb County. The residents here fought to become a city because DeKalb wasn't paying attention to things that mattered — public safety, parks, local development. That's why the city exists. It wasn't just civic pride. It was frustration with being ignored.

When I covered the parks department on the podcast for the first time in 2018 — episodes 26 and 27 — the director was a guy named Brent Walker. He was the entire department. One person. And even then, he was just announcing plans for the Brook Run amphitheater, which didn't open until 2020. That's how early it still was. Today the parks department has more than a dozen full-time staff and over 200 acres of green space across the city. I've watched that happen in real time.

The police department is now one of the strongest parts of the city. It's a safe area — most of the crime that happens here comes from people entering Dunwoody to commit it, not from within the community itself. That's a direct result of having our own department instead of sharing county resources with places that don't look like us.

The restaurant scene has made massive moves since 2010. That has less to do with the city, and more to do with the indirect effect of businesses trusting that Dunwoody can support their business. Whatever it is, it's working because there are more great restaurants than ever before.

Why are Dunwoody parks such a big part of the community?

Brook Run Park is probably my favorite thing about Dunwoody, and I'll be upfront that I'm completely biased.

I live in Dunwoody North, about a quarter mile from the park. My in-laws live even closer. We're there several times a week. I play soccer there twice a week, and my youngest plays with a Rush Union Academy team on the turf fields. During COVID, I ran the trails every single day. Our WUD Men's Over 40 soccer team won eleven championships there, never losing a season. I'm never going to stop mentioning that.

Brook Run is 110 acres of baseball, soccer, trails, a skate park, a dog park, a community garden, an amphitheater, and more — all managed through a public-private partnership model where the city owns the land and private operators run everything on it. Dunwoody Senior Baseball, Rush Union Soccer, Treetop Quest, the Nature Center — they bring programming the city couldn't fund alone. What you end up with is a park that functions more like a small city than a patch of grass. And once you spend time there, it's hard to imagine living somewhere without it.

What are your favorite restaurants in Dunwoody?

This question is impossible to answer without leaving somebody out. But there are a few places that have earned a permanent spot in our rotation.

NFA Burger is the biggest name in Dunwoody — statewide, regionally, all of it. Billy Kramer built a legend out of a gas station on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Billy also happens to live down the street from me, so I might be a little biased. But I'm not wrong. Order it Billy's Way. Don't change a thing.

Good Vibes in Dunwoody Village is a Weber family staple. My go-to is the Orange Whip. For a short period, they made a drink called the What's Up Dunwoody in honor of the podcast. That's one of the cooler things that's happened to me in this city.

Grana at Ashford Lane is my favorite pizza in Dunwoody — and I say that as someone who actually owns a pizza restaurant. Start with the garlic bread. Trust me.

Taqueria Los Hermanos: my wife Sasha's family goes almost every Friday. That's not a habit, it's a tradition. The carne asada is my order. The tres leches cake is non-negotiable.

And the whole Funwoody block in Dunwoody Village — Bar{n}, Morty's, Message in a Bottle, Good Vibes, {s}table — completely transformed what the Village is. David Abes has opened roughly one restaurant a year since he started, and together they've made Dunwoody Village one of the best dinner destinations in Metro Atlanta.

What are your favorite things happening in Dunwoody right now?

Honestly? The fact that the city is figuring out what it wants to be — and now actually has the tools to do something about it.

Walkability is still low — Walk Score of 33, car-dependent. But the city now has a real trails master plan with actual budget behind it, which didn't exist before incorporation.

The growth around the Perimeter corridor keeps attracting investment — High Street building out, Ashford Lane adding new concepts, Campus 244 developing into a real destination. More companies are moving offices into the Perimeter area, which strengthens Dunwoody long-term in ways that go beyond restaurants.

What I'm most excited about is the cumulative effect. Parks, trails, restaurants, events, public safety — they all compound. The Dunwoody I live in now is genuinely better than the one I moved into in 2010. Not because of any single thing, but because a city that's in control of its own future keeps getting it right a little more each year.

How much do school district boundaries really matter in Dunwoody?

As a real estate agent, I have to be careful here because schools are incredibly personal. But honestly? Boundaries absolutely matter in Dunwoody.

The elementary schools within the cluster can vary pretty significantly in scores and parent perception, even though they all eventually feed into Peachtree Charter Middle and then Dunwoody High School. Those differences show up in home values, in how long listings sit, and in buyer conversations I have every week.

At the same time, I think people oversimplify it. A lot of families moving here already know they're planning the private route at some point. Others start public, shift to private, and then come back for DHS — which is a legitimately strong high school that a lot of families specifically want. That's essentially the path our own family took.

Schools are a huge reason people move to Dunwoody. But they're only one piece of why people stay here for decades. The kids grow up, the school conversation shifts, and the city itself is still the thing that keeps people around.

What are your favorite things about living in Dunwoody?

It took me a while to find the right way to say this, but I think I finally have it: Dunwoody is really two separate worlds that somehow share the same city.

There's the neighborhood side — quiet streets, mature trees, swim clubs, backyard soccer goals, kids riding bikes to the pool. And then there's the Perimeter side — office towers, hotels, MARTA, Perimeter Mall, one of the biggest business and dining districts in the Southeast. And what makes Dunwoody special is that neither one is crossing into the other.

The neighborhoods stay neighborhoods. They don't get developed out. They don't get replaced with mixed-use. The Perimeter keeps growing and improving, but it stays in its corner of the city.

That line between the two is actually what makes Dunwoody work. You can be in a quiet subdivision one minute and five minutes later be at a rooftop bar, a great restaurant, MARTA, or Brook Run Park. Most cities make you choose between those two things. Dunwoody figured out how to give you both.

Fifteen years in, that's still my favorite thing about living here.