Buckhead has sometimes been referred to as the Jewel of Atlanta, though this title is severely threatened by its increasingly underwhelming user experience. Its lack of vibrancy, identity, and walkability make the neighborhood a shining example of poor urban design and undercut its ability to attract residents and businesses. In its attempt to remain relevant, Buckhead should look to Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, Virginia’s Tyson’s Corner, and Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood.
Density doesn’t have to be a bad word. Allowing more people to live in strategic and desirable areas in closer proximity to one another doesn’t necessarily mean turning all parts of the region into Manhattan. While we aren’t talking about San Francisco or New York levels of density, we are talking about raising the density levels in certain parts of the region to something a little less Mayberry and a little more DC or Seattle.
Look no further than almost any film produced or set during that time period. While Taxi Driver and Blade Runner are less subtle in their portrayal of the city as a place of terror, even films such as Ghostbusters, Back to the Future II, and Woody Allen’s cache during that era can’t help but show the city in poor form. Certainly cities back then had many charms, but there really is no avoiding the fact that they were largely in a free fall, a decline that society assumed to be perpetual.
Well a lot has changed over the past 20 years.
Sigh. Any hope of MARTA expansion has once again been taken off the table. After several bills were introduced in the Georgia Senate with bi-partisan support to allow citizens to vote on […]
This is a general update on a previous piece about bike-share systems and Georgia’s need to get in on the action. Georgia’s first bike-share system isn’t quite as successful as planned, but […]
This is somewhat of a tangential update in that it’s an update of an issue referenced in a recent discussion of how suburban Atlanta will urbanize and become less auto-dependent. Tyson’s Corner […]
Last Saturday Tom Sabulis of the AJC had a great piece on the growth of mixed-use, urban style developments that cater to walking over driving. He points out that most of these […]
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