Upcoming Elections in Atlanta

I have found this article on Atlanta Journal Constitution Online about suburban sprawl in Atlanta. It argues that contrary to its vast size, Atlanta still has politics and policies of a small town. With the upcoming elections, candidates are not offering anything new but raising taxes, both liberals and conservatives to lower urban sprawl. Another interesting point that the author makes is that the commercial and residential downtown of Metro Atlanta is somewhere between Cumberland and Perimeter Malls, which means that what is called uptown today is the very center of commercial activity and residences, which is pretty apalling.

Can Amado

Gentrification

Having talked anout Urban Decay, I felt the necessity of mentioning gentrification in the blog. Gentrification is defined as the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces earlier usually poorer residents.

Gentrification generally raises the property values and general look of a neighborhood, generally in urban centers. It is generally thought that with the rise in property values, the lower-income residents leave so there is a loss of the greater community compare to the gain in property value. However, it is argued is a Usa Today article that gentrification makes everyone better off. This is true simply because old residents dont get to move as it is said to and new residents that coem in bring wealth and liveliness to the neighborhood.

Can Amado

Urban Decay in Atlanta

According to Wikipedia, urban decay is the sociological process whereby a city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude, with depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape.

Although it is said to become better, I have observed some terrible examples of urban decay in Downtown Atlanta. Most streets around Underground Atlanta are barren and desolate with creepy buildings around. Buildings on those streets look like ghost town buildings that we see on movies. I felt bad for the city of Atlanta because although it is developing rapidly, all the wealth is flowing to the suburbs and no urban culture like in Europe or in San Francisco can be created where artist and wealthy communities reside downtown.

Below is a photograph of the abandoned Medical Arts Buliding just south of I-20 in downtown Atlanta, in a very central location but left alone for decades.

Can Amado

New York Mania

Although I have been to NYC once before, I have fallen in love with New York on thanksgiving break. So I decided to look for blogs about New York. While I was looking for blogs, I found http://www.nycbloggers.com/, a site dedicated to hosting blogs of New Yorkers. Blogs were sort out according to where the authors live and were shown on the subway map. The subway is of utmost importance to New Yorkers, and this map proves how people are categorized by which subways stop they are living near.

Can Amado

Can cemeteries be good, ever?

On thanksgiving break I travelled to New York City to visit a friend of mine who moved there. While I was planning for the trip, I was looking for interesting places to visit, different than the usuak tourist spots like Fifth Avenue, Soho and Statue of Liberty. I found a very interesting blog called Forgotten NY. In relation to our blog adn how it may relate to Forgotten Ny, I found an interesting post about suburban sprawl in Staten Island borough of NYC. According to this article, the old cemeteries of Staten Island are very valuable green spots due to rising suburban sprawl and dimininsihing green spaces. I personally have never liked cemeteries nor enjoyed being in them. However, looking from this perspective, cemeteries are public green spaces that are open to everyone, a serene oasis in the middle of suburbia or in dense urban centres, just like the Trinity Church Cemetery in the Financial District at Manhattan.

Can Amado

Smart Growth

For the final post, I found a site that reviews a plan to make urban areas more compact and densely populated, called "Smart Growth". Following is the summary of some arguments and counterarguments of "Smart Growth".

• Farmland is being lost due to urbanization. However, most of the farmland lost is due to productivity rather than urbanization and there is no real threat to the food supply.

• Green spaces are being threatened by urban expansion. However more land is preserved in parks than is destroyed by urbanization.

• Densely populated urban areas reduce traffic, yet data shows that congestion is less common in areas where the population is less dense.

• Densely populated urban areas provide alternate methods of transportation thus limiting the dependence on cars. However for the alternate method of transit to be efficient more than for a small portion, it would require a more extensive network and cover a larger area for most cities.
  

• Dense urban areas reduce travel times, yet data shows that travel times are shorter in areas that aren't as densely populated.

• Dense urban areas reduce air pollution, yet data shows that air pollution is less where urban areas aren't as densely populated.

I guess this goes to show that compacting urban areas is not necessarily a good thing and data supports the exact opposite and actually having less densely populated areas is better.

P.S. Have a great Thanksgiving break!

Vincent Louis

Carthago delenda est!

The city of Carthage, modern day Tunisia, was a great and powerful city that rivaled the might of the Roman Empire in ancient times. The navy was the largest and most remarkable aspect of Carthage and is also what made them so great a force to be reckoned with. The ports of Carthage were designed to be very efficient and was sheltered so that there was very little wake in the harbor.There were two harbors: one to house the navy ships and one to house the trade vessels. There were a multitude of docks which made trade easy and efficient with other nations which in turn created a large sum of wealth which funded the vast armies. The city was built around a high citadel and contained a necropolis, theatres, marketplaces, and religious areas which show that Carthage was very cultured and advanced.

Vincent Louis