Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities

by Ryan Gravel

Overview

**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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250078254
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/15/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

RYAN GRAVEL is the founding principal of Sixpitch and creator of the Atlanta Beltline, the reinvention of a 22-mile circle of railroads that began as the subject of his master's thesis. In September 2016, he was awarded the inaugural Judy Turner Prize. A designer, planner, and writer, he is increasingly called to speak to an international audience on topics as wide ranging as brownfield remediation, transportation, public health, affordable housing, and urban regeneration. Gravel lives with his family in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xi

1 As Many Gains as Losses 1

2 "Infra-Culture" 13

3 Cycles of Change 23

4 There's Nothing Wrong with Sprawl 41

5 Tough Love 55

6 An Idea with Ambition 77

7 A Wide-Open Place 89

8 An Expandable Vision 109

9 Breaking Ground on Hope 127

10 Catalyst Infrastructure 137

11 An Infrastructure for Health and Well-Being 179

12 An Infrastructure for Economic Prosperity 187

13 An Infrastructure for Equity 195

14 An Infrastructure for Civic Identity 207

15 Up Ahead 217

Notes 225

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

"This is a local story, but it echoes one of the grand themes in contemporary city-building: the transformation of industrial relics into new public amenities...Gravel makes a case – as cogent as any I’ve seen – for why governments need to favour this form of development and stop subsidizing sprawl." —The Globe and Mail

"An uplifting story about what people can accomplish working for a common purpose they make their own." —Kirkus Reviews

"What if infrastructure was viewed not as something over-budget and/or in need of repair but as a conduit to creating better, more livable cities? In Where We Want to Live, Ryan Gravel makes a passionate case for infrastructure as catalyst, arguing that our collective imaginations and energy can transform the places we live in. Absolutely inspiring." - Allison Arieff, Contributing Columnist, The New York Times

“Crisp and smart. Where do we want to live? Ryan Gravel, who will likely be remembered as one of our nation’s highest impact urban designers, has some remarkable answers from his nearly two decade journey exploring the topic. At a time when sustainability, race relations, and economic growth seem more perplexing than ever, Ryan’s ideas address all of these issues through a thoughtful approach to the development of our cities. As a doctor, I am also well aware of the tremendous health benefits a walking city can have on our health. Decreases in blood pressure and obesity and increases in connectedness, happiness and joy. I don’t always think about these issues on a spectacular day of running or biking on the Atlanta Beltline with my three daughters. I simply know this what a real city can feel like.” —Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent at CNN

“Ryan Gravel’s new book starts with the premise that big infrastructure ideas can yield huge economic and social payoffs. With the spirt of Daniel Burnham’s famous “make no little plans,” Gravel shows how his concept for the Atlanta Beltline is changing everything there, becoming a model for how all metropolitan areas can achieve transformative change. The Beltline is the most important infrastructure project in the country today, linking rich and poor neighborhoods to each other and to transit, and sparking billions of private sector investment already and tens of billions to come. Just as every metro area in the country adopted some form of belt highway, every metro will built a Beltline…surprisingly, Atlanta is doing it first. A hopeful book with achievable goals.” —Christopher B. Leinberger, The Charles Bendit Distinguished Scholar and Research Professor, George Washington University School of Business

“In a time of political complexity Ryan Gravel delivers with a beautifully written call-to-action for more responsible and inclusive infrastructure in our cities and metropolitan regions.”– Nathaniel Smith, Founder & Chief Equity Officer, Partnership for Southern Equity

From the Publisher

2015-12-20
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.

Kirkus Reviews