ATL Urbanist

Choices we make for ourselves, our families & our cities

Blogger Mathildepiard writes this today about an NPR report:

What I found really interesting is that this story, which was supposed to be about how parents struggle to make sure their kids get enough exercise, ended up being about biking, traffic, and urban planning.

One mother talked about how she spends her afternoons in Los Angeles traffic, ferrying her two boys from one sporting activity to another. She explained that her eldest can’t really just bike around in her neighborhood because it’s not bike-friendly enough.

The story also profiled two other moms, both in Portland, and I especially loved how both talked about the choices we make for ourselves, for our families, for our cities (emphasis is mine)

Read her full post here.

My family had an interesting choice to make a couple of years ago. We were moving from a Midtown townhouse and had to choose a place that was both in our modest price range and in a walkable area.

Though downtown fit those criteria, a move there would force us to rely on sidewalks and MARTA much more than we had before, with our shared car parked four blocks away from our building in a garage. We would also be without some of the amenities nearby we had in Midtown.

In the end, we went with downtown because it was well-connected to transit and walkable — more so than most any other spot in the city, in my opinion. The small indignities of getting groceries inside without a driveway and walking in inclement weather are, for us, well worth suffering through for the benefit of being able to walk out the door to go some place we like, without needing to hop in the car first.

The Goodness of Trees on City Streets

As a follow up to my recent post on the current greenery of Broad Street (versus it’s concrete-jungle grayness from decades past), I thought I’d take some photos of the trees on this street before the leaves start to fall.

Looking at these photos, I’m reminded of a post this year from one of my favorite writers, Kain Benfield at the Natural Rsources Defense Council. Writing about the benefit of city trees, he points to a study giving evidence that trees on city streets, among all their other good qualities, reduce crime. 

A quote:

“According to the study, a 10 percent increase in trees roughly equaled a 12 percent decrease in crime. ‘It’s really pretty striking how strong this relationship is.’”

Another recent study points out that street trees can “create slower and more appropriate urban traffic speeds” and also “increase customer traffic to businesses” nearby. As a downtown resident who lives among a lot of street trees on Broad and elsewhere, I’ve seen evidence of all these positives.

We’re lucky to have this greenery downtown — greenery that didn’t exist a few decades ago when sidewalks were tree-less and Woodfruff Park wasn’t yet built. 

Is Gen Y fueling an urban revival in ATL?

From the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “10 Atlanta intown development sites to watch” post today:

…developers are paying close attention to Gen Y, those 20-somethings who apparently want to live and work inside the city, near its shopping, entertainment and restaurants, away from the drudgery of the traffic-choked commute.

“There’s been a real trend toward urbanization along the Peachtree spine between downtown and Buckhead and it’s being fueled by Gen Y,” said Jeff DuFresne, executive director of the Urban Land Institute.

Sounds like a positive development to me! I know that there are many who will call this a temporary trend and claim that most or all of these 20-somethings who now prefer city life will move to sprawling subdivisions when they want to start families. But only time will tell.

My prediction: if Atlanta can do a good job of building overall livability into the ever-developing urban fabric of this Peachtree corridor, there will be a significant number of families who will want to stay intown and continue enjoying a walkable, transit-connected life like my wife and I have done with our kid.

More pocket parks, better schools, increased safety…it could happen.

Photo of Peachtree Street from Instagram user bculturemedia

Atlanta joins trend of city growth outpacing suburbs

A Time.com article today explores a trend of growth in big cities compared to their surrounding suburbs. The info comes from new census estimates just released this week.

For the first time in a century, most of America’s largest cities are growing at a faster rate than their surrounding suburbs as young adults seeking a foothold in the weak job market shun home-buying and stay put in bustling urban centers.

I was excited to read that Atlanta is part of this trend, which the article claims is driven by young people who are are spurning home ownership in the suburbs for  “apartment living, public transit and proximity to potential jobs in larger cities.”

New Orleans, which saw its population shrivel in the mid-2000s due to Hurricane Katrina, saw the biggest rebound in city growth relative to suburbs in the last year, 3.7 percent vs. 0.6 percent. Atlanta, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, N.C., also showed wide disparities in city growth compared to suburbs.

The piece also points out that many economists and demographers predict this trend will be short lived if the suburban housing market recovers well, though one believes that “cities that market themselves well to young people and that offer job growth, cultural amenities and access to rapid transit are likely to see continued growth.”

That bodes well, I think, for Atlanta’s ability to hang on to the growth trend. It certainly has cultural amenities and access to rapid transit. Job growth is a question mark (and an important one), but good marketing can be easily achieved with the help of projects like the Beltline, Streetcar and Ponce City Market.

Read the full article here:
Big U.S. Cities Growing Faster than Suburbs | Time.com | July 28, 2012

EDITED TO ADD:

Also significant in the new census report is that the City of Atlanta just squeaked in at #15 in the list of the top 15 fastest growing US cities with a 3% gain in population from April 2010 to July 2011. To be clear, that ranking belongs to the actual city — not the greater metro area.

Quite a boost for a city that has generally been considered to be losing popularity in comparison to its overall metro.

Midtown ATL photo by Instagram user Ericlangley