Bloglanta

Residential towers are not such a terrible thing, especially when placed appropriately — near existing transit stations. If the market for retail space isn’t saturated, put in some retail space on the ground floor, and you have a mixed-use site with great amenities. In Atlanta, this gives us the embryonic stages of a great street life.

In Manhattan, meanwhile, a great street life is not everywhere. For years, the business district has had a reputation for shutting down completely during non-business hours. I took this photo of a New York City block in the middle of a business day:

Someday, this may change, as new residential towers are rising in south Manhattan.

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Years ago the Atlanta Braves already had baseball’s largest network of radio stations broadcasting their games (in 1995 there were 200 stations in 9 states) and Ted Turner’s invention of the Superstation enlarged the Braves fan base even more. An intriguing website called CommonCensus attempts to measure that effect. Thousands of fans enter their address and favorite team and software groups the locations together to produce the image. Take a look at this map showing the Braves with the largest geographic fanbase.

Using the same methodology, they attempt to show spheres of influence of America’s cities. This is similar to the concept of hubness that was floating around usenet a few years ago but with more of an eye to see where people actually feel they live rather than population densities or our current, almost arbitrary lines drawn by history and politics. A tool like this could be a path to ending gerrymandering.

What does this mean for Atlanta? Take a look at how far our influence stretches. People talk about us as a blue island in a sea of red, but it’s clear that a great portion of Georgia and the South identifies with our fair city.

In Atlanta, there is little appreciation for the power of infrastructure. Atlanta’s residents would rather fight individual battles in the relatively inconsequential zoning wars than get into the real meat of defining a community’s character. Even major infrastructure projects like the Beltline get reduced to the individual projects proposed within the TAD boundary.

A recent article by John Sugg points out the most fundamental flaws in how Atlanta’s residents think about the Beltline.

The Mason project is not perfect. The oversupply of parking spaces within the proposed Piedmont Park towers will inflate the project’s cost to an amount greater than the project’s real value. Assumptions about the local infrastructure are being made ahead of actual decisions about the local infrastructure.

Meanwhile, in New York, Manhattan is not the only place where you can find tall condo towers next to parks. (Central Park and its surrounding developments have been a frequent image in the minds of Mason’s critics.) In Brooklyn, new developments are cropping up to accomodate new masses of people moving into the borough. Among these developments, I caught this tall tower next to a public park:

Granted, the tower isn’t as tall as Mason’s proposed development. What I saw with my own eyes was a development that fit within the existing infrastructure, which included a tight street grid with public parks integrated within the local urban fabric. Some of the parks, such as the one above, included sports fields. Others were simply parks with trees, grass and very cute and friendly squirrels. For the most part, Mason’s proposed development will fit within the context of the proposed infrastructure for the area. As more people move back to the city, single family homes will become increasingly out of context.

As you can see, a few things have changed around here.

Bear with us as we complete the transition to WordPress. You may notice, if you look at our archives, that a few authors have switched places. Joe became Larry, Jonathan became Chris, Amber became Ian, and so on. This will be fixed shortly.

In the meantime, you are still welcome to sign up and contribute to Bloglanta.

Silly Atlantic Station….
They have one the Second Largest Parking Deck in the United States (only the Mall of America is Bigger), and yet they won’t let their vendors validate parking… 
This is just silly.  Yes.  You get two hours free.  How nice.  Yes.  It’s free after 7:00 ish.  How nice.  Go for a late lunch and the deck is empty.  It’s a wasteland.  Spend too long at lunch however, and you’ll have to pay for it.  If you’re already spending $40 for lunch at Strip, the fact that they can’t validate your parking for however long you’re going to be there is adding insult to injury. 
Having the shuttle is a good thing, however, until there is a train stop there, let the vendors validate.