Articles

The future Atlanta? Pastoral is possible

By Teresa Durkin
For the Journal-Constitution
April 22, 2008

What will Atlanta look like 100 years from now? It's a daunting question.

One optimistic view is much more pastoral than futuristic. Atlanta in 2108 could be a city that functions more like a forest ecosystem than a sprawling metropolis dominated by concrete, steel, automobiles and smog.

Interstates could be replaced by urban agriculture, parkland and water storage. The air could be cleaner, and fresh water abundant. Layered transit options could provide mobility.

In January, a global team of planners, architects, strategists and designers converged on Atlanta to compete in a "City of the Future" competition sponsored by the History Channel. The mandate was to identify what we want to protect, preserve and enhance about Atlanta in the next 100 years and also to determine what we deem obsolete.

The design team deemed that in 2108, the automobile-centric transportation and land-use system will be obsolete. Reclamation of much of the land consumed by 10-plus highway lanes will allow us to protect and preserve our natural resources and neighborhoods.

Just as Atlanta cannot survive another century of the automobile as the dominant transportation priority, it cannot survive without ensuring and replenishing an abundant fresh water supply. Atlanta must restore and protect the network of streams in its watersheds. A lifeline of streams exists yet is virtually invisible. Abused by the worst land uses, streams have been paved over, bridged and piped and impaired by traditional storm water management. Reversing the way we treat this resource and the vegetation that accompanies it must happen over the next century.

Buildings are a good place to start. Buildings annually consume 70 percent of electricity in the U.S., and 40 percent of raw materials globally. They create millions of tons of building-related construction and demolition debris. Fortunately, Georgia currently ranks fourth in the nation in building projects certified by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design as extremely energy efficient. Georgia should strive to be No. 1.

If Atlanta becomes a city known for solving environmental problems, the economy will continue to grow and Atlanta will remain a place where people want to live. Atlanta is a place where corporations and the private sector know how to get things done. The environmental and corporate worlds are now finding common ground on which we will swing the odds in the direction of a truly great city.

Georgia and Atlanta could encourage industry that contributes materials and technologies required for LEED certification. Development of technology to support the environmental restoration industry, solar technology, the capture and reuse of rainwater and conversion of landfills to better use are all possible contributors to this vision of Atlanta in 2108.

Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement, will be a gifted child of an ecological rights movement. The restoration of Atlanta's ecosystems will transform shortages to surpluses of clean water, clean air, free energy and rich soils.

Atlanta in 2108 will be built upon the foundation of its rich neighborhood fabric comprising dynamic hubs surrounded by urban villages with abundant open space interlaced with urban agriculture. Divisions and gaps between neighborhoods will be healed at least in part by the reclamation of land devoted to transportation.

Sounds like a better place for everyone, doesn't it?

Teresa Durkin is a vice president with the HOK Planning Group, a global architectural firm.

Copyright 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Source: www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion
/stories/2008/04/22/visioned0422.html

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