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  #61  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 3:39 PM
mhays mhays is online now
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I'm a big fan of suburban town centers. The good ones can be pretty urban, whether they're on a large scale like Buckhead or Bellevue or just a few apartment and office buildings.

That said, nothing beats a good downtown...with the full retail spectrum, lots of tourists and business visitors, a huge office crowd, events, and so on. If all of that comes together the city has a big advantage.
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  #62  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 5:14 PM
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Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
i wish this board would embrace the idea that suburban town centers are good. multiple cbd's with multiple supporting neighborhoods make sense. the notion that a single, all powerful and central cbd is outdated. people and their jobs are less static than they used to be, and one of the missing pieces is interconnecting all of the outlying nodes with transit. the re-urbanized central cities isn't a passing fad but don't think growth is limited to central neighborhoods. gas is cheap and people are still buying suv's like it was 1993. until suburban life become cost prohibitive in a meaningful way, than its growth will continue. that doesn't mean suburbanites can't be urbanists. they need urban light though. the perception needs to be that its fun, not a necessity. but you can trick them and add a little office space in with their retail and café table dining....
Agreed. Especially so in big sprawled out cities where between traffic and distance, it can take an hour or so to get to downtown. It's 30 miles from our house to downtown which is why my wife and I often opt to go to small local town center a mile or so away instead.
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  #63  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 5:21 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
I'm a big fan of suburban town centers. The good ones can be pretty urban, whether they're on a large scale like Buckhead or Bellevue or just a few apartment and office buildings.

That said, nothing beats a good downtown...with the full retail spectrum, lots of tourists and business visitors, a huge office crowd, events, and so on. If all of that comes together the city has a big advantage.
the operative word, visitors...not residents. do suburbanites go "downtown" to go shopping and socialize anymore? some do for sure but more and more options are starting to appear in their neighborhoods too. I think in successful cities, were seeing a common ascension. downtown and suburbs are thriving at the same time. we just need figure out how to connect them better.
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  #64  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 5:22 PM
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Originally Posted by M II A II R II K View Post
Add a greenbelt perhaps.
Wouldn't that just create leap-frog development as the metro expands? We see this in the West with mountain ranges, which then requires massive investment in transportation infrastructure (usually a freeway) to connect it to the rest of the metro region.
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  #65  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 5:51 PM
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Building the Braves stadium in Cobb County while preaching the importance of increasing the use of public transportation, and life within the downtown area has to be the most counterproductive thing Atlanta has done.

Now the only time MARTA will get heavy traffic is for the Falcons games, and SEC Championship games which happen way less frequently than MLB season games. Even with the renovation of Underground, there will be absolutely no desire for suburbanites to come to Downtown outside of work.
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  #66  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 6:07 PM
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hard to believe athens is considered metro atlanta.. seems like a stretch
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  #67  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 6:09 PM
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Originally Posted by jayden View Post
Building the Braves stadium in Cobb County while preaching the importance of increasing the use of public transportation, and life within the downtown area has to be the most counterproductive thing Atlanta has done.

Now the only time MARTA will get heavy traffic is for the Falcons games, and SEC Championship games which happen way less frequently than MLB season games. Even with the renovation of Underground, there will be absolutely no desire for suburbanites to come to Downtown outside of work.
on the contrary, there is a grassroots effort to bring cobb (and gwinnett) into the marta service area, which they were originally intended to be in. if the traffic induced by this stadium is bad enough it might help as a catalyst to further these efforts...
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  #68  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 6:18 PM
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Originally Posted by goat314 View Post
You will find this to be the case in pretty much every metropolitan area with a significant Afro-American presence. It's the real reason America abandoned it's cities, but people like to create other narratives.
Race has pretty much shaped American culture, politics, cities and development patterns. If America was a 90+% white country, it would be politically similar to current-day Western Europe countries. Cities would be more urban and built out. Widespread heavy rail in many cities across the country. More liberal etc.

It's why America feels so different from Europe despite the fact that in a lot of ways, America is just another extension of Western Judeo-Christian culture.
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  #69  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 6:54 PM
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^^^Europe still has suburbs. The only reason European central cities are extremely dense is because they are oh, 1500 years older than most American cities. but I agree, racial politics has shaped where people live, but I don't necessarily think it shaped the how as much. People have been seeking quiet suburban life far from the central fray since antiquity.
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  #70  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 7:19 PM
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Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
^^^Europe still has suburbs. The only reason European central cities are extremely dense is because they are oh, 1500 years older than most American cities. but I agree, racial politics has shaped where people live, but I don't necessarily think it shaped the how as much. People have been seeking quiet suburban life far from the central fray since antiquity.
Oh suburbs would have ALWAYS happened simply because some people prefer the space and quieter life, but the urban cores of most decent size cities wouldn't be so blighted and rail solutions would have been much easier to pass. You'd have many walkable cities just like Europe. The US prior to 1950 had a whole bunch of walkable urban cities(and would be even more walkable today had they kept developing) but the period between 1950-1990 just killed many urban cores and many cities lost 40-50 years of continuous urban development on top of destroying much of their urban fabric.
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  #71  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 7:34 PM
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The well developed suburban quasi-downtowns such as Perimeter/ Cumberland/Avalon in Atlanta provide most of the characteristics of a big city downtown including housing, shopping and office amenities. The so-called traditional CBD of big cities and metro areas will remain, probably, at the center and that includes major museums, symphony orchestras and such. In addition some sports amenities will remain in the centers, but some, as we have experienced with the Braves will be comfortable in the burbs (the Hawks, the Falcons and United remain in the downtown Atlanta city area). Nonetheless, the Atlanta Ballet and Opera have moved to a new Hall in Cobb county near the new Braves complex.
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  #72  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 8:41 PM
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Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
the operative word, visitors...not residents. do suburbanites go "downtown" to go shopping and socialize anymore? some do for sure but more and more options are starting to appear in their neighborhoods too. I think in successful cities, were seeing a common ascension. downtown and suburbs are thriving at the same time. we just need figure out how to connect them better.
I should have included residents as a key item. A downtown with 100,000 (or 200,000) residents in four square miles will probably be a good one, and one with 20,000 or even 40,000 residents in the same area generally won't be very vibrant.

By "visitors" I meant out-of-towners. All the top downtowns have bucketloads of them. The big shopping districts all have a lot of visitor spending. They keep restaurants busy outside the obvious times. They're often the majority of ticket sales at museums.
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  #73  
Old Posted Apr 20, 2017, 9:01 PM
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Originally Posted by Ant131531 View Post
Oh suburbs would have ALWAYS happened simply because some people prefer the space and quieter life, but the urban cores of most decent size cities wouldn't be so blighted and rail solutions would have been much easier to pass. You'd have many walkable cities just like Europe. The US prior to 1950 had a whole bunch of walkable urban cities(and would be even more walkable today had they kept developing) but the period between 1950-1990 just killed many urban cores and many cities lost 40-50 years of continuous urban development on top of destroying much of their urban fabric.
if you believe the conspiracy theory, maybe even earlier thanks to big oil and the auto industry.....consider the general motors streetcar conspiracy if you've never read about it....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera...acy#Background
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  #74  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 1:58 AM
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Originally Posted by ATL_J View Post
What do you consider the suburban fringe? Just curious.

To add some color to your comments. The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has ten central counties that belong to it. I'd consider this the "core" of the MSA and it comprises 34.1% of the land area of the MSA. From 2000-10 it captured 66.3% of the regions growth, however, from 2010-2015 it captured 80.8% of that growth. The inner, most "urban counties", of Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett captured 38.1% of all growth from 2000-2010, but 65.3% of all growth from 2010-2015. To wrap Atlanta into this, the city itself captured 0.4% of all growth from 2000-2010 and 10.3% of all growth from 2010-2015 for a land / capture ratio of 6.74.

The majority of suburban development occurring right now is "infill" as people in the metro seek downtown / town center environments. That isn't to say they're moving to the heart of the city, but historic downtowns like Duluth, Norcross, Roswell, Alpharetta, etc. are seeing a surge in popularity and you're seeing large faux-town centers like Avalon & Halycon in Forsyth catering to that desire. Not to imply there isn't your typical suburban cul-de-sac neighborhoods being built, but most construction activity is located in these more relatively dense, suburban areas.

I'm also not sure I agree with your housing comment. 3 miles from Downtown Atlanta doesn't take you very far and comprises most of the urban, intown neighborhoods, where the vast majority of new construction is townhomes and large multifamily projects. Atlanta does have a lot of established, leafy neighborhoods, but for those not built out, new construction in these neighborhoods does not function nor is similar to construction 30 miles out. Maybe I misunderstood the comment?

Anyways, always interesting to hear outside perspective.
It's best to just ignore Crawford, especially when he starts spouting off anything remotely related to Atlanta.

He has proven time after time for many years that he has absolutely no clue what he is talking about, but unfortunately that has never stopped him.
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  #75  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 2:04 AM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
I'm a big fan of suburban town centers. The good ones can be pretty urban, whether they're on a large scale like Buckhead or Bellevue or just a few apartment and office buildings.

That said, nothing beats a good downtown...with the full retail spectrum, lots of tourists and business visitors, a huge office crowd, events, and so on. If all of that comes together the city has a big advantage.
Buckhead is not a suburban town center, it is the Uptown area within the City of Atlanta.
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  #76  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 2:29 AM
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How many remember that Oprah show in the 1980's that she hosted in Forsyth county about race?
I remember it vividly, as I was one of the thousands that marched in protest. It was perhaps our first example of "fake news."

The insidious assholes that started it all turned out to be Klansmen from Mississippi. The real locals were warm and welcoming, but of course that was simply ignored by the National media.

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As for Atlanta's sprawl it has no boundaries in any direction to stop it and how different is it from other sunbelt metros in that regard ?
It's no different from any Metro that isn't geographically constrained, Sunbelt or otherwise. Any and all Metros that can sprawl do so. Look no further than Orlando for your closest example.
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  #77  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 4:30 AM
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Originally Posted by goat314 View Post
You will find this to be the case in pretty much every metropolitan area with a significant Afro-American presence. It's the real reason America abandoned it's cities, but people like to create other narratives.
It's ONE of the reasons that the white middle class left for the suburbs. Car ownership, the Interstate Highway system and consequent freeway networks, and the availability of new, inexpensive, and spacious housing with easily obtained financing also played a huge role. Most people rented housing prior to 1950 or so. Mortgages were hard to find for the working man. There were many more multi-generational households, and demand for new housing after the depression of the 1930s and WW2 was enormous. School desegregation and mandatory busing to achieve racially balanced schools tended to add impetus to an already existing phenomenon. By the time this happened in the 1960s, most cities were ringed with independent suburbs with separate municipal governments. Not surprisingly, these are often the same suburbs that black middle class families have moved to in recent years as their own circumstances improved. The black middle class also abandoned the central city to a certain extent and for many of the same reasons.
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  #78  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 12:37 PM
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Originally Posted by jayden View Post
Building the Braves stadium in Cobb County while preaching the importance of increasing the use of public transportation, and life within the downtown area has to be the most counterproductive thing Atlanta has done.
Again, "Atlanta" didn't do that. Cobb county did. Atlanta has zero control over what Cobb or Gwinette counties do, or what Dunwoody or Sandy Springs does.
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  #79  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 2:14 PM
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Again, "Atlanta" didn't do that. Cobb county did. Atlanta has zero control over what Cobb or Gwinette counties do, or what Dunwoody or Sandy Springs does.
amazing what doesn't stick when people already have their mind made up.
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  #80  
Old Posted Apr 21, 2017, 2:38 PM
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Again, "Atlanta" didn't do that. Cobb county did. Atlanta has zero control over what Cobb or Gwinette counties do, or what Dunwoody or Sandy Springs does.
Yeah, didn't we kind of go over that already? Atlanta is what it is because there are dozens of counties and numerous municipalities per county involved here, and not a damn one of them is willing to work with any of the others on anything.
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