"For Sale," Again

The duplex up the street is about to be demolished and replaced with a new house, apparently.  First the "For Sale" sign went up and the tenants moved out, then it was "Under Contract",  then it was back "For Sale", then it wasn't, and now it's for sale again, but this time they are selling something else, a new home that hasn't even been built yet.

There's been no sign about a request for a variance, yet, so they are not too far along.  A trailer has been in the driveway for a while, I'm assuming for salvage of what gets salvaged when a house is demolished, but I haven't seen any action yet on the demolition front.

So that's the story.  A small brick duplex where young people used to find affordable housing in the neighborhood is going to get replaced by a large, new, expensive home.  

In Virginia Highland, there's been an effort over the last year or so to create a neighborhood master plan.  There have been community meetings and chances for comment on line and lots of strong advocacy on the neighborhood email list.  There had been a proposal to allow "accessory dwellings" -- garage apartments and so forth -- that might provide some lower cost housing in the neighborhood but I think it's gone from the current draft.  Here's what the FAQ on the plan now says:

In the survey part of the Master Plan process, some citizens expressed an interest in themselves living in such units on their own property as they age out of needing a larger home. Conversely, many community members expressed their opposition to any easing of restrictions on accessory dwelling units. As a result, the Master Plan recommends an ongoing examination of this topic, understanding the necessity of addressing the negative aspects that have historically been associated with accessory dwelling units. Loss of tree canopy, storm water runoff, increased on street parking, and backyard privacy issues are problems that will need to be addressed. The neighborhood will evaluate and review existing and additional accessory dwellings in the context of proposed upcoming city zoning changes.

Whether it's our intention or not, we seem to be determined to allow only people of a certain income level to live in our neighborhoods, between the market incentives for property owners to replace older rental housing  with new, expensive construction, and zoning that prohibits home owners from providing such housing on their property.  I can't help but think that the primary concerns don't actually have much to do with "loss of tree canopy, storm water runoff, increased on street parking, and" (my personal favorite) "backyard privacy issues."

I got a big kick out of this on line guide when I saw it last month.  The Morningside neighborhood was not even mentioned, and see that map?  We're in that big empty spot just below Lindridge Martin Manor.  Now I know it's not just housing costs that keep Morningside off the map -- there isn't much commercial activity in the neighborhood either, and that's what's on the map, mostly -- but no neighborhood as socioeconomically homogeneous as this neighborhood is is going to be a very interesting place to live.

It may be boring, but at least we have our backyard privacy.  Of course, for improving the quality of life in the neighborhood, we'd be better off with front porches.

Atlanta Streets Alive -- West End

On Sunday, Atlanta Streets Alive came to West End.  Atlanta Streets Alive is an open streets event organized by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  The first one I attended was in May 2012, when Atlanta Streets Alive was on Highland Avenue.  Since then, they've been back to Highland with a loop on the Eastside Trail of the Beltline, have been on Peachtree Street a couple of times, and extended the the Highland loop to Boulevard.  I think I've been to every single one, since then, and have progressed from attendee to volunteer to $12 a month supporter.  (On Sunday, my volunteer assignment was to work in the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition's tent, getting people signed up for memberships.  One woman told me, well, I don't really ride my bike that much.  I told her I was a member and I don't even have a bike.  She didn't join, but lots of other people did.)

I was in the tent working at 2 when the event started.  The opening remarks were close by but the bullhorn the speakers were using didn't work well and I couldn't hear much.  But Ceasar Mitchell, the President of the Atlanta City Council, stopped by and introduced himself, and later Cleta Winslow, representing District 4 on the Atlanta City Council, came by but she didn't introduce herself.  We did have a good view though of the Seed & Feed Marching Band's opening, non-marching, set.

After I finished my volunteer shift, Tom dropped Iain off and we headed east on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.  Although the estimate for the number of participants was substantially less than some previous events, the music was absolutely the best of any Atlanta Streets Alive event I've attended, and I am not talking about the Feed & Seed Marching Band.  There was music in front of churches and in parking lots along Ralph David Abernathy.  It was amazing.  And I didn't even take a picture at the Wren's Nest, where the Atlanta Jazz Festival had set up a stage.

These musicians were playing on the steps at West Hunter Street Baptist Church.

A sousaphone ensemble was playing near Howell Park.

There had been a band earlier outside the Shrine of the Black Madonna, but they were packed up and gone by the time we got there.  But there was great music at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.

There was another band outside the West End Performing Arts Center, but I didn't take a picture there either.

The route took us south on Murphy Avenue, past The Metropolitan, which Tom had described to me as "kind of like the Goat Farm," except that unlike the Goat Farm, the Metropolitan has actual goats.

It also has this really cool tower, which appeared to be inhabited, based on the curtains covering the windows.

There was a giant chalk board where we were invited to write down something we wanted to do before we die.  I had to think about it for a moment; I wrote "walk through Europe."

Then the route took us across West Whitehall Street and west on White Street, which took us to the Westside Trail on the Beltline, which we followed back to Gordon-White Park.  There were a few side trails, and the Streets Alive team really wanted us to stay on the correct route.

There was more.  We got Jamaican food for a late lunch from the women's agricultural group set up near Gordon-White Park, and a poem from Jon Cilberto of Free Poems on Demand.  ("I remember you," he said, when Iain and I approached the table.  To Iain, who was still trying to come up with a subject for a poem, he said, "you want something political.")  We picked up our poem on our second cycle past the table.

There were kids drawing in the street with sidewalk chalk, gymnasts doing flips and jump ropers doing complicated double dutch jump roping.  

There were people on bikes, on foot, in wheelchairs, on scooters, and on roller blades.  It was a great afternoon to walk around the city, listen to some music, eat some food, walk around some more.  

Did you miss it?  Not to worry -- the next one's back on Peachtree, on May 18.

See you there.

Spring Break

Week before last, I went to the airport to head out of town on a brief trip for work, one of those trips where you're in transit almost longer than you're at the destination.  It was late morning.  I left my car at the airport park-and-ride lot and boarded the shuttle for the terminal.

They probably were the last people to board the shuttle; I assume they were a family, parents with their child, but I don't actually know that for sure.  The child didn't say much (and not anything that I could understand) so I got no information on the relationship from listening to what the child said.

I don't know how old he was but he was small, and I'm guessing he was older than his size would suggest but I don't know that either.  He had obvious physical deformities, the kind that elicit both pity and curiosity.  I don't know, medically, what the child's condition was, but he might have some syndrome associated with craniosynostosis, in which the sutures of skull close too soon, and the growing brain forces the eyes forward in their sockets. There he was on the shuttle bus and his parents sat on the empty row of seats facing me and expected the child to sit in between them, but he didn't.  Instead, he climbed on to the seat next to me.  I asked his parents if they would like to trade seats with me.  Not, they said, that's not necessary, but his father moved to a seat on the bus's back row so he was closer to his son.

The child clutched with his left hand a computer tablet in a thick red plastic case, with a child's game open, and with his right hand he held on to my arm.  His mother asked me if that was all right.  I said I had three children.  Later I realized that really wasn't an answer, but what I meant was that I was happy help another mother's child, especially if all I had to do was allow him to hang on to me for a few minutes on a shuttle bus.

After the bus started the child said something.  I couldn't understand it, but the father recognized it as "bumpity-bump," as the small bus bounced on rough places in the road.  That's all I remember him saying.  I asked if he could show me how to play the game on the tablet; he didn't seem to have heard me, and there was no response.

When we got to the drop off at the terminal, the mother said to the father, that was more successful than last time.  To the rest of us, she said, last time he cried the whole time.  That's when I realized they had gotten onto the shuttle with no luggage.  They weren't getting off the shuttle to catch a plane; they had driven to the airport to ride the shuttle to the terminal and then back to their car.  I said something about the absence of luggage to the mother and she laughed.  After this, she said, we'll go on our big spring break trip to IHOP.

I didn't ask anything else but I assumed they were working, step by step, on getting their child ready to take a trip.  Or maybe not.  Maybe a ten minute ride on a shuttle bus with strangers was a manageable outing with a child who had the week off from school.  Maybe this was their spring break.

Since then I have thought about them, about the anxieties and worries that they must have, but more about their warmth and their good humor, and how if I were in their situation, I doubt that I would do nearly so well.  Whoever they are, I wish them the best.

More than Cars

It was a couple of weeks ago; I was on my way to work, driving north on North Highland and then on Johnson Road towards Briarcliff.  I had slowed to a near stop at the traffic light at East Rock Springs because a car ahead of me was making a right turn.  Behind me, a car honked.  Was someone honking at me for stopping for (as opposed to hitting) a car ahead of me that was turning?  That seemed unlikely although I supposed not impossible.

I continued on Johnson Road, driving right at the posted speed limit (30 miles per hour), and a car following very close behind me was flashing its headlights.  At the intersection at Briarcliff, Johnson Road becomes two lane.  I was in the right hand lane, waiting for the light to change, and the car that had been behind me pulled along side me and the driver gestured and honked before pulling forward in the other lane.  Apparently I had completely ruined this man's day by slowing him down to the speed limit for a few minutes.

But drivers take their cues from the road more than from the signs about how fast is too fast to drive, and that stretch of Johnson Road is wide and gently curving.  It feels like you could comfortably drive 45 or 50 miles per hour or faster on that stretch of road, and some people do.  They shouldn't do it, but part of the reason they do is that some of the streets -- especially streets like Johnson Road or even Wessyngton Road  -- are so wide they feel like they were designed for speed.  So many drivers drive fast, regardless of what the posted speed limit says.

There's a wonderful video online about a redesign of a major intersection in a town in England.  The town was cut into quarters through its center by two main roads.  As a consequence the town's business district was an unpleasant place to be and pedestrians felt unsafe and tended to avoid the area.  Someone came up with a shared space design that removed the traffic signal and directed the traffic into something that looked kind of like a figure eight but with pedestrians walking through it.  Some in the town predicted that traffic gridlock and chaos would result.  It didn't.  The design signaled to drivers that they needed to drive slowly, and they did, and because the cars weren't going fast the pedestrians were no longer terrified and the center of the town became livelier and a much more pleasant commercial area.  And the traffic did get through.

I've been thinking about this recently because on one of the neighborhood email lists there has been enormous backlash against the city's plan to add bicycle lanes at the expense of traffic lanes on some city streets.  How dare the city reduce space for cars to make way for bikes!  No one rides bikes, no one ever will ride bikes, and drivers have an inalienable right to drive wherever they want as rapidly as possible regardless of the impact on anyone else.  The only place the drivers thought bicycles possibly belonged was on the sidewalks, where presumably they would only inconvenience the pedestrians.

Last week I was in Geneva, where it's possible to get everywhere I needed to be by riding a city bus.  Every morning I would walk a few blocks to the area near the train station, where cars, bicycles, motorcycles, buses, trams, and pedestrians all use the streets.  There I would catch the bus to my meeting and then in the evening I'd get off the bus there and walk back to my hotel.  I tried several times to take pictures there but none of them captured the sense of the place all that well.  But here's the point -- when the design of the place requires cars to slow down, they do.  And there's room for the people on bicycles and on foot.

It's possible to design a city so that it's for everyone, not just for people who drive cars.  And when that's been done in other cities, it has made those cities better, livelier, healthier, and more prosperous and more pleasant places.

Atlanta's different, I've heard people say.  No one here rides a bike, no one ever will.  We don't have public transit here and we never will, we're too spread out.  Atlanta is all about cars.  Space for cars is all that matters.  To hell with kids too young to drive, people who can't afford cars, and people who are too old to drive -- they don't matter.  All that matters is cars.

But I don't think this is true.  Atlanta can do better than this, and if we do, the city will be a better place to live, work, and do business.