The city of Atlanta began 2008 with the declaration that “Our Future is Green.” The Sensible City is on board.
Recently, Sensible City hosted a delegate from Atlanta in San Francisco during Earth Day Week at the Ecocity World Summit. Alexia Prichard met with Townsend Bailey for an interview (we’ll post that soon).
We requested a research series internally on the city and were pleasantly surprised. It turns out that the Capital of the South has more happening in terms of sustainability initiatives (including serious long-term planning) than Chicago. A few points… Atlanta:
has more LEED construction projects underway than any other city in the nation
has completed the largest brownfield restoration project ever
is currently engaged in the largest urban greenspace reclamation project in the country
There are many more points, but we’re especially impressed with the chosen leadership of this initiative. I’ve asked the team to put all of Sensible City’s gumption and resources behind Atlanta’s transmutation.
Watch for more in the coming months and years. In the mean time, watch this little video and tell us your vision for how Atlanta can work with its neighborhoods to enliven their sustainability commitment.
Simplistic thinking is often applied to educational technology. Either it’s the greatest approach to education ever invented or it’s a waste of money. We can do better than such limited rhetoric. Too many advocates rely on weak arguments, such as “students are digital natives, so we should use more technology,” as if schools should have used radio and TV more often when earlier generations grew up with those media. Stanford University’s Larry Cuban was right to warn against the excessive “hype” one hears about the value of computers. (“The Laptop Revolution Has No Clothes,” Commentary, Oct. 18, 2006.) On the other hand, a majority of skeptics have failed to notice how quickly online schools, computer-based testing, and other powerful innovations are spreading, and how significant they are.
Rethink development. “Start approving new housing without any parking and create and expand a car-free street into a car-free district,” said Richard Register, designer, builder and author in ecological city design and planning, who is organizing the Ecocity World Summit in April. “Go for higher density in the mode of very mixed-use with the sort of architectural features I talk about in my books: Rooftop and terraced gardens and cafes up there, bridges between clustered buildings.”
Register, president of Ecocity Builders in Oakland, Calif., pointed to other cities that work with their universities to create new spaces where there were previously none.
“The University of California at Berkeley has nine bridges linking 18 buildings, or in a couple of cases, the building is a bridge with a large open ground level passageway,” he said. “These features could be emphasized and buildings on campuses brought close enough together to create streetscapes in one part of town, and/or campus while opening up other areas for natural and agricultural activities.”
Move away from sprawl. Register’s group, Ecocity Builders, has a mapping system that helps identify “vitality centers” for more development where people can walk to conduct business.
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