A pre-workshop walking audit of the Spring Street corridor gave workshop participants context for the Friday discussion.
Building on the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) initiative “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares”, CNU Atlanta hosted an all-day educational and design workshop on Friday, February 17 in Midtown Atlanta. Led by Richard A. Hall and Tracy Hegler of Hall Planning and Engineering (HPE, Inc.), the workshop introduced the best practices detailed in the newly released ITE/CNU street design manual, Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach.
The morning lecture focused on the factors that impact walkability and bikeability within and outside of the street right-of-way, stressing the importance of land use elements such as block size, street frontage and land use mix in the design of Complete Streets. The hands-on afternoon session generated valuable ideas in the application of these ideas to improve Spring Street, a four-lane, one-way arterial that workshop participants surveyed in a walkability audit the day before. The participants posed many questions during both sessions, leading to lively discussions about local practices and challenges.
Workshop participants listen to Rick Hall discuss the importance of context sensitive street design.
In true CNU fashion, the workshop was attended by a diverse group of fifty participants from the public, private and non-profit sectors. Attendees included transportation engineers, planners, architects, landscape architects, developers, non-profit policy makers, neighborhood advocates and elected officials.
Brad Davis of CNU Atlanta Education Committee said, “the diversity of our attendance highlights both the opportunities and challenges associated with improving our streets. There are a lot of people involved in the design, construction and maintenance of our region’s thoroughfares and there are also many vested interests. I think we’ve made important steps forward today in understanding the role each professional, public official and community advocate has in the creation of complete streets.”
Participants put the manual to use with a design exercise during the afternoon session.
Board Member Chris Carrigan agreed: “Our goal with the workshop was to learn how policy, combined with design standards, can improve the quality of streets in our communities. I think we accomplished this. There is a lot of opportunity to improve our transportation quality in the Atlanta area, and we’ve made a good step towards achieving that with our workshop.”
Nancy Geisler, with Sustainable Atlanta, summed up the day well. “It was really helpful that the course included a visual of 17 blocks of a downtown thoroughfare in Atlanta and assessed its walkability. The new vision is that urban roadways need to offer something for everyone, those who want to drive/park, walkers, bikers, people who want transit. All of this makes the roadway a desirable place to be.”
Established in 2006 to promote new urbanism in the greater Atlanta region, CNU Atlanta was the host for the 18th annual Congress for the New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places organized with assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The chapter’s educational and advocacy efforts are combined under three topics—Transportation, Suburban Retrofit, and Healthy Neighborhoods—that reflect the region’s needs. The chapter’s next event, scheduled for Fall 2012, will focus on the design of Healthy Neighborhoods.
On July 31st, 2012 residents in the 10-County Atlanta region will have the opportunity to vote on a 1 cent sales tax that will fund transportation projects within the region. The tax is expected to raise an estimated $7.2 billion over a 10-year period. 15% of the funds (or approximately $1.1 billion) will be given directly to local governments to fund local transportation projects while 85% ($6.1 billion) will fund a list of pre-selected regional projects. Given both the scale of this investment and the central role that transportation plays in our communities, the Board for the Atlanta Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism thought it necessary to identify some of the key points regarding the proposed referendum as they may relate to our organization’s Charter. 
On Friday February 17, CNU Atlanta will host a collaborative design workshop focusing on policies and design standards that support context sensitive street design and construction. Led by Rick Hall, with 
