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Title details for Where We Want to Live by Ryan Gravel - Available

Where We Want to Live

Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities

by Ryan Gravel
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available

**Winner, Phillip D. Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment**
**A Planetizen Top Planning Book for 2017**
After decades of sprawl, many American city and suburban residents struggle with issues related to traffic (and its accompanying challenges for our health and productivity), divided neighborhoods, and a non-walkable life. Urban designer Ryan Gravel makes a case for how we can change this. Cities have the capacity to create a healthier, more satisfying way of life by remodeling and augmenting their infrastructure in ways that connect neighborhoods and communities. Gravel came up with a way to do just that in his hometown with the Atlanta Beltline project. It connects 40 diverse Atlanta neighborhoods to city schools, shopping districts, and public parks, and has already seen a huge payoff in real estate development and local business revenue.
Similar projects are in the works around the country, from the Los Angeles River Revitalization and the Buffalo Bayou in Houston to the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis and the Underline in Miami. In Where We Want to Live, Gravel presents an exciting blueprint for revitalizing cities to make them places where we truly want to live.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 6, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781466890534
      • File size: 13891 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781466890534
      • File size: 14449 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      January 1, 2016
      An autobiographical account of the reclamation of Atlanta's Beltline and its potential contribution to building a new urban culture for this century. Gravel, a civil engineer and architect, knows the story from the inside. He helped draft the 1999 proposal to build a transit line on the 22-mile loop of abandoned railroad tracks that encircles Atlanta's older neighborhoods and separates them from the outer suburbs and more modern sprawl. The plan was intended "to protect and revive historic neighborhoods, facilitate access to affordable housing, accommodate an inflow of new residents, redevelop available land, and provide alternative and desperately needed means of transportation." The proposal won support from leading local officials and began to give new life to institutions like the city's Neighborhood Planning Units. The NPUs, a legacy of the civil rights movement, helped give voice to residents in the city's neighborhoods. But this story is about far more than just a political campaign in support of a technical idea. Various citizens and organizations brought further proposals, adding a greenway trail, building new parks, executing brownfield remediation, and more. The idea became a living part of the culture of the city and its people, as well as a focus for their aspirations, well before the groundbreaking ceremony. Gravel attributes the success of the project to certain community catalysts that create "larger opportunities and make comprehensive change more palatable." Through the process, the author became familiar with other projects underway in cities around the world, including Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. Gravel and his cohorts are constantly fighting urban sprawl, and Atlanta's Beltline is helping to create walkable spaces that break down the segregation of neighborhoods into residential and commercial areas, divisions enforced by automobiles and roadways. An uplifting story about what people can accomplish working for a common purpose they make their own.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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