The Neighborhoods We Want

It's a good thing that people want to live in Atlanta's older walkable neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that were built as streetcar suburbs in the 1920s or even earlier.  These older intown neighborhoods have many lovely older homes, and many have within them small commercial areas that provide walkable destinations, with neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and small shops.  As more people want to live in these kind of neighborhoods, there's demand for housing in them.  Some people want to live in the neighborhood but want a bigger house with all the modern amenities.  So older homes are being purchased, demolished, and replaced with bigger houses.  In most parts of the city, the only requirement for newly-constructed houses is to comply with the city building code.  They are not required to be of the same scale as adjacent houses, to be of the same design as adjacent houses, or to be compatible in any way with the neighborhood.  All they have to do is meet the current building code.

This is an issue in many parts of the city as well as in Decatur.  There's currently an effort in Virginia Highland to explore Historic District Overlay Zoning for two subdivisions in the neighborhood.  This has already generated vigorous discussion on the neighborhood email list, with an active opposition group formed that opposes the designation.  Decatur's City Commission recently considered a moratorium on demolitions of single family homes.  They ended up voting against it.  In the Oakhurst neighborhood, the demographics of the neighborhood are changing rapidly.  Commissioner Kecia Cunningham told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “For me, it’s not about ‘McMansions,’ it’s the loss of racial and economic diversity, the loss of affordable housing."

On our street, the apartments at the corner of Wessyngton and North Highland are being vacated and will be demolished soon.  I don't know what will be built there, other than that I am certain it will be three large expensive homes.  Lynsley found designs on line that a local architecture firm has proposed for the street (see this link and this one).  The two houses are contemporary, "fusing modern luxury with holistic sustainable design."  The architects note that the proposed location for these houses is "one block from some of Atlanta's best shops and restaurants."  What it doesn't say is that Wessyngton Road is still mostly made up of small ranch-style homes built during the 1950s and that these new houses that are proposed don't look anything like most of the houses on the street.  

But not all the houses on our street were built in the 1950s.  There are newer houses, some dating from a few decades ago; one of them has a quite contemporary design and is for sale now.  There also has been demolition of older homes and new construction on the street in the last few years.  Some older homes including ours have been renovated and second floors added.  It's not that small 1950s ranch-style homes are architecturally important and should be preserved; it's that demand for lots for new construction threatens existing neighborhoods by forcing out longtime residents when property values become too high.

And it's not just that.  A neighborhood is a complex adaptive system, and changing one thing can result in major and unanticipated changes in other areas.  Part of what makes Atlanta's intown neighborhoods interesting is that different kinds of people live in them, that everyone is not just alike.  Interesting neighborhoods require housing to be available across the income spectrum.  Already Morningside is not nearly as interesting as Virginia Highland, which is not nearly as interesting as Poncey-Highland, and that is why.  

I love Atlanta's intown neighborhoods, and I'm glad other people do too, but at the moment it feels to me that we are at risk of loving them to death.  The city doesn't require a Social Capital Impact Statement for new development; all there is is the permitting process.  But building codes and even Historic District Overlay Zoning are pretty blunt instruments.  We need additional and sharper instruments if we are going to shape the direction that our neighborhoods take.  Incentives and disincentives are preferable to regulations, if they'll do the job, and if there are things that the market will do without incentives, even better.  (My impression is that many of the new large intown mixed use developments do include a range of housing types; whether that's due to requirements or incentives, I don't know, but I am pretty sure it's not market forces.  Market forces are leading to an increased focus on walkability in commercial areas, according to a recent study, but not to what the authors called "social equity," which included affordable housing and accessibility.)  My guess is that new houses that look like they belong in the neighborhood probably sell for more than houses that don't, and not all the new construction is dreadful.  But the city and county need to use tax policy to help people on fixed incomes be able to stay in their homes when property values are rising.

This is my new favorite house in the neighborhood.  It was on the market in 2011, after its owner moved into assisted living.  A couple bought it, and after that work started out the site.  I assumed it was going to be demolished and replaced with a much larger, new home.  One day after that I saw them standing in the yard, and I asked.  They seemed surprised at the question.  No, they said, they they planned to renovate it.  The work is ongoing, but one of the things they've done already is enlarged the front porch.

I wish our neighbors in Virginia Highland well, as they continue the discussion about the Historic Overlay District Zoning.  But unless everyone in the two subdivisions wants it -- and that seems pretty unlikely -- it will be a tough sell.  So the discussion continues about the kind of neighborhoods we want, and what -- if anything -- we are willing to do to maintain them or improve them.