Jim Durrett,Executive Director, Buckhead Improvement District

Jim Durrett, Executive Director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID) recently posted a blog entry on his organization’s website recounting past visions and studies for a more walkable Atlanta. Durrett reports:

The research confirms what many of us already know to be true: if people are attached to their communities, local economies thrive. . . [T]he principle drivers of attachment are availability of social offerings, aesthetics and openness of a place.  And guess what?  Walkability impacts all three of these drivers.

Durrett adds that, “For these reasons and more we are working to make Buckhead an exemplary walkable urban place.  Please hold us to it.”

At CNU Atlanta, we share Durrett’s vision for walkability in our region. Please consider joining us as we strive to help Atlanta thrive.

According to the CID website: The mission of the Buckhead Community Improvement District is to create a more walkable and livable urban environment.  We meet the challenges of growth by investing tax dollars collected from commercial property owners within the district, as well as other funds we leverage from outside the district, to make meaningful improvements in the transportation network and public realm that connect people and places.

Jim Durrett, an Atlanta native, directs all activities of the CID.  Jim has been promoting smart growth development and livable communities since 1996, when he left his hydrogeology practice and went to work at the Georgia Conservancy. He came to the Buckhead CID in September of 2009.  Jim is an avid bicyclist, a member of Leadership Atlanta’s class of 2013, and serves on several boards, including MARTA’s board of directors.

According to the Georgia Cities Foundation, a community improvement district (CID) is a mechanism for funding certain governmental services including street and road construction and maintenance, parks and recreation, storm water and sewage systems, water systems, public transportation systems, and other services and facilities. The administrative body of the CID, which can be the city governing authority, may levy taxes, fees and assessments within the CID, not to exceed 2.5 percent of the assessed value of the real property.

The Congress for the New Urbanism will hold its 21st annual meeting in Utah’s capital city May 29-June 1. Over 1,200 planners, architects, engineers, developers and others from around the world are expected to attend. They will share their ideas to carry out the values of the CNU charter and make cities more livable, walkable and sustainable.

Recently, CNU president John Norquist told the media that Salt Lake City is a “great example” of the New Urbanism, pointing to the fastest-growing rail system in the country, as well as the city’s planning around mass transit and its walkability.

CNU Atlanta will send a strong contingent westward, with featured speakers at the event such as local chapter founder Ellen Dunham-Jones and current local chapter president Chris Carrigan.

Also, the CNU ‘Health District’ Initiative will meet Saturday, June 1 from 12-2:00 pm.  This initiative was launched out of the CNU Atlanta chapter and CNU 18, which took place in Atlanta. Entitled, “Is Healthcare the New Retail?” the initiative is organized with assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Assistance’s Healthy Community Design and is focused on place-based health and healthcare imbedded in live/work/walk neighborhoods, for youth to seniors.  According to CNU Atlanta founder and Health Districts Initiative Chair, Laura Heery Prozes, the ’Health District’ Initiative leverages bodies of research from Dr. Larry Frank, previously at Georgia Tech, and other thought leaders previously with the CDC: Dr. Richard Jackson, Dr. Howard Frumkin and others.

Other speakers from Atlanta will include Paul Knight from Historical Concepts and Bill de St. Aubin of Sizemore Group.

Click here to see a current listing of all registered attendees.

Photo: Gary Hustwit, Urbanized

CNU Atlanta founder, Ellen Dunham-Jones, makes a featured appearance in the 2011 documentary, Urbanized, a documentary about the design of cities, and the issues and strategies behind urban design.

The feature-length movie, by filmmaker Gary Hustwit, will screen on Monday, May 13, at Georgia Tech’s Reinsch-Pierce Family Auditorium at 6:30 pm. Dunham-Jones, among many of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers providing insight in the movie, was a driving force behind the creation of the Atlanta chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism that was founded in 2006. She is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Georgia Tech.

Ellen recently commented about Urbanized, “It really is a great film for anyone who loves cities, who loves films that take them places they’ve never been, and who’s interested in hearing some well-known folks talk about cities. I’m honored to be in such great company.”

She recently appeared in a interview in Creative Loafing about her appearance in the movie in which she said:

Atlanta has some great examples of retrofitting. The Beltline and the redevelopment of Woodstock’s downtown are two wonderful cases of reinhabiting, redeveloping, and re-greening the legacy of our rail infrastructure.

The Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative and Lifelong Communities programs have and are continuing to help over 100 metro communities re-envision how to retrofit some of our auto-dependent areas into more walkable, more compact places.

She is the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.

For more information on Monday’s screening of Urbanized at Georgia Tech click here.

At this month’s T3* Meetup, Monica Campana of Living Walls will discuss the organization’s work with street art to bring life, energy and change to Atlanta.

November 15, Thursday, 5:30-7:30pm
Steel Restaurant & Lounge
950 West Peachtree Street Northwest #255, Atlanta, GA 30309 (map)

Free and open to all!

*T3 is a monthly gathering organized by the Atlanta Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU Atlanta) for architects, planners, real estate professionals and all others who are interested in our built environment.

 About Living Walls: Living Walls, The City Speaks, is an annual conference on street art and urbanism that began in August 2010 in the city of Atlanta. Along with changing the urban landscape, the Living Walls conference set out to highlight a number of problems facing the city. Living Walls did not just showcase art, but also built a platform for much-needed dialogue in the city. The 2012 conference featured 26 artists who visually activated our urban landscape in the world’s first all-female street art conference.  The five-day conference included film screenings, lectures, block parties, gallery exhibits and bike tours. Learn more about their work at their website.