Atlanta: Don’t accept drive-to urbanism! (Marietta, Woodstock: how much, houses, neighborhoods)

[jsvh]

Atlanta: don’t accept drive-to urbanism! Connect great communities with great streets

Good article and interview with Tim Keane:

The Atlanta region is famous for its car-centric sprawl, which separates houses and destinations from each other – via distance and street configuration – in a way that demands car trips. We often think of this type of built environment as being exclusive to the outer suburbs, but that isn’t true.

When it comes to mobility options there’s good and bad to be found in both the burbs and the city. Just as there are wonderfully walkable places in the outskirts of the region (check out downtown Woodstock), elements of car-dependency can can end up marring even our best intown efforts at walkable urban development.

A mixed-use, compact place like Atlantic Station (below) can be a pleasure to walk through once you’re inside. But approaching it on foot or bike from another neighborhood is a challenge – and the streets themselves are at fault.

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The affordability factor

Those challenges for pedestrian and cycling mobility on roads like this make for a situation where builders likely expect that people will drive to communities – even mixed-use, compact ones – and understandably provide a lot of parking. But all that parking raises the cost of rents, exacerbating what is already a growing affordability problem intown.

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Interview with Tim Keane, Commissioner of Planning, City of Atlanta

How can the city address the problem of what I call “drive-to urbanism,” where you have little pockets of walkable density that aren’t connected to each other or to the rest of the city by any means – at least not in a comfortable and safe way – other than car?

The step that will address the issue you’re raising is a complete rethinking of the streets. Not in a small way but in a big way. Not, “should we repair the sidewalk and put in the ADA ramp,” but to utterly think of the right of way as a different thing.

The streets in Atlanta, with very few exceptions, are completely maxed out for the car. We’ve scraped out every bit of the right of way, over many years, for cars. And for cyclists and pedestrians it’s a bit unnerving. That’s something we’re really going to need to face over the next few years, having to carve out space from our streets – from the cars and for the others.

The city can’t be a better suburb than the suburbs. All we can do is be a better city. We’ve got that market. We’re the city. Well, what does it mean to be a better city? What it means is that you can walk and ride your bike and get on a bus or a train for some things. Let’s take Marietta Street and Howell Mill Road. Those streets could be remade into streets where you’d love to ride your bike or go for a walk.

And this includes people who drive everywhere and never get out of their car. We all share this. This is not an us versus them thing. You might drive to every single thing you do. You might drive two blocks to the drug store.

The issue, though, is that your trip two blocks to the drug store is going to get more difficult whether we remake the streets for bikes and peds and transit or not. As a matter of fact you might argue that it’ll get even worse if we don’t because not only you – who wants to drive two blocks to the drug store – but everybody else who’d rather walk or bike has to drive. It’s as simple as that.

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(See link for complete article)


I really agree with "The city can’t be a better suburb than the suburbs.". I think that has been Atlanta's issue for decades. People need choices in the metro region and urban choices have been lacking. CoA needs to play to its strengths and offer great options to go without a car.

[AnsleyPark]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Atlanta: don’t accept drive-to urbanism! Connect great communities with great streets

Good article and interview with Tim Keane:



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...


(See link for complete article)


I really agree with "The city can’t be a better suburb than the suburbs.". I think that has been Atlanta's issue for decades. People need choices in the metro region and urban choices have been lacking. CoA needs to play to its strengths and offer great options to go without a car.

Agreed. It will take a very strong urban planning effort to pull this off. Would be great if there were one, but it seems that our urban planning is dictated by our private developers for the most part. And there goal is profit, not sensible urban development. It appears to be the American way...

[Zanarkand A East]

LOL @ urbanism with a 10-floor parking deck. I hope the city figures this out quickly, before we have another parking fortress like at Skyhouse.

[ccdscott]

I like Mr. Keane. We had him at the YPT and he had some good ideas on how to improve Atlanta with regards to urbanism. He doesn't own a car, so he practices what he preaches. With he and Keith Parker at the helms of their respective divisions, we should be good shape as far as vision. Implementing the vision is much tougher...

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

Agreed. It will take a very strong urban planning effort to pull this off. Would be great if there were one, but it seems that our urban planning is dictated by our private developers for the most part. And there goal is profit, not sensible urban development. It appears to be the American way...

I agree.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

Agreed. It will take a very strong urban planning effort to pull this off. Would be great if there were one, but it seems that our urban planning is dictated by our private developers for the most part. And there goal is profit, not sensible urban development. It appears to be the American way...

I completely disagree with his philosophy on streets. Basically he is saying that we can't make things better for cars (which we can simply with things like left turn lanes and signal synchronization), so lets make it worse.

Now he is absolutely right about "drive-to" urbanism. It has been a frustration to me since I moved here from sprawled out Houston how segregated residential and commercial is. Fairly simple trips take you much longer and force you to go in multiple directions.

One thing that would help would be gradually converting more of the arterial streets from residential to commercial. Highland Avenue is an example. The commercial is mixed with stretches of SF homes. If Highland over time became all commercial, there would be more options and they would be closer to the homes in the surrounding neighborhoods. Where appropriate, that commercial could be mixed use.

[jsvh]

bu2 - But he is right on with that. You can't really make things better for cars. We need to give people other options. That doesn't mean banning cars, but it does mean shifting street's ROW down from the current 95% car.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by jsvh

bu2 - But he is right on with that. You can't really make things better for cars. We need to give people other options. That doesn't mean banning cars, but it does mean shifting street's ROW down from the current 95% car.

But you can't do that until you have the infrastructure to make it happen. You could make Peachtree the prettiest, most pedestrian-friendly road in the world, but you'd still have a traffic jam since the people coming into Atlanta largely don't have a choice but to drive.

[brownhornet]

Originally Posted by MattCW

But you can't do that until you have the infrastructure to make it happen. You could make Peachtree the prettiest, most pedestrian-friendly road in the world, but you'd still have a traffic jam since the people coming into Atlanta largely don't have a choice but to drive.

Pretty much...since everyone is so opposed to the city having an adequate transit system. How else are people outside of the city going to get there? Outside of 285 other than the north Marta line there's no decent mass transit at all unless you want to count the once an hour connector buses which suck. If the metro would build out rail lines the way that they should this wouldnt be an issue.

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by MattCW

But you can't do that until you have the infrastructure to make it happen. You could make Peachtree the prettiest, most pedestrian-friendly road in the world, but you'd still have a traffic jam since the people coming into Atlanta largely don't have a choice but to drive.

That's the problem, there are enough people IN ATLANTA to not worry about people coming in by vehicle. The car experience will never get any better, no matter how much we try to improve it for drivers. Drivers are impatient about everything in-between them and their destination, lights, bikes, pedestrians, and other drivers. Trust me I was a driver for 34 of my 36 years. You can't make a city easy to drive in, name me any great city and trust me driving is a pain.