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Sunday, August 31, 2008
A note from the editor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is Maria Saporta’s last column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Maria has decided to take a voluntary buy-out, ending a stellar 27-year journalism career at the AJC, 17 years as a business columnist.
The AJC is a much richer newspaper because of Maria’s ability to work her sources to get scoops about the Atlanta business community and tell stories about the leaders who shape this town.
We wish Maria the best as she moves on to new endeavors.
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We must aspire to make Atlanta as great as it can be
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If we were to time travel to 2020, would we find the Atlanta region in disarray?
Would we see a pollution-infested city with crowded highways, void of parks and natural forests? Would the region be a place of haphazard developments with multiple local governments making independent decisions that don’t relate to their neighbors?
Would there be a disconnect among citizens — either by race, wealth, ethnicity or comfort? Would we find a region within a hostile state, a metro area fractured by a division of urban, suburban and exurban communities?
An alternative vision exists.
We could travel to the future and find a vibrant region filled with people on sidewalks, hopping on street cars, enjoying parks, living in town centers connected by transit and greenways. We could find communities where all kinds of people are living, working and playing side by side — with little regard to age, income, race or ethnicity.
It’s all a matter of what we aspire to be.
One of the key builders of Atlanta — architect/developer John Portman — gave a vision shaped by philosophy and history.
“I want Atlanta to come together, not only physically but socially,” Portman said after a talk on Thursday. “I want Atlanta to realize that it’s a unique place on the planet and can be whatever it wants to be. But we have got to have the desire. We have to believe in Atlanta like we did in the 1960s. Then we had an incredible belief in the kind of city we wanted it to become.”
Back in the 1960s, then-Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. had a “Platform for Progress” — to steer the city toward the future. He called for a modern rail transit system, affordable housing, an enlightened view toward integration, the development of an international city, a home for professional sports and an area attractive to new companies and investments.
So what would be today’s Platform for Progress?
“I want Atlanta to be a 24-hour city,” said Portman, who designed much of the city’s skyline. “We have got to develop more people-friendly environments, which includes parks, streetcars and sidewalks.”
Arthur Blank, a philanthropist, co-founder of Home Depot and major owner of the Atlanta Falcons, said “We can’t give up” on projects like the Beltline, the Peachtree streetcar, ample clean water and green space.
“We’ve got to invest in Atlanta,” Blank said. “The quality-of-life issues are major, major problems. We have got to pay the price and get ahead of those problems. The choice we have is that we can become an average city or a great city.”
Blank said the state needs to help address issues in the Atlanta region, which accounts for about half of Georgia’s population and about 75 percent of its economy.
“We can’t have a state where the governor doesn’t focus on the needs of the region,” Blank said. “Atlanta is the heartbeat of this state. We need unique political leaders who have the vision and moral courage to take a long-term view on what would make Atlanta a great city.”
And that vision needs broad acceptance, according to Penny McPhee, president of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
“People outside of Atlanta have to think we are a great city,” she said. “And the least of us in Atlanta also have to think we are a great city.”
Longtime minority builder Herman Russell would like Atlanta to build upon its reputation as a “versatile city with people of all walks of life; a city where people are welcome and see an opportunity to get ahead.”
Within that vision, Russell said, we need investment in the arts, including a new symphony hall and the proposed Center for Civil and Human Rights.
When we spoke, Russell was in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. He had just visited the Black American West Museum and rode back to his hotel on Denver’s light rail system.
“It was free,” Russell said. “I thought: ‘Gee, we need this in Atlanta.’ ”
We do need streetcars, along the Peachtree spine, the Beltline and on routes connecting our city’s top attractions. We also need viable alternatives to the automobile: Commuter rail, high-speed rail and implementation of the regional Transit Planning Board’s Concept 3 plan would give us that.
On our major streets in Atlanta and our regional town centers, we need wide sidewalks with well-marked crosswalks, buried power lines and an active street life of stores, restaurants and galleries close to homes and offices.
We need to get our major festivals — such as the Atlanta Dogwood Festival — back to Piedmont Park where they belong. We need to protect our trees and forests from overzealous clear-cutters and developers by giving our arborists the support they need.
We need to preserve our history, including special places and buildings that remind us from where we have come. And we need to conserve and maintain our green spaces to give people places where they can escape from life’s stress.
We need to support our educational institutions for the sake of our future generations, encouraging Atlanta’s emergence as a center for urban universities.
And we need state and local leaders — from political, philanthropic and business circles — who will work hard to lift our region from mediocrity to greatness.
“Atlanta has so many great people,” Russell said. “I don’t think we’ll sit back and let Atlanta go to hell.”
Let’s prove him right. Let’s transform Atlanta into an extraordinary city of the future.
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