Category: Columns

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