Category: Maria Saporta

Irony of ironies.

For nine days, new urbanist Andres Duany and his team have been in Atlanta working on ways to design pedestrian-friendly communities that welcome all generations.

And on Tuesday, the day of his last presentation, one of the out-of-town participants was hit by a car at a crosswalk at Courtland and Ellis while walking from her hotel to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

The woman was in Atlanta with the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the key sponsors of Lifelong Communities planning endeavor.

It just so happened that Sally Flocks, executive director of PEDs — an advocacy organization for pedestrians, was participating in the

People are loving the Terracotta warriors.

Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art, speaking at Tuesday’s meeting of Atlanta Kiwanis Club, told the audience that “The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army,” might end up being the High’s biggest show ever.

So far, the show has sold more than 250,000 tickets, and there are still two months left to the exhibit.

Shapiro, who has been with the High Museum since 1995, said the museum started keeping good visitation records during the Olympics. The Impressionists exhibit after the Olympics attracted 250,000 attendees.

The first year of the Louvre-Atlanta partnership (a show that lasted nearly a year rather than several months of a more traditional exhibit), about 300,000 people visited the High.

Solutions, including new transportation funding, must be found to relieve this region of congestion, says Jim Maran, president of the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce.

Maran, and several of his Gwinnett colleages, met with the staff of the Atlanta Business Chronicle this morning to talk about economic development and the county’s views toward the region.

The conversation kept returning to transportation. And Maran voiced a concern that many in the metro have about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s possible restructuring of the state’s main transportation agencies.

A draft of the plan was leaked to the press last week that stated that a new transportation authority would have a seven-member board — three appointed by Perdue, two appointed by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and two appointed by House Speaker Glenn Richardson.

New urbanist Andres Duany is not much a fan of public participation in planning.

In speaking to metro Atlantans in two forums this past week, Duany made several references to how community involvement in the planning and design process can be a bother.

When unveiling plans for a site near Toco Hills, Duany described an existing apartment community with large trees that all would be razed to make way for his vision. Duany’s design included putting in a new grid street system with new residential development of 60 units per acre for a total 1,500 units.

In the question-and-answer period, local planner Don Broussard told Duany that he had been a member of the Congress of New Urbanism for about 10 years.

In presenting preliminary plans on five different communities in metro Atlanta on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 14, Andres Duany shared ideas on how to retrofit suburban shopping malls.

Duany, considered the father of new urbanism, said malls are between 120 and 180 acres. They are strategically located on arterial roads. And they have (now often vacant) big box stores that can be converted for new uses.

“All the parking lots are just building sites,” said Duany,

Nearly everything that’s wrong with our American society can be blamed on sprawl.

At least that’s what Andres Duany, the father of “new urbanism,” believes.

Duany is in Atlanta working on a nine-day planning exercise called: “Lifelong Communities.” He was brought here by the Atlanta Regional Commission, and several other partners, to help design welcome communities for our aging population.

Could transportation funding reach a stalemate yet again this year?

The politics between all the diverse constituencies at the state could torpedo progress for another year.

The state House is favoring a statewide sales tax. The state Senate is favoring a regional solution, giving metro counties the option to vote in a one-cent tax.

The big question is the role the governor will play. Will he side with the House or Senate, or will he promote his own agenda?