Author Archives: Teresa Johnston

By Guest Columnist RYAN GRAVEL, senior associate at Perkins+Will, and the original visionary behind the Atlanta BeltLine.

In 1994 I was studying abroad in Paris while in college at Georgia Tech and I had no idea I was living half a block from a grand urban experiment.

The old elevated railroad viaduct running east along Avenue Daumesnil in the 12th Arrondissement that I naively passed underneath at least twice a day on my way to the market or laundromat wasn’t just an old abandoned relic. It was months away from the groundbreaking of its transformation into the Promenade Planteé and Viaduc des Arts – a half-mile elevated walking garden up top with arts-related businesses and studios housed in its elegant arched

By Guest Columnist SUSAN VARLAMOFF, director of the Office of Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

As families gather around the Thanksgiving table this year, some will be serving food produced on Georgia farms. My family will dine on turkey grazed at White Oak Pastures, a fourth generation farm in south Georgia. And our vegetables will come from Loganville’s Three Peas in a Pod farmer’s market.

This past summer I attended the Georgia Organics’ Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival and found myself among 800 exuberant people—teenagers to 70 somethings—enjoying drinks and dishes infused with locally grown tomatoes of all varieties.

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL W. TYLER, chairman of MARTA’s board and a partner with the Kilpatrick Stockton law firm.

Forty-five years ago a group of visionary Georgia leaders looked into the future and saw a greater Atlanta metropolitan region linked together through one regional transit system. Consequently, in 1965 the Georgia General Assembly created Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.

In creating MARTA, the state legislature’s goal was to help transform the Atlanta region into a world-class metropolitan area with world-class transportation infrastructure that would benefit the entire state.

The original vision of the legislature was to launch an initial five-county regional transit system comprised of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnet, Cobb and Clayton counties. These five counties were given the right to choose by referendum whether to join the system and to enact a one-cent sales tax to help fund MARTA.

By Guest Colunmist YOUNG HUGHLEY JR., CEO of Resources for Residents and Communities; and Guest Colunmist STEVEN R. FADER, president of business development at New World Home.

During World Habitat Day in October 2009, Evelyn Nu’Man, Atlanta’s director of housing, introduced New World Home (NWH), an award-winning, rapidly growing developer of sustainable housing, to Resources for Residents and Communities (RRC), a non-profit community development organization in need of a partner for a special project in Reynoldstown.

Inspired by the groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding among the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection

By Guest Columnist KATHERINE MOORE, growth management and Blueprints program manager with the Georgia Conservancy.

Earlier this year, community leaders in the working-class neighborhoods of northwest Atlanta reached out to the Georgia Conservancy for help.

These residents aren’t “NIMBY’s” trying to stop developers from clearing land. They’re not seeking to chase off any big-box stores or industrial plants.

So, why did these concerned residents contact us? The answer may surprise you. They want help shaping – not

By Guest Columnist HELEN PRESTON TAPP, Georgia state director of the Trust for Public Land.

Fall’s fresh air and blue skies beckon us outdoors to enjoy neighborhood strolls, hikes in the woods, biking and boating adventures and campouts. Even a little time on a trail or in a park re-invigorates us. Now, there is mounting evidence that reinforces what we feel: Getting outdoors is good for us.

And making sure that all of us have places for people to connect with nature, friends, family and our heritage is the mission of The Trust for Public Land (TPL). TPL negotiates with landowners to buy key properties which

By Guest Columnist SALLY FLOCKS, founder, president and CEO of PEDS, an Atlanta-based advocacy group for pedestrians.

In Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., tax dollars pay for sidewalk repairs, with substantial amounts budgeted each year. The City of Atlanta, in contrast, makes sidewalk repairs the responsibility of adjacent property owners.

The City’s program is politically unpopular, especially in low-income areas, and has been ineffective city-wide. The annual budget includes no funding for sidewalk maintenance or enforcement, which ties the hands of Public Works officials. Few people voluntarily repair sidewalks, and everyone who walks suffers as a result.

The 2008 State of the City’s Infrastructure report

By Guest Columnist VALARIE WILSON, executive director of the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership

With so many critical needs – education, health, jobs and more – why would we as community leaders and engaged citizens focus now on parks, trails and transit? While they are nice amenities, shouldn’t we concentrate on serious problems during these challenging times?

Obesity is deadly serious – now the second leading preventable cause of death in the United States. And hypertension is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. So it is heartening that the conversation around complex and often overwhelming healthcare policy topics is shifting to focus increasingly on

By Guest Columnist KEVIN GREEN, executive director of the Clean Air Campaign

Since breathing is one of the great pleasures in life, we thought we would take a minute to assess how this year’s smog season has gone, how it compares to years prior and where we may be heading.

To start with the obvious, this summer has been HOT – one of the warmest Georgia summers on record. And the heat affects more than just our thermostats. Ground-level ozone is formed when pollutants mix with heat and sunlight, which is why we have a “smog season” in Georgia, the five-month period from May 1- Sept 30. As cooler temperatures and shorter days move onto the horizon, so too does the end of when we are most likely to see days of increased air pollution.

By Guest Columnist FRANK MANN, senior director at Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia.

I consider myself very fortunate to have traveled a great deal throughout my adult life both for pleasure and for business. I am continually impressed and even amazed that major cities all over the world have made such strong commitments to the display of public (and in many cases private) art.

This becomes evident regardless of the city one travels to including older cities in the United States, like Chicago and New York, where many wonderful paintings and sculptures adorn their streetscapes, building lobbies and outdoor plazas and fountains. Most often parks

By Guest Columnist GINA SIMPSON, president and CEO of Hands on Atlanta.

Since I joinied Hands On Atlanta in November 2008, there has never been a dull moment.

We have seen a tremendous surge in volunteerism over the last year, a welcome development because the need is greater now than it has ever been.

With the economic downturn and increased unemployment, we saw a 30 percent increase in our volunteer efforts in 2009. Many people have chosen to volunteer as a means of networking with potential employers, while meeting critical service needs in the

By Guest Columnist BRUCE GUNTER, founder and president of Progressive Redevelopment Inc.

Eventually, Atlanta will emerge from this devastating recession, but it will not look the same when it does. Now retrenching from an over-fed housing sector, the new economic and geographic landscape will impact many housing-related business sectors, entire neighborhoods, thousands of families, and land development patterns.

In this larger context, what will become of affordable housing in Atlanta?

First, our local markets are being shaped by national economic and financial factors. Homeownership rates will decline significantly, despite record low mortgage interest rates and more reasonable home prices.

By Guest Columnist EMILY ELLISON, president and CEO of Literacy Action

As morning traffic in Atlanta returns to its pre-summer crawl, signs of the new “season” are everywhere: Heavy backpacks are pulled over shoulders. Peanut butter sandwiches and apples are crammed into lunch boxes.

And families all over the city are rushing out the door, hoping that permission slips have been signed and that summer reading assignments were completed. It’s back-to-school time in Atlanta – an annual rite of passage for everyone from the pre-school set to college students.

What many people don’t realize is that it’s also a time when thousands of adults return to school, adults who

By Guest Columnist ALEXIS CHASE, executive director, Georgia Interfaith Power & Light.

Energy efficiency and Georgia’s faith community have not always been friends. Most congregations tend to think short-term, rarely considering long-term sustainability when renovating old structures or building new ones; their eyes are fixed on cost and speed.

Fortunately, that’s changing, thanks to an innovative statewide program recently launched by Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL). It’s called Power Wise.

We received $400,000 in federal stimulus money enhanced by $200,000 from a private foundation to help Georgia’s faith communities of every religion,

By Guest Columnist MARILYN BROWN, a Georgia Tech professor of energy policy and director of Sustainability in the Science and Technology Program.

Nowhere are the stakes higher for the development of an energy policy that leads with energy efficiency than in the South.

The region, comprised of 16 states and the District of Columbia, currently has the greatest dependence on fossil fuels in the nation. With only 36 percent of the country’s population, the South accounts for 44 percent of the nation’s energy use. As the fastest growing region in the nation, increasing demands for power will force even greater dependence if steps are not taken to

By Guest Columnist JOE WINTER, co-founder of C4 Atlanta, a non-profit arts service organization.

You hear about it, empathize with it, but it never hits home until it happens to you: getting laid off from your job.

My co-worker Jessyca and I had just wrapped up a major annual project. She and I had received phone calls over the weekend to come to the office for a meeting early on Monday morning, April 5, but with no explanation of the agenda for the meeting.

I walked in to the office. There were six of us: me, my two co-workers, and the board “triumvirate:” the co-presidents and the treasurer who was also the consultant.

The co-presidents immediately turned the meeting over

By Guest Columnist JAMES SHEPHERD, co-founder and chairman of the Atlanta-based Shepherd Center, one of the nation’s largest spinal cord injury, brain injury and disease rehabilitation facilities.

The 2010 election is a critical one. Like the rest of the nation, Georgia is facing the most challenging economic time in its history.

The citizens whose votes you are seeking deserve specifics, not rhetoric. It is not enough to be articulate, look good and tell me you can do the job. You need to tell me what you believe, what options you would advance to create jobs and tell me what options you will consider to fund the programs you talk about supporting.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber produced a study of the top

By Guest Columnist ALLISON KELLY, senior vice president of the Georgia Conservancy.

For decades, Georgia’s environmental community has urged the state’s top elected officials to take water issues seriously.

In the 2009 state legislature, water yet again took a back seat to matters deemed more critical, such as the economy, education and immigration.

All that changed last summer, when federal judge Paul Magnuson ruled that metro Atlanta has no legal authority to draw drinking water from Lake Lanier. It was a shot across the bow that catapulted water from the sidelines to center stage among those now running to replace Sonny Perdue for governor.

By Guest Columnist CLARA HAYLEY AXAM, former director of the Atlanta Office Enterprise Community Partners who currently is president of Clarification & Mediation Inc., a management consulting firm.

There is a well-quoted adage that implies that if something is free, it is probably not worth having. Whether you believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that is yours for the taking or in working hard, spending judiciously and saving for a rainy day, dreams of pots of someone else’s money to fix all of our woes are just that – dreams.

In 2002 Atlanta was designated as a federal Renewal Community (RC) in accordance with the 2000 Community Renewal Tax Relief Act targeting revitalization in designated census tracts with pervasive

By Guest Columnist ANGEL LUIS POVENTUD, a renegade community activist and believer in Atlanta.

Community. I’ve always had it. I was born in 1971 in a Miami neighborhood where my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents all lived just three blocks apart, and my elementary school was just down the street. My parents are Puerto Rican who grew up in New York City.

My mom worked as an executive secretary, and my dad worked as a printer for Eastern Airlines, so we were able to travel the world until about the time I turned 15.

After I graduated from high school, I tried going to college for architecture and toyed with the idea of becoming a city planner. But then I left school to go