The best infomercial for smart growth you are likely to see
Posted May 6, 2010 in Green Enterprise, Health and the Environment, Living Sustainably
For some time, I have been intrigued by Atlanta as a city that contains both some of America's worst-case, most godawful sprawl and some of its most encouraging examples of smart growth. On the sprawl side, the grasp of metro Atlanta grew from 130 square miles in 1950 to an astonishing 8000+ square miles today. Urbanist Chris Leinberger has called it the fastest-expanding human settlement in human history. The average employee in the region drives 66 miles per day. Atlanta is chaos writ very large.
But, on the smart growth side, I hardly ever give a presentation in which I don't show images and data for the city's spectacular brownfield redevelopment Atlantic Station, the highly innovative Atlanta Beltline transit and parks project that will spur revitalization in long-neglected neighborhoods, or the city's wonderful new urban village Glenwood Park - or all three of them. They are some of the country's very best ambassadors for smart growth.
This short video shows us Atlanta in all its chaos and glory, along with some very eloquent spokespeople on these subjects, and I'm not saying that just because some of them are my friends. It ultimately focuses on Glenwood Park, exactly the kind of walkable, mixed-use, human-scaled revitalization that provides an antidote to sprawl. Developer Charles Brewer is particularly eloquent when he describes how much of what he wanted to do there had actually become illegal under today's zoning regulations, even though the design was basically following time-honored, traditional neighborhood design.
The video was a little slow to load the first time I watched it, but it's worth it. Enjoy, and spread the word:
Sprawlanta is the first installment of a six-part video series called American Makeover. It has won an award from the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
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Comments
Tony Flagine — May 7 2010 04:37 AM
You must not be that familiar with Glenwood park: It's not close to MARTA transit facilities. There is really only one soul-less road in and out. It's property prices are dropping. Several shops have closed. You can hear the roar of interstate 20 from most of the property.
It's a bit of a shambles, really. Why would anyone emulate Glenwood Park?
Kaid @ NRDC — May 7 2010 08:45 AM
As with many places across America, the economy and real estate market in metro Atlanta have suffered. But, for the record, in the first quarter of 2010 the price per square foot and median sales price of homes in Glenwood Park increased 5.4% and 24.9%, respectively, in both cases far outperforming the Atlanta region as a whole.
The reasons why residents find the neighborhood appealing are well expressed in the video. The reasons that, as an environmentalist, I like the neighborhood are that its central location within the region means that its residents drive considerably less than most Atlantans; its compact design conserves land and promotes walkability; its green technology features further reduce environmental impacts; and its proximity to the Atlanta Beltline future transit route means that its environmental performance is only likely to improve over time.
Tony Flagine — May 7 2010 09:36 AM
Kaid,
For the record, I know of one condo that dropped in price from $230,000 to $155,000 (a 2010 sale). That's like-for-like. It's a small neighborhood, so the mix of houses for sale would determine the avg prices you quote. If you can find anyone who purchased a house in Glenwood Park before 2009 who has not lost value, I'll admit I am wrong.
I also know that some mortgage lenders have blacklisted Glenwood Park for new home loans. I don't know precisely why (maybe too many delinquencies or rentals?) but I do know one sale that almost didn't go through for that reason.
The hair salon closed. The promised grocery store is not opening. Pool memberships were sold last summer for less than the annual maintenance fee for existing pool memberships.
Anyway, you can praise it up and down but: (1) many of the qualities you mention apply to existing places in that area of Atlanta and (2) Glenwood park is not a success story...
Tony Flagline — May 7 2010 10:08 AM
Some current sale prices in Glenwood Park:
933 Garrett St, #202 - price reduced from 179k to 114k (foreclosure)
473A Bartram St - price reduced from 274.5k to 225k
980 Faith Ave - price reduced from 459k to 419k
462 Hamilton St - price reduced from 879.9k to 599.9k
These are all houses currently for sale. I'm not sure how any objective observer can conclude that Glenwood Park is a success - so far it's been a money pit wrapped in a misleading "new urbanism" narrative.
Ken Firestone — May 7 2010 11:38 AM
Tony,
I don't get it. Real estate prices are in the toilet for most of the country. I just sold a high end condo for a relative for 200K less than it would have gone for 2 years ago. And this is in the DC area, which is doing better than most of the country.
As for transit, Atlanta is sort of known for it's sprawl, and finding an available brown field next to a MARTA stop may mnot be possible. If the development reduces VMT then that is great. And the site is "transit ready" just waiting for the belt line to get built.
Robert Freeman — May 7 2010 12:43 PM
Let me see if I've got this straight. Glenwood Park reclaimed a semi-toxic industrial tract that was depressing housing values and redevelopment potential in a potentially prime intown location, integrates with the surrounding community through seven (not one) street connections, offers housing options from $130,000 to over a million, adjoins the Beltline, and is built to Earthcraft green building standards, and the beef is that the place is not immune to bursting housing bubbles or downturns in the national economy?
The very fact that people hold it to such a ridiculous standard is proof of how good it is. Why don't we let it weather more than just one cycling of the economy before we start putting nails in its coffin. Demonizing a place that took greater risk and fought infinitely more battles to build something better than average seems pretty counter productive to me.
Tony Flagine — May 8 2010 04:34 AM
No one is holding Glenwood Park to a ridiculous standard - I'm just objecting to the uncritical praise of Glenwood Park offered on this blog!
The author owes the readers the duty to at least present a balanced picture. Anyone familiar with Glenwood Park can tell you it's failing in certain important respects.
David Goldberg — May 8 2010 08:21 AM
The success of innovations in new urbanism and smart growth does not rise and fall on whether Glenwood Park is perfect in all respects, or whether it was somehow able to overcome all of the myriad hurdles that exist to thwart neighborhood grocery stores and the like. Tony is right in some respects, that the bubble and some of the high expectations for Glenwood Park probably inflated selling prices above where they should have been in the early going, and the collapse of the market has made it even harder to complete the project as envisioned. Still, as an Atlantan and someone who has followed the project from the moment Charles Brewer, with a gleam in his eye, showed me the slag heap he had just bought, I have absolutely no doubt that over the long haul -- the only haul that really sets the standard for success in urbanism and sustainability -- this neighborhood will be regarded as one of the jewels of the city of Atlanta. Atlanta has a lot of great older neighborhoods and, thanks to the last boom cycle, many other regenerated and redeveloped neighborhoods that serve as excellent models for more urban living. You don't have to love Glenwood or Atlantic Station -- two very different projects -- to agree that they are very worthy attempts to replace tax-base killing brownfields with new districts that were designed to achieve more than mere bottom-line success. Metro Atlanta is rife with those kinds of developments, many of which are sucking serious wind these days and can't be sold at any price, and their negative impact stretches for miles and miles beyond the city borders. Glenwood Park might not live up to all of our high ideals in every respect, and it may not have earned the instant returns that a much simpler development might have, but it is in almost any respect a gift to the city and to generations to come.
Josh Martin — May 8 2010 10:58 AM
Fabulous post and video!!!