Roswell East-Stopping traffic or sophistication?

[rackensack]

Originally Posted by yeah-yo

jxu66-Well he has the zoning rights to add a typical suburban development, so one way or another the traffic worsens. And I know a lot of "Miltonians" who have a creepy crazy-eyed hatred of MARTA.

Really? I've been in the northern suburbs for over a decade now, the last couple in North Fulton, and I really can't say that I've heard many people, if any, claim to have an inherent problem with MARTA. No doubt there was a time when the rich white folk didn't want the poor black folk having an easy way to get to where they lived, but I really don't think that's been a significant factor in many years -- maybe I'm just naive, but I don't see it. I suppose there probably are a few knuckle-walking troglodytes left, but they apparently keep their less enlightened notions to themselves, at least around me.

What I do see are people who don't see sufficient benefit to them, personally, to offset the costs to them, or to motivate them to actively support better public transportation. I once lived for several years in Atlanta with no functional automobile, so I'm more familiar than many "Miltonians" (assuming you mean that in the sense of "people who live in what was once Milton County" and not "people who live in the city of Milton") with what it's like to rely on public transportation as your primary way to get to work and to get around the city. If my life circumstances were different, I could easily see myself being happy living in NYC, Boston, DC, or San Francisco and not owning a car. But despite that, I can't get motivated to do much more than nod and smile when people talk about how great it'd be if MARTA served North Fulton better than it does. That's largely because we all know that we'll likely be dead before anything happens, even if they start building now, and because we've seen how poorly executed so many MARTA projects have been, and how badly managed it has traditionally been. Factor in the state constitutional limits on use of gas tax money and the lack of any political will at the state level to address this (let's face it, it's not a big vote-getter back home for state legislators from down in Ware County), plus the antipathy of the current governor toward public transportation, and the sensitivity to any increase in taxes on the part of most affluent suburbanites, and it becomes apparent that we can't get there from here. The fact that we've self-selected to a large extent for people who're predisposed to drive rather than take public transportation (if you really hate the idea of having to get in a car and drive to get anyplace, you're probably not going to choose to live in Alpharetta) is really just another shovelful of dirt on that particular grave.

Originally Posted by yeah-yo

rackensack-I think you get what I am saying, It is more about being against change, than a rational calculation of cost/benefits. There is something irrational about this opposition. But, particularly I think they dislike this exact style of this design. For example, an office park/residential area would not have faced as much opposition in my opinion.

I get what you're saying. I don't necessarily agree with the inference that people who opposed Roswell East were (are) irrational. I think they're as rational as most people making these kinds of decisions (which is to say, not very much) -- most of the time people on any side of a question make their minds up about it emotionally and come up with better or worse rationalizations to justify the decision they made. I think the folks in Martin's Landing who fought Roswell East did so based on a set of assumptions and understandings and emotional reactions that were qualitatively not much better or worse than those that drove the supporters of the project, just different. For all that people get vocal about things, they often seem to have a poor grasp on the realities of the situation -- what's possible and what's not legally, what's objectively true and what they just wish was true, etc.

I ultimately don't know whether I'd have supported or opposed Roswell East -- I never felt like I understood all the issues well enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other. I could see positives and negatives on both sides. There always seemed to be lots of information flying back and forth without much real communication.

[yeah-yo]

Currently, there are several large housing developments which will cause the same problems. Why are they not being opposed? It's because Roswell East offers a new type of development. I think Atlantic Station is the right comparison. Why would anyone strongly vocally oppose anything like that? It does not affect anyone anymore than a standard housing development will. The only difference is the type of people who will live there; upscale, sophisticated urbanites.

The opposition is because the lifestyle at Atlantic Station-style developments is different than the lifestyle of the Martin Landings people. It is the worst kind of tribalism. They only want the same type of people with same lifestyles living beside them. That is the ugly underbelly of the opposition.

And I am sorry, people in North Fulton talk crazy about MARTA; such as the illogical fear of crime etc.

[meadgrad]

Originally Posted by rackensack

Roswell East in the form originally proposed by Charlie Brown is a dead letter, so no one's actually opposing it right now because there's nothing to oppose. There was plenty not to like about it, but in principle I don't think the type of development that was proposed is wrong. People behaved as if the choice was between nothing and Roswell East, when in reality the choice was between Roswell East and something based on the current zoning, which likely would, as Mr. Brown suggested, be worse from a traffic/congestion/quality of life standpoint.

It always amazes me to see people complain about sprawl and density in the same breath -- they're not the same thing, and if you're going to have growth, you're pretty much going to get one or the other: you either grow vertically, or you grow horizontally. And in many respects, density is (to my mind) preferable, when the infrastructure is there to support it. The biggest problem I had with Roswell East was that I'm not clear that the necessary infrastructure is in place in Roswell, or that it could (or should) be built by the developer. Dense cities work well when all (or at least most) of the goods and services people need are readily accessible within walking distance or at least are accessible by public transport or a reasonably inexpensive cab ride. Roswell East itself might well have been designed to facilitate pedestrian travel, but unless the surrounding area is adapted as well, and unless it's better served by public transportation than it currently is, it'd end up being just another kind of semi-isolated office park pod with apartments and some houses.

The congestion around Holcomb Bridge and GA 400 is only going to get worse no matter what happens. Most information I've seen suggests that even if right-of-way acquisition started today it'd be ten years before any construction projects could be completed -- possibly more like twenty. The traffic studies for Roswell East suggested (keeping in mind that they were paid for by the developer) that it would result in a smaller increase in congestion than doing nothing or than allowable development options under current zoning. Reducing congestion isn't even on the table. I'm not saying that anything Charlie Brown might possibly build is better than anything that could be built under the current zoning, but the odds are that it would be.

I do find it amusing that people drag the "character of historic Roswell" bit into this discussion, however, since the area bounded by Riverside, Old Alabama, Holcomb Bridge, and 400 has about as little "historic character" as you can imagine. There's a major freeway and about 3 miles of neighborhoods between "historic Roswell" and this proposed development. Sure, any place right on the river has some history to it, but really what Brown proposed was simply replacing a late 1970s/early 1980s suburban development model with an early 21st century one. May or not have been better, but it's different and that's enough to trigger opposition.

Because, when you get down to it, that's what people do -- oppose things. Unless they have an economic interest being served by a proposed change, they'll almost always oppose it. When you buy a property, you're in a sense buying the conditions of the surrounding area as well -- but you don't get any property rights to anything except your property, and you have no guarantee that the surroundings won't change. Zoning laws attempt to introduce a bit more stability and predictability, but they also lead to people assuming that they can stop anything they don't like, just because they don't like it or it will change the character of the area. But the reality is that areas change over time. American society in particular is based on the idea of growth and change, of pulling up stakes and moving on, so it's inevitable that change happens more quickly here than in most other, more established societies.

Wow...you saved me a lot of typing cause I could not have made these points better myself!

[rackensack]

Originally Posted by yeah-yo

Currently, there are several large housing developments which will cause the same problems. Why are they not being opposed? It's because Roswell East offers a new type of development. I think Atlantic Station is the right comparison. Why would anyone strongly vocally oppose anything like that? It does not affect anyone anymore than a standard housing development will. The only difference is the type of people who will live there; upscale, sophisticated urbanites.

I'll get to the rest in a minute, but your last statement there I think is highly questionable. As much as I personally like a sophisticated, urban, pedestrian-oriented, vertically dense environment, I'm not sure Roswell East would actually attract the sort of residents you (or the developer) think it would. The proposed development was huge, but despite the rhetoric it wasn't a city unto itself. Outside of the immediate vicinity, the surroundings are suburban, without the mass of boutiques, restaurants, nightclubs, cultural venues, etc., that attract "sophisticated urbanites". Atlantic Station is just across a freeway from Midtown Atlanta, with a shuttle bus to MARTA. It's next door (in a sense) to Georgia Tech, close to the Woodruff Arts Center, Fox Theater, and dozens of other points of interest to "urbanites". Roswell East . . . isn't. It's over the river and through the woods from all that. That was one of my key questions about the proposal -- will the target market buy that far from downtown, and if not who will?

Originally Posted by yeah-yo

The opposition is because the lifestyle at Atlantic Station-style developments is different than the lifestyle of the Martin Landings people. It is the worst kind of tribalism. They only want the same type of people with same lifestyles living beside them. That is the ugly underbelly of the opposition.

Oh, come on. "Worst kind of tribalism"? I think there's millions of people in the world who might be able to offer up experience with some aspects of tribalism that make yelling at zoning meetings seem like pretty small beer.

The opposition doesn't really have anything to do with the "lifestyle" of anyone. It has to do with maintaining the perceived stability of a particular set of conditions instead of taking a chance on a different set of conditions with unknown (and unknowable) effects. People don't oppose these types of changes because they hate people who aren't like them -- they oppose them because they are quite literally invested in things being like they are. They bought the homes they did partially because of the features of the property itself, but partly because of the characteristics of the surrounding area. They have a huge part of their net worth tied up in things continuing to be at least as good as they are now. Anything that makes those conditions likely to change is frightening, because there's never any guarantee that a change will have positive effects. The status quo may not be perfect, but at least it's a known quantity. Change can negatively affect them financially, but because a home is an investment you also have to live in, it affects them in lots of other ways as well; people have decided to live where they do because they're able to accept the negatives and they like the positives. If conditions change, they may no longer be able to cope with the differences. That doesn't make them evil people, it just makes them people.

The reality, of course, is that conditions are always changing, so that doing nothing doesn't actually ensure that things stay the same. But it always looks safer.

Originally Posted by yeah-yo

And I am sorry, people in North Fulton talk crazy about MARTA; such as the illogical fear of crime etc.

No doubt there are some people in North Fulton who do. I don't encounter them myself, but I'll take your word for it.