Milton and Alpharetta Star in New Report Just Out

I sequested myself in my room this morning and had multiple cups of coffee as I poured over Chris Leinberger’s report, “The WalkUP Wake-Up Call”.  WalkUP’s are “Walkable Urban Places” that include housing, business, retail and are relatively robust to very robust economic centers.  The aforementioned report focuses on Atlanta and says that “surprisingly, research has found that sprawl in metro Atlanta is reaching an end.”  and “WalkUPs will be the primary location of economic growth in metro Atlanta.” and “The new development model is walkable urban development.” 

The report focuses on 7 ‘types’ of WalkUps, one of which includes historic Roswell. It further mentions North Point Mall area as an"emerging WalkUP” and West Windward, Encore Park and East Windward as "potential WalkUps" with some very interesting comments about all of those. 

So, the Brookings Institute is finally getting around to observing in quantifiable terms what the ASLA knew decades ago when The New Urbanism began.   In fact, I would venture to say that the dream-world of Seaside, Florida set in motion the desire to return to the pre-1930’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” world of singing with Judy Garland on the front steps and papa walking to work the next day after the milk-man delivered the milk and the kids were sent skipping off to school.  In short, I am for this kind of world.  It’s manageable.  It has a smaller carbon footprint.  You feel a sense of community.  And since I work in midtown, which scores extremely high as a WalkUP via the Leinberger methodology, I see walkable urbanism daily.  In addition, I live in Crabapple, which is itself a strangely walkable community despite being cut through the middle by Georgia Highway 372.  And just down the road from me is downtown Alpharetta, also cut through the middle by 2 GDOT controlled roads - 9 and 400.  Oddly enough, the Leinberger report does not mention downtown Alpharetta, which has great potential to become, if indeed, it is not already, a true walkable community. 

I do take issue with the statement that “research has found that sprawl in metro Atlanta is reaching an end.”  Research can only look at what exists.  You cannot say that research has found that (in the future) something is coming to end. Maybe it has paused. Maybe it will return. Maybe it still exists and you are ignoring it.  

Also, although I like the idea of WalkUP communities, there are many ways for people to live and exist happily in society and WalkUPs are by no means the only way; nor the only way for developers to make money.  And the section on economic inequities is difficult to integrate sensibly into the rest of the report.  Although the Georgia State corridor scores platinum for economic equity, is it the ideal?  What is the take home for developers and city planners from this message?  I'm not sure.  

Finally, the report states that only 59% of the "regionally significant WalkUps" in the ATL metro have heavy rail transit.  Although this report is by no means trying to discourage the expansion of heavy rail in metro ATL (quite the contrary),  nevertheless it goes on to say “The metro Atlanta WalkUPs without rail demonstrate that it is possible to foster walkable urbanism without rail.”  No, MARTA, you are not needed everywhere.