The Atlanta Beltline makes intown trips faster

Atlanta has long been a car-centric city, but the Eastside Beltline’s opening is providing residents of nearby neighborhoods an alternative to the car. Despite the possibility of sitting in traffic, is the car still a faster option?

FOX 5′s Justin Gray decided to put it to the test by seeing which could get across town quicker: a bike, a car or a runner. They began at one end of a newly-paved trail in Inman Park and headed to Piedmont Park – a 2.25 mile trip on the trail.

So who won? Click the video to find out!

Click the video to find out who reaches Piedmont Park first!

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Video: The GA 400 Trail on BroadcastAtlanta

Would you like to see more green space and walkability in metro Atlanta? Soon you will!

On this episode of BroadcastAtlanta (also known as BADTV) we hear from George Dusenbury from the City of Atlanta’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs department about plans to increase park space in the city’s least parked area – Buckhead.

Also Erica Danylchak from the Buckhead Heritage Society discusses how plans for the GA 400 trail will incorporate important historic sites along the way.

Livable Buckhead is the chief organizer of the proposed five-mile trail to be built alongside and beneath Ga. 400, connecting North Buckhead with the BeltLine.

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Ga. 400 Trail Meetings Begin

The proposed five-mile trail to be built alongside and beneath Ga. 400 moves into its final planning phase this week.

If all goes as scheduled, design work that begins at this time will lead to construction starting in mid 2013, according to Denise Starling, the executive director of Livable Buckhead, Inc. Livable Buckhead is the chief organizer of the $10 million trail that is to stretch from a cemetery off Loridans Drive in North Buckhead to the planned Peachtree Creek spur of the BeltLine, near MARTA’s Lindbergh Station.

The Buckhead trail is not directly affiliated with the BeltLine. But the two projects are complementary, and are to constitute the largest expansion of greenspace now underway in any U.S. city, according to Trust for Public Land.

This is the sort of pastoral scene to be built in the Ga. 400 right-of-way. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Livable Buckhead, a non-profit, was incorporated in 2010 to help implement a greenspace initiative known as the Buckhead Collection. The initiative evolved out of the collective vision within the community to provide more public greenspace in a park-starved region of the city.

Buckhead’s newest proposed trail is an example of the type of innovative thought that Livable Buckhead is bringing to its effort to provide public greenspace.

The trail would be established in the Ga. 400 corridor, in the right-of-way beneath the highway and outside the walls that reduce the highway noise heard in neighborhoods. Currently, the much of the land is unkempt and urban campers have taken up residence in some areas.

Atlanta Councilman Howard Shook has helped garner support for the project from the Atlanta City Council. Last week, Shook shepherded legislation through the Atlanta City Council to support the proposed trail by expanding the boundaries of the Buckhead Community Improvement District.

Buckhead is to have this type of winding pathway once the planned trail opens. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Buckhead is to have this type of winding pathway once the planned trail opens. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

The CID now includes the state-owned land along Ga. 400, as well as property owned by MARTA. This expansion will allow the CID to help pay for the trail’s development, according to Jim Durrett, the CID’s executive director.

Starling said the development phase now beginning involves meeting with individual landowners to talk about their desires for the trail. This phase will follow the pending approval of the trail’s finalized concept proposal.

Some neighbors have already expressed concerns including safety along the trail, its impact on trees, and impact on a natural habitat that’s home to a number of coyotes and deer, Starling said.

Compounding these issues is the reality that some homeowners may not realize that portions of their backyards are actually within the public right-of-way of Ga. 400, Starling said. Some apparently have forgotten property lines that were established by the Georgia Department of Transporation after years of intense conflict that led up to the highway’s construction.

Pedestrians could stroll along a trail, safely away from motorized vehicles. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Pedestrians could stroll along a trail, safely away from motorized vehicles. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

The battle over Ga. 400 now seems like ancient history. But its construction almost 20 years ago came only after a long and bitter battle that pitted neighbor against neighbor, and resulted in zoning that was intended to keep commercial development and apartment towers south of the Buckhead Loop.

“Ga. 400 came right through these neighborhoods,” Starling said. “One of the biggest things we’re going to have to deal with is a lot of people who think the GDOT right-of-way is their back yard. So there are going to be perception issues to deal with.”

Another the major issue to resolve involves the amount of access to the trail.

“I’d say I want an access point from my backyard to the trail, but others may say, ‘No, I want a wall,’” Starling said. “We’re designing with different people’s needs, and different yard dynamics, and taking all of that into consideration.”

Funding is another major issue.

Nearly $1 million has been provided for design, with $750,000 coming from the Buckhead Community Improvement District and $200,000 from Atlanta.

The PATH Foundation has included about $3 million for the trail in its current capital campaign, Starling said. A request for an additional $2.5 million has been presented to the entity that oversees Ga. 400, the State Road and Tollway Authority.

Starling said Livable Atlanta expects to start a capital campaign later this year to raise the additional funds needed to build the $10 million trail.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle Saporta Report

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Urban agriculture movement — a healthy trend for Atlanta

Source: Business Chronicle. By SUSAN VARLAMOFF, director of the Office of Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia

SUSAN VARLAMOFF

Social, health, economic and environmental factors now feed a grassroots movement to convert vacant lots across Atlanta into farms and community gardens.

Atlanta is ripe for urban agriculture. It has a high unemployment rate and homelessness abounds. Food deserts, where fresh food is nonexistent, cover half the city. The state ranks No. 2 in obesity, largely due to poor diets.

The movement is supported by the Atlanta Local Food Initiative, which encourages consumers to request locally grown food in their supermarkets and restaurants.

Environmentalists see no sense in transporting lettuce from a California farm to an Atlanta table, leaving a wake of greenhouse gas emissions behind, when it can be grown in Georgia and in the city.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed will break ground on the Trinity Ave. farm across from City Hall in 2012 to show anyone wandering down its paths how to grow vegetables and fruits in their own backyards or neighborhood lots.

Atlanta BeltLine’s leaders are investing in farms and community gardens along the transit’s green corridor to bring fresh food to nearby neighborhoods and restaurants.

The English Ave. neighborhood, where foreclosures and abandoned homes litter the landscape, will undergo a renaissance.

Entrepreneurs collaborating with the Prince Charles Foundation (yes, Prince of Whales of the United Kingdom) will upgrade the homes to LEED standards and locate an organic farm, a fresh market and food hub in the neighborhood.

The Atlanta Mission, the city’s largest homeless shelter, now boasts a community garden where the men cultivate vegetables year round to supply the mission’s kitchen with fresh food.

The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences provides technical assistance to rural farmers. Today, CAES is seeing a huge surge in requests for assistance on how to grow food in the city.

Most importantly, Mayor Reed provides the bold leadership to make Atlanta a model for sustainable urban agriculture. Through his “Power to Change” sustainability plan, he pledges to bring local food within 10 minutes of 75 percent of all residents by 2020. The Trinity Avenue farm is a down payment on this promise.

Growing food in the city requires more than just digging a hole, placing a plant and reaping the harvest. Urban sites are a challenge. Soils may be toxic from previous uses, tall buildings may shade the lot making vegetable gardening difficult and the land may be covered in concrete and asphalt. And if vegetation is sparse, bees needed to pollinate the plants may be absent.

Urban farming reaps many benefits.

Rashid Nuri, nonprofit director of Truly Living Well, employs 40 people on his six farms and community gardens. They supply fresh food to south Atlanta food deserts and to high-end restaurants such as Empire State South and Restaurant Eugene’s.

Wheat Street Garden in the Historic Fourth Ward with downtown skyline in background

Wheat Street Garden in the historic Fourth Ward area is now a safe community-gathering place that was once a hangout for the homeless and sex and drug traffickers.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank distributes canned food to the disadvantaged and has seen a 34 percent increase in 2011 over the previous year. However, a steady diet of processed food, often high in sugar and salt, leads to obesity. So, they have launched 175 community gardens to supply fresh food to the poor.

Environmental benefits are many. Shortening the transport from farm to table reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Through photosynthesis, a process in which plants make their own food, plants absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and release oxygen used by humans in respiration. Plants cool the air through transpiration and can reduce the urban heat island.

Lastly, cultivating fertile soil to grow food takes carbon out the air and stores it in the earth reducing the effects of climate change.

Urban farming is not a new phenomenon. During the 1893-1897 economic recession, Detroit Mayor Haze Pingree instituted potato patches to feed the poor and employ the unemployed while saving the city money in social services.

In World War I and II, Liberty Gardens and Victory Gardens produced million of pounds of food from backyards and vacant lots. Today, with the Great Recession and environmental issues looming large, urban agriculture makes even more sense.

As the poster child for sprawl, metro Atlanta has plenty of open spaces for farms and community gardens.

Rashid Nuri, nonprofit director of Truly Living Well, employs 40 people on his six farms and community gardens

Due to its warm climate and long growing season, food can be grown year round. Right now lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and kale are growing in downtown Atlanta. According to Nuri, the demand for local food far outstrips the supply.

Since colonial days, agriculture has been Georgia’s leading industry, worth $69 billion annually. CAES has supported this industry successfully for 150 years through its research, teaching and outreach programs.

The college maintains a laboratory to help farmers and gardeners to test their soil and water to be sure it is contaminant-free and contains the right nutrients and pH for sustaining their plants. If there is a problem, scientists provide recommendations to improve it.

No one organization can do the job. It will take a coalition of academics, municipal agencies, community leaders and nonprofits to provide the technical assistance, regulation and oversight, community organizing, funding and education to develop and implement a strategy.

New York and Philadelphia have commissioned studies to determine the potential for urban agriculture within their cities. The studies serve as a blueprint to site gardens in areas where fresh food is most needed and where the land is most suited for cultivation.

Atlanta has strong leadership, a robust local food movement and countless organizations needed to create a sustainable urban environment by connecting people to their food systems.

Our success lies in our ability to convene the players, plan the strategy and systematically work the plan until fresh food is available to all Atlantans regardless of where they live.

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