By Guest Columnist HUDSON McGAUGHEY, undergraduate engineering student at Georgia Tech
On a blistering July day this summer, I strolled down the side of the road in Clarkston with three high school students, chatting and taking pictures. To others, we probably looked like another group of teenage boys, maybe looking for a place to cool off, and taking photos for Instagram. However, these pictures weren’t for social media. They were for research.
Forget all the perceptions of metro Atlanta being a poster child for sprawl.
A new report looking at the urbanizing trends in the country’s 30 largest metro areas shocked one of the co-authors – Chris Leinberger, a real estate expert who is a professor at the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at the George Washington University School of Business.
Amid all the discussion of walkable neighborhoods and how they boost community health, almost overlooked is the cutting-edge research produced by the YMCA of Metro Atlanta that is helping people improve their physical and emotional health.
Repurposing pavement has a nice ring to it.
That was the message at the Feb. 13th annual meeting of the Midtown Alliance.
A person delivering the message was Janette Sadik-Khan, who changed many of the streets in New York City from being focused on cars to streets for everyone – including pedestrians and cyclists.
