Mableton improvement coalition -- villages vs coorridors (Atlanta, Smyrna: townhomes, inspection)

[netdragon]

I noticed that the Mableton Improvement Coalition's vision doc (Home) speaks of "corridors" in Mableton, however if you look at the street layout of Mableton, it has a spur layout where there are spurs running into Mableton center (3 of them run into or very close to the center of Smyrna, and 2 into downtown Atlanta, along with 1 into Austell) and each of these spurs has unique sections to it. This is different from Smyrna, which truly has cooridors and thus naturally has a burgeoning "Main-street" district connecting two cooridors (Concord Rd between Atlanta and S. Cobb). These means the development patterns in Mableton shouldn't be anything like how Smyrna was re-development.

The thought of these areas as corridors is probably part of what has caused the sense of place along these corridors from being deteriorated by in-fill development. I believe that it should focus on the concept of villages rather than corridors with maintenance of distinct villages along corridors being the primary focus rather than corridors themselves. Therefore, for instance, one artery running through Mableton could have 3 or more villages, each with their own unique character, and also run through the Mableton center.

There should also be intentional plans to prevent the impending re-development in the central part of Mableton and other areas from bleeding into these villages and vice-versa so these villages should be made to be independent, boutique-style shopping districts focused on serving people living nearby, with a sense-of-place. There should be an effort to use cues from the surrounding area to attempt to reconstruct their architectural feel and layout, when possible, so it "fits". There should also be attempts to reconstruct the history of these areas. In the center of Mableton, a higher diversity of services can be clustered than the "essential" shops provided for the residential areas in the villages.

For example, Floyd Rd isn't a contiguous corridor in the historic sense. It's a road that runs through two villages -- Milford and Concord. Thus, some serious inspection of the Concord area should be done to find that the Concord area is a tightly bound light residential area that has two separate roads run into Floyd Rd (Hicks and Concord). Since the intersection of Hicks and Concord doesn't have the road infrastructure for a small business/boutique district, it makes sense to have the triangle between Hicks, Floyd and Concord as a "historic" Concord "village center" (activity center) modeled after and old New England style village with a green somewhere in the vicinity. An example of how this could be layed out is that along Hicks could be a "village green", and in front of that, lining Floyd Rd, there could be sidewalk-edge small shops, with some small roads leading off of Floyd to the edge of the green, with parking and a few more shops. Floyd could be widened at that location to allow parallel or diagonal parking . Shops would be tightly-packed bungalow buildings with occasional rows of two-story commercial "office" townhomes. Then at some point on the way to Mableton center, there should be an area with no shopping at all, to keep the Concord area distinct. However, a city-style sidewalk could connect the village to the center of town, with town-homes or historic bungalow homes lining it.

Buckner to Oakland, on the other hand, isn't really a historic district -- however with this being targed as a high-density area, it makes sense to have this be a higher-density activity center, probably intermixed with some office development (it seems like they are already doing this). The intersection of Pebblebrook and Cooper Lake with Veteran's Memorial also present obvious locations where a small, medium to high consolidated activity center for residents in that area makes a lot of sense. However, in my opinion, there should be no other non-residential development along Veteran's memorial, since anything else should go in the center of Mableton.

By dotting Mableton with small distinct village districts along the spurs, however leaving the rest of the spurs as simply residential, it'll bolster up Mableton's economy, draw people to the center, and keep Mableton from seeming too suburbanish, yet also allow most of Mableton to still have a small city / town feel to it.