Category: Sustainable Communities

For many, the events of 2020 have spurred a long-needed national awakening on issues of inequity, injustice, and systemic racism.  One needs to look no further than the history of American housing policy to witness the terrible impacts of systemic racism. How did decades of misbegotten policy, attitudes, and actions create concentrated poverty, cripple transportation […]

By Shannon Lee For the past two decades, The Conservation Fund has protected and enhanced public natural lands here in Atlanta. Like you, we live, work, and play in and around the metro area. Now more than ever, we need time outside to reconnect with nature and recharge our spirits. But we also want to […]

By ULI’s Atlanta Community Schoolyards Project Team When Atlanta Community Schoolyards launched its pilot project with ULI Atlanta, the Trust for Public Land, Park Pride, and Atlanta Public Schools in early 2019, the idea of a global pandemic halting daily activity and life was not in our national vernacular. Since the shutdown of March 2020, […]

By ANDPI For many, the events of 2020 have spurred a long-needed national awakening on issues of inequity, injustice and systemic racism.  One need look no further than the history of American housing policy to see systemic racism in action. The next Atlanta Regional Housing Forum will feature an overview of discriminatory housing policy through […]

By Daphne Bond-Godfrey, Director, ULI Atlanta Housing affordability has been and continues to be one of the most pressing and vexing challenges facing American cities. ULI’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2021 names it one of the top ten trends in real estate and goes as far as to say “[The] affordable housing crisis likely […]

By Kelsi Eccles and Stacia Turner, The Conservation Fund 2020 has been a rainy year in Atlanta, and it’s on track to be one of the city’s top five wettest years on record. More water more often—with 2018 being the second wettest year on record—heightens the need to address aging or inadequate infrastructure, manage increased […]

We spoke with Bronfman about his Midwestern roots, how community development must stay creative amid the pandemic and how Jamestown embraces the unexpected. By Colleen McNally, The Wilbert Group “People are usually surprised when I say I’m from Kansas City,” says Matt Bronfman, principal and CEO of Jamestown, a real estate investment and management company […]

By Urban Land Institute We spoke with Ashley about her switch from aspiring restaurateur to real estate sales, what’s cooking at Invest Atlanta and her plans for leading ULI Atlanta’s Center for Leadership 2021 Class amid the pandemic. At age 25, Ashley Jones was working at The Coca-Cola Company as a territory sales manager when […]

By George Burgan, ANDP Prior to the onset of the pandemic, spiking rental rates had become an increasingly insurmountable obstacle for low-income families. In the last decade, rents in our region have increased by 65%, compared to a national average increase of 36%. Nearly half of all households in the City of Atlanta and nearly one in three households […]

By Hannah Palmer, Coordinator of Finding the Flint  Last month, I burst into applause when the Board of the Clayton County Water Authority (CCWA) voted (via Zoom, of course) to approve the purchase of 12 acres of wetlands along Mud Creek. The Finding the Flint team, scattered in home offices and in vehicles around Atlanta, […]

Featured Image: Photographed from left to right, Marc Brambrut and Sheba Ross By Sheba Ross, Urban Land Institute member and mTAP Chair (2019-2020); and Urban Designer, HKS “Pencil in your plans. Write your vision in ink.” This profound thought from Andy Stanley’s book Next Generation Leader has become evident in multiple facets this year. In […]

Featured Image: Farmers Joe Reynolds and Demetrius Milling, next-generation, entrepreneurial farmers who are actively working to own farmland in Georgia and supply the growing demand for sustainably produced, locally sourced foods. Photo by Robin McKinney. By The Conservation Fund To learn more about Working Farms Fund, watch the video below and read Nicolas Donck’s story to […]

By ULI ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced finalists for this year’s Jack Kemp Award for Excellence in Affordable Housing. Metro Atlanta based HearthSide Club Lafayette, a mixed-income senior housing project was the only housing project recognized in the Southeast and one of 12 in the country recognized as a finalist. ULI’s Jack Kemp […]

By Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc., (ANDPI) NeighborWorks® America, the nation’s leading network of nonprofit community development organizations, is set to release its expanded annual housing and financial capability survey on Thursday, July 16. The 2019 survey found that vast majority of Americans say owning a home increases financial stability, but when it comes to […]