Making Playtime A Priority In America's Cities (Atlanta, Millen: apartment, buy)

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by tarnishaluvsdontae

Rmember that density makes it crowded and the rents go up.

Incorrect. Higher rents result in more density.

You have to have higher density to spread out the higher land costs in desirable areas.

If you build a single family home in the middle of downtown it will not lower rents, it will just be a really, really expensive home.

[CCATL]

Originally Posted by tarnishaluvsdontae

Rmember that density makes it crowded and the rents go up. I lived in NJ before I was here. Have you heard about the rents up there? Gone way up since they started regentrifying and all these rich folks moved into the city. They moved into NYC but also Newark, Jersey City, Hackensack, Elizabeth and other places that used to be cheap to live in. Now all regentrified and expensive.

Do you really want that to happen in Atlanta? I cannot afford. So yes to elbow room. No to dense. Thanks.

See jshv's comment. Density does not determine rent costs, but rather, it is supply and demand. Higher supply with less demand = lower costs, high demand with no supply = higher costs. NYC and other areas of the NE are more dense, but have a lot less supply, and space to build new supply, than Atlanta. Densifying and putting up pocket parks to make the city family friendly is not going to change that, and costs will not be as high as NYC anytime soon. Your personal opinions regarding keeping the city undesirable (ie: less dense) for your own benefit is not in the benefit of the city as a whole, so I fully disagree with that mentality. Let the city grow, let it become desirable - but let it be as organic as possible while mitigating the inevitable that results in pushing out all but the rich (see NYC) while we still can.

[arjay57]

I think the key point is that in order to be sustainable the city must develop ways to attract and keep families.

Millennials will only be young for a few more years -- then what happens to all these apartments?

[Larry X]

Now we have to make play time a priority smh. When I was growing up we were always outside playing, didn't need a park, just a front yard, back yard, an open field, or the street.

[arjay57]

If we keep focusing on density there may not be a front yard, back yard or an open field.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by CCATL

I think it's an argument for cities needing more space for children and families, not for "elbow room". For example, more parks, more playgrounds, more basketball courts/tennis courts, playgrounds, etc. Basically, more space for recreational activities. If you go to any major, dense city, there are pocket parks and recreational areas spread every few blocks throughout the city. This gives children and adults space to be active, creative, and healthy. Atlanta is definitely lacking in this arena. Yes, we have Piedmont Park and Centennial Park in the densest part of our core area, but aside from those, there really isn't any place that people can walk out of their high rise and be in a recreational area within a couple blocks (unless of course you live next to one of those parks). I don't know of a single basketball court in the middle of downtown or midtown - that's pretty telling as to how sorely Atlanta needs more spaces like this as we continue to densify and become more urban.

Basically, I think you're looking at it wrong. We don't need elbow room in the sense that the core areas should stop becoming more dense. We need to continue to densify, but also make families want to stay, by providing small recreational parks that intermingle with the highrises. Not everybody wants to move to the suburbs, regardless of if they have kids or not, and we need to provide incentives for those who want a dense big city life to stay when they have families, like every other successful major city.

This. We have waaaaaay too few greenspaces. Just do a comparison between the acreage of parks here and that of just about any city in Europe.

[Ant131531]

I guess Atlanta should just stop growing then. All of the development going into the region should just halt and just go to one of the Texas cities where they will be glad to improve their world standings and grow.

Atlanta should just go back to 1980 when no one heard of Atlanta and it was a provincial city at best with parking lots dotting the core with no use other than the 9-5 crowd to park their cars.

This means that Perimeter and Buckhead should stop growing too and no more development should go to these regions if Atlanta shouldn't get development either.

[Ant131531]

You know what. Charlotte would be happy to take the billions of dollars in developemnt that Atlanta is going and will be getting in the pipeline and grow into a fine, dense city where people can actually walk from neighborhood to neighborhood like how a real city is supposed to function.

[arjay57]

Ant, what do you think about the man's point in the original post? Don't we have to work on making our cities child and family friendly? Aren't we at risk of designing kids out our cities?

"...cities are struggling to try to figure out how to be child-friendly and family-friendly - not just to attract a creative class, but to be able to maintain them, grow them, and sustain them once they start having kids. And we've actually designed kids out of cities, and this is an attempt to design family-friendly child-friendly cities once again."

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Ant, what do you think about the man's point in the original post? Don't we have to work on making our cities child and family friendly? Aren't we at risk of designing kids out our cities?

I do agree Atlanta needs more parks. If it's going to densify, more smaller parks need to be built. Look at Manhattan. Dense as hell...maybe even too dense, but it has many small parks for children to go rest and play in.

And I have no idea why they said walking and biking are 'adult things'. I was biking when I was a kid. In fact, cities would make it easier for kids to do things. They can walk to store and buy their parents groceries or buy themselves a small snack. They can walk to the park unlike the suburbs here in Atlanta. They don't have to wait for their parents to drive them.

The only problem at the moment with cities is the cost of apartments and how small they are. If there were more family-friendly apartment, then cities would be better for families.