By Guest Columnist SANTIAGO MARQUEZ, CEO of the Latin American Association
At the beginning of 2020, our state Legislature hit the ground running to accomplish the ample priorities on its plate for the year. In the midst of the annual kick-off, however, Georgia and the rest of the nation was forced to turn its attention to tackling the public health threat created by COVID-19.
The era of raw sewage rolling down the Chattahoochee River from spills in North Fulton County is to be coming to an end. The Chattahoochee Riverkeeper campaigned for, and supports, the expanded sewage treatment plant being built in Roswell.
By QUYNH PHAM, master’s student of Architecture and City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech
To say that the last several months have been distressingly surreal would be an understatement. For students, it began with an unusual end to the spring semester, one marked by sudden shifts to online learning, early prompts to move out of campus housing, virtual graduations, and understandably high levels of anxiety due to the uncertainties that laid ahead.
Yehimi Cambrón is a visual artist making her way through these rocky times, painting murals intended to convey the immigrant narrative and help “redeem the soul of America.”
By Guest Columnist FRANK FERNANDEZ, president/CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
The world has changed. Twice. I’ve heard dozens of variations on this theme over the last five months since the pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice began.
Manmade beaver dams have just been installed along a creek in Atlanta’s Blue Heron Nature Preserve and could offer a time-tested, natural method to manage stormwater runoff.
Florida is poised to close Apalachicola Bay to oyster harvesting in a board vote slated for July 22. The move comes as the Supreme Court finished its year without ruling on the water war between Florida and Georgia.
The $1.2 billion Georgia intends to inject into the state’s economy through its long-term investment program is expected to help offset the pandemic-related recession that has cut jobs and hampered company earnings across the state.
Mental health – a survey new in June shows 50 percent of American adults say they feel isolated, and happiness is at a 50-year low. Three leaders met in a virtual town hall to share thoughts on these issues and more – Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera, renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones, and Tech student leader – and artist – Mykala Sinclair.
The 2.0 version of the Atlanta Way won’t retool the city into Wakanda. The efforts emerging from Atlanta City Hall do represent the start of a response to calls for justice issued by protestors following the death of George Floyd. The operative words in that last sentence are: Start of a response.
Calls to remove Confederate memorials in Atlanta coincide with a June 12 court order for the removal of the Confederate obelisk in Decatur. A similar debate – in 1870 – kept such a monument out of Five Points and in placed, instead, in Oakland Cemetery.
“I refuse to be another hashtag.” The spirit of this message on a placard is driving efforts across the country to defund police departments or to reform police practices. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has set a June 18 deadline for recommendations to reform the city’s use-of-force policy, adopted in 2018.
Atlanta-based Southern Co. may be an early example of a power producer criticized by environmentalists for its pledge to comply with a provision of the Paris climate accord. Meanwhile, Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to devise a climate platform to take on President Trump – one that satisfies the party’s centrist and progressive views on fossil fuels.
Rural Georgia is at risk of getting left even further behind the state’s populated regions amid the pandemic. One key factor is that many philanthropies won’t donate to local groups that can’t produce audited statements and IRS designations. Bambi Hayes-Brown is seeing it first hand in Southwest Georgia.
Google has made public a treasure trove of never-before-seen proprietary data that could help decision makers reopen the economy safely in metro Atlanta. Google’s report shows changes in categories of places people visit – whether they’re going to work, buy groceries or walk the dog, and so forth.
By Tom Baxter What kind of economy is it, exactly, that we’ll be trying to jumpstart back to life in the coming months? The pandemic has churned up some surprising answers to that question. The Commerce Department reported last month that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product declined by 4.8 percent in the first quarter of […]
Atlanta’s Blue Heron Nature Preserve has started “Spread Your Wings,” a social distancing program with a broader purpose of expanding the preserve’s role as an urban ecology center oriented around a new three-mile trail system that traverses ridgelines across 30 acres in Buckhead.
As the pandemic crisis passes, the new orders of life provide opportunities to improve conditions in terms of sustainability, racial equity in placemaking, and more just development practices. These are among the views expressed by the head of the U.N., a national author who examines Atlanta in an upcoming book, and a longtime urban planner now teaching at Georgia Tech.
The law of supply and demand that’s affecting affordable housing in Atlanta has an added complexity that’s arrived at the forefront: A somewhat limited supply is increasingly tilting toward higher income residents.
When it comes to creating a sense of place, the three-year-old City of South Fulton started with a blank slate – for starters, the name doesn’t refer to a previously known community. Now it has Wolf Creek Amphitheater, a 200-acre development planned along the Chattahoochee River, and a detailed economic development plan that offers a vision of a Town Center.
