Since the mid-1990s, the Atlanta region has had a tsunami of growth – almost a million new residents as well as a huge accompaniment of businesses, visitors and public and private investments – which has swept aside capacities, plans and resources needed to meet the demand.

A series of three Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable sessions will bring in a number of respected thought-leaders to discuss the impact of Atlanta’s historic growth and what can be done to ensure a more livable future.

Guests include:

Michael Dobbins, Professor, Georgia Tech College of Architecture

Kay B. Lee, Director, Center for Community Preservation and Planning, Newton County

Randy Roark, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Tech College of Architecture

Scott Bernstein, Founder and President, Center for Neighborhood Technology

Leon S. Eplan, Principal, Eplan Consulting

Dan Reuter, Chief of Land Use Planning, Atlanta Regional Commission

While we’re on the subject of rising to the massive challenge of growth management, be sure to read the candid article below.

A Time To Review Georgia’s Growth Policy

By Dan Reuter

There are many good examples of Georgia cities and counties that are permitting new walkable and mixed use developments, upgrading aging infrastructure and building sidewalks or multi-use paths, such as Athens, Savannah, Morrow Woodstock, Suwannee, Cobb County Gwinnett County and others. 

But we also have cities and counties that are still stuck in the last century of promoting growth and economic development that may have a short lifespan of success. We understand that we are living in a global economy with competition for oil, resources and investments. 

But are we ready to make decisions that can allow Georgia to compete? 

Will the state of Georgia and local governments work together to make new investments in our economic future? 

Full article

The headline of Mary Lou Pickel’s article in today’s AJC says it all: “Gwinnett’s minorities surge toward majority. A revolution in diversity …”

A revolution indeed.

Gwinnett’s African American and Hispanic populations more than doubled between 2000 and 2007. The Asian community is booming, too. Gwinnett’s explosive growth and the availability of jobs and affordable housing, the article asserts, is attracting the newcomers.

But the numbers are just numbers. The real story, the reason the headline uses such dramatic words as “revolution,” and “surge,” lies with the cultural impact of a majority white county turning into a minority white county.

Is it that big a deal though? It’s happened before, in DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton and Rockdale counties.

But yes, to many people it is a big deal. The ripple effect of such a shift changes many things, from the political structure of the county to its civic and business sectors.

For example, perhaps a minority-led Gwinnett will be more accepting of mass transit links to Atlanta.

Another example, courtesy of the AJC article, is that state Sen. Curt Thompson (D-Norcross) “has said he has to campaign in Spanish, Korean, Hindi, Vietnamese and Mandarin to keep his seat.”

Many more such shifts are taking place across Gwinnett County, the rest of metro Atlanta and the entire state.

The big question is, is there anything we should do to help make this demographic shift easier for those who are about to become the majority and for those who are about to become the minority?

 Shouldn’t we at least get together and talk about it?

 It’s time to start the conversation. The next Fifty Forward event, “The Changing Faces of the Future,” will be Sept. 10 at the Morehouse College Leadership Center. Former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Martha Farnsworth Riche will be the keynote speaker and she’ll be joined by a panel of local experts, followed by an open-house discussion.

 Until then, anyone  want to start talking about this issue now?

Since 1956, the primary federal funding source for transportation infrastructure has been the Highway Trust Fund which was initially established as a method to speed the completion of the Interstate System. For the last 50 or so years, the trust fund and its Mass Transit Account have served us well. They have allowed us to build and maintain roadway and transit infrastructure that has enabled our economy to grow and thrive.

Sadly, the trust fund is on the verge of collapse. It is time that we start considering new options for the next 50 years. How will we ensure that we are able to maintain what we have and build new infrastructure that will support or economy in a sustainable way for the next two or three generations of Americans?

As the globe shrinks due to increasingly mobile capital and labor supplies, competition for economic development gets fiercer. Places across the world are finding ways of funding and constructing sustainable transportation infrastructure that will enable and support continued economic expansion for years to come. Check out thes numbers from the Urban Land Institute and Federal Railroad Administration:

17 – Number of new subway lines Shanghai will add by 2010
6 and 4 – Number of new light-rail and high-speed rail lines Shanghai will add by 2010
40 – Percent growth of rail ridership in the United Kingdom in the last decade
225 – Top speed of France’s high-speed passenger train, the fastest in the world
6 – Number of countries France’s high-speed passenger train connects
150 – Top speed of the U.S.’s only high-speed passenger train, operating in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor.
0 – Number of rail line miles on the Boston-Washington corridor that have been upgraded to accommodate the high-speed train’s top commuting speed.

Fifty years is a long time and the world will change a lot before we hit the mid-century mark. If we want to remain competitive as a nation, state and region, we have some tough questions to answer and serious work to do.

How will we fund our transportation system for the next 50 years?

Will there be room in the national, state, and regional agendas for the expansion of our sustainable transport network?

Well not alone they can’t, but they are making a run at it.  In an AJC article today, Craig Simons highlights Coke’s plans to buy 100,000 new beverage coolers that work using compressed carbon dioxide as opposed to hydrofluorocarbons.  Given that these flourocarbons are 1000 times more potent as greenhouse gases than is carbon dioxide, this is a significant step for one of the Atlanta region’s major international corporations.

While speaking at a lecture in Beijing organized by Greenpeace, Coke’s CEO Neville Isdell said, “We cannot wait for consumers or governments or technologies or price to move us towards sustainable solutions … so we’re doing what we can within our own business.”

These coolers cost about 25 percent more than the current industry standard.  So, Mr. Isdell and Coke are to be congratulated for going to the extra expense to help protect the environment we all share.

But there is more that can be done. Coke replaces 1 million refrigeration units annually.  With that kind of buying power, Coke is poised to help drive down the cost of these environmentally friendlier coolers.  Hopefully, other corporations will follow suit.

Coke isn’t a perfect company, but it’s adding its waves to a ripple effect that might one day lead to a more sustainable world.

Atlanta’s not perfect. We’ve got a long way to go to become that idyllic international city. But every now and then we should take a deep breath and relax. Maybe, just maybe, we could even laugh about it.

This film humorously pokes fun at all of Atlanta’s faults. It’s a subtle spoof on Atlanta’s self-promotional tendencies and entertainingly tours all of the region’s shortcomings.

Warning: There’s one cussword and you WILL laugh out loud, especially at the part when the narrator talks about the bricks at Centennial Park. (“Their blood is the mortar that holds this city strong.”)

The film also playfully makes fun of the region’s love affair with branding slogans: “Atlanta, Yesterday’s City of Today. Because Tomorrow is Soon.”  

Hey, that’s not bad.

According to the YouTube page, “This film was created in 50 hours as a part of the 2008 Rapid i Movement Film Competition. It won 1st Place and will be seen at the 2008 Atlanta Film Festival.”

We love it. And we want more! PLEASE post links to any and all similar films here in the comment section. We’d love to see them.

This article, Don’t Railroad Taxpayers into Transit Subsidies, asserts that “…no rail line should be designed or constructed unless approved by majority vote at the ballot box.”

Good idea. After all, this is a democracy, right?

So the next logical step here is to make sure that a majority of the public is on board with any significant investment in new infrastructure. That would mean putting any new roads up to a vote, too. After all, it’s only fair.

Luckily, we do live in a democracy and we all do get to vote. But some people aren’t too keen on letting us vote on the issues that matter most to us.  In the last legislative session of the Georiga General Assembly, approval of a referendum on a consitutional amendment for a new transportation funding source failed.

A new survey by the Transit Planning Board indicates that there may be more interest in public transportation in the Atlanta region than many choose to believe.

Given the staggering growth projections for this region, given the aging of the population and their future transportation needs and given that we are, today, gridlocked, the least state leaders could do is allow citizens to choose whether or not they want to pay for transit services.

That’s just the bare minimum. That’s just a start.

Eventually, the folks who blocked the vote on the transportation sales tax may want to start thinking about how we’ll get around 50 years from now.

How do you envision the Atlanta region’s transport system 50 years from now?

You can get anywhere in Atlanta now, without having to drive.

Short walks and bicycle trips lead to local transit stations that are surrounded by restaurants, coffee shops, townhomes, offices and grocery stores.

After a short wait, we hop onto a light-rail car and are whisked away into a network that links Lawrenceville to the downtown Marietta square, Lovejoy to Kennesaw, Palmetto to Chattanooga, UGA to GSU.

The epicenter of this network is a bustling live-work-play station that serves buses, pedestrians, commuter rail, MARTA, light rail, bicycles and every other mode of transportation that keeps Atlanta seamlessly moving.

Every day, Atlanta’s workforce travels side-by-side with conventioneers and tourists through this portal. The theater and galleries are packed and the restaurants are great. The nightlife doesn’t stop.

Above the shops, a new hotel – a twisting skyscraper of steel and glass –connects to the Georgia World Congress Center and CNN Center. There’s a pedestrian walkway that leads to Marietta Street and the thriving Fairlie-Poplar and Luckie Street districts.

From here, we can go anywhere.

That’s one vision of the future.

What’s yours?

Georgia has grown and benefited from automobiles and associated development for over 40 years.While this growth has led to prosperity, it has also led to development patterns that induce automobile dependency and greenhouse gas emissions that will have a negative impact on our future.In fact, a new study has labeled Georgia and other southern states among the worst in the US for creating these emission inducing development patterns.

ULI, Smart Growth America, and other organizations recently summarized existing research in a report entitled Growing Cooler. In it, they determine that development and traffic patterns are major contributors to climate change. 

The good news is that state and local governments in Georgia can impact greenhouse gas emissions by making decisions regarding land use policies and policies that lead to cleaner fuels and vehicles.

We can no longer ignore that our development patterns are a major problem for our state’s future. Some cities in the state are already taking action by signing the US Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement. Mayors for the cities of Alpharetta, Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, Decatur, East Point, Macon, and Tybee Island have signed on to the agreement. These mayors represent 910,726 people, or roughly 9.6% of the sate’s population.

Though these eight cities are taking action to ensure that our state has a sustainable long term future, Georgia may already be a decade behind other states with regard to responding to climate change. And as a coastal state, this should worry us.

Under the Georgia constitution, local governments have substantial authority to guide land use and future development. It is time for local governments to start making land use decisions with our 50-year future in mind.