In a blow to Atlanta planning officials’ effort to boost intown density and housing affordability, the city council’s zoning committee this week shot down legislation that would have spurred more diverse residential construction and reduced car dependency.
Authored by City Councilmember Amir Farokhi, the proposed ordinance sought to make the city more welcoming to accessory dwelling units—such as basement or garage apartments or a tiny home in the backyard—and eliminate parking space minimums at most residential developments.
“These are not radical proposals,” Farokhi told Atlanta Civic Circle in an interview.
We know how to do density right. Build parks. Big parks, small parks. They attract developers with dense development plans like nothing else.
The problem on the east side is we are short on parks. The closest parks to the East Lake MARTA are over a mile away (Bessie Branham and Lake Claire). This matters. Because Atlanta is traditionally under-parked, with one of the lowest ratios of parkland to developed land among big cities, much of our open space is in private backyards.
Simply telling developers to build out backyards and go up with residential is a way to build slums. You have to plan for more parkland first. That’s happening on the west side, which missed the residential run-up of the last 40 years. Parks, greenspace, and bikeways are all enabling high density development. Just as clearing out the school in Cabbagetown enabled that area to do dense development starting in the late 1990s.
Atlanta has the most heavily treed neighborhoods of any city in the country; trees that are vital to our health. The solution is planting more trees and building more parks. Proposals to Destroy the best of Atlanta is the force driving divisive planning that can only hurt our city.