An FBI database on police use of force has finally produced some findings after years of struggles with voluntary reporting, with little help from Georgia agencies, whose participation is among the nation’s lowest. But the state’s contributions are a bit better than they appear due to some reporting quirks.
Category: John Ruch
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
Complicated history lives at Oakland Cemetery’s restored African American Grounds
Mayor Andre Dickens came to Oakland Cemetery June 10 to pay respects, this time to the roughly 12,000 people buried in the African American Grounds, and to cut the ribbon on a five-year restoration of their final resting place.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
The public safety training center deserves a real public review
As the Atlanta public safety training center advisory committee presents another ridiculous soap opera episode of scrutinizing its own members more than the City’s secretive plan, the public shouldn’t fall for tuning out. For planners, this is no accident or failure; in a sham process, it’s a success beyond the wildest dreams of distraction to have the public fighting itself rather than questioning authorities.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
NPU-R power struggle is the best and wildest example of a system in need of reform
A power struggle at Southwest Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit R – where the chair and a former “executive committee” are trading coup allegations and lockout attempts – is the best and wildest example of the need for NPU system reforms.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
Candidate forum on housing affordability another example of what goes unsaid
I’ll admit that I tuned in to a recent Georgia House candidate forum on housing affordability issues not so much to learn about solutions as to confirm why nothing ever really changes.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
In Georgia’s lesser-known companion case to Roe, the past may show abortion rights future
If the U.S. Supreme Court kills Roe v. Wade this year, so likely goes its lesser-known companion Doe v. Bolton, a Georgia case whose past may be the prologue of another generation’s abortion rights battles.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
New ‘Save Your Spaces’ festival aims to empower people in DIY historic preservation
By John Ruch The hot trend in historic preservation is diversifying who and what gets remembered beyond ye olde rich, straight, white people and their mansions. Nedra Deadwyler is among the movement’s Atlanta pioneers with Civil Bikes, a program of tours of Sweet Auburn’s history and life. Still lagging is diversifying who makes those decisions […]
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
Plan for cell tower looming over historic Oakland Cemetery draws fire; could be first of many
A 165-foot-tall cell tower looming over Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery and historic Cabbagetown is the goal of a proposal being blasted as ugly and secretive by City officials, preservationists and neighborhood leaders.
Posted inColumns, John Ruch
Lawsuit over Grady Hospital authority chair’s ouster is part of power and money debate
The authority that owns and funds Grady Memorial Hospital has spent $350,000 and counting fending off an increasingly testy lawsuit from its former board chair, who alleges she was ousted in an illegal meeting.
Posted inColumns
On-demand transit expands across Georgia, putting pitches and criticisms to the test
By John Ruch On-demand public transit is suddenly in demand after years of official musing about the potential of Uber-style vanpool shuttles hailed with an app. In the past 18 months, on-demand transit has launched across Georgia, from Atlanta to Valdosta to Gainesville. Is this a revolution in convenient and appealing transit, or hype for […]
Posted inColumns
Buckhead crime task force offers a wealth of information and questions about underlying causes
The Buckhead Public Safety Task Force, established earlier this year by District 8 City Councilmember Mary Norwood, is a cornucopia of information about what the criminal justice system is up to.
Posted inColumns
The little-known private technology behind a new era of gang prosecutions
Behind a new era of gang prosecutions from Atlanta to Augusta is a little-known company’s private technology whose trade secrets leave it defined mostly by what it is not.
Posted inColumns
Buckhead crime task force focuses on gang problem, but data has holes
Created by the City Council to satisfy one neighborhood’s myopic fixation with its crime rate, the Buckhead Public Safety Task Force is unsurprisingly zooming out to focus on statewide and national causes, to wit: gangs.
Posted inColumns
Why does a Moreland Avenue mega-project keep ignoring a mixed-use vision?
Fifteen years ago, the Southeast Atlanta and DeKalb County neighborhoods along south Moreland Avenue envisioned a more pedestrian-friendly, community-oriented future. They and a consultant team published a report of mixed-use concepts that has proven influential on several redevelopments in the suddenly booming corridor of strip malls and industrial sites.
Posted inColumns
In nuclear war threats, governments once again fail to imagine the unimaginable
Exactly two years ago, it was dawning on Americans “temporarily” locked down for COVID-19 that they were entering an apocalypse so unthinkable, so unimaginable, that … well, actually, it was thought of and imagined by everyone except woefully unprepared governments. Pandemics were already a disaster movie subgenre whose cliches initially provided more useful predictive power than the WHO or CDC.
Posted inColumns
NPU system’s open-meeting issues should get clarity in new reforms
The March 1 meeting of Buckhead’s Neighborhood Planning Unit B board wrapped up with a call for the public to exit so a private executive session could begin. As journalists have done since time immemorial, I piped up to ask the purpose of the private session and how it complied with the Georgia Open Meeting Act (OMA).
Posted inColumns
Historic Nabisco factory site’s future could be a sweet case of preservation
There’s nothing stopping the new owner of Southwest Atlanta’s historic Nabisco snack-making factory from bulldozing it the ground as part of a $50 million warehouse development – unless goodwill and local pride count. And it seems Prologis is bringing those to the table for historic preservation and MARTA connectivity that could mean a future as sweet as an Oreo.
Posted inColumns
In Buckhead cityhood debate, how do we measure crime solutions?
When Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) this month agreed to freeze Buckhead cityhood legislation, he also set ticking a clock for new Mayor Andre Dickens to address the big issue motivating it. The “crime problem,” Ralston declared, is “not solved,” and Dickens would have a one-year crack at doing so.
Posted inColumns
A blue Buckhead is cityhood’s overlooked challenge
By John Ruch All the sound and fury around the Buckhead cityhood movement made it easy to overlook its core political challenge: a Republican-based campaign trying to win over what has become a reliably blue neighborhood. Cityhood likely would have failed in its desired November ballot question, and even if it pulled off the upset, […]
Posted inColumns
Atlanta must plan wisely for a new planning commissioner
Sometimes I crack open The Atlanta City Design: Aspiring to the Beloved Community, the massive urban vision book published under the auspices of Planning Commissioner Tim Keane, just to marvel that a government was capable of producing such a thing.
