Blog post changed America

Today's post takes off on another article from the AJC - we'll chalk it up as a coincidence and not a trend. 

I decided to spend the extra time taking the train in to work today and finally read an article that I've kept putting off for a while since the headline intrigued me so much (of course you may have noticed on this site that I have low standards for headlines considering the ones I've used in the past.) This article was titled "Doraville subdivision changed America."

Wait for it....wait for it....you must be wondering how a subdivision in Georgia could have changed America, right? (Ok, maybe I'm the only one.) Did someone invent some new type of cul-de-sac there? Maybe it led to a lawsuit or a major Supreme Court case. Anyway, I decided to read this article and I ended up a little disappointed. Why? Let's make a small list:

1. So this subdivision (Northwoods) was the first large-scale planned development in Georgia. Alright - that's a notable claim despite the dubious honors that Atlanta has gotten from suburbs spreading like kudzu around here.
2. Apparently some local & state officials are seeking to make this community a historic landmark because of its ranch houses and "a vision of what suburban community living could be."

Let me stop right there for a moment. I understand the importance of post-WWII residential development but once you give Levittown a historic designation shouldn't we have this category pretty much covered already? I'm sure this community is a very nice one but historic...not too certain about that. Yes, it would be good to capture the architectural elements that were used there and study how the community's social ties develop but where do we draw the line at historic? Looking at the official designation from the state's criteria (since there is a state list and a national list), I guess this community could be considered historic but I'm still not sure it sits well in my mind.

I say let's not hand out these historic designations like candy but if they want the sign let them have it (especially considering the ~30,000 national designations given out each year.) If I live in this area and want to modify my lovely little ranch house it would be a bit trickier with the requirements that come with the national designation though.

So those were my thoughts - if you have some let me know in the Comments section. Other than giving me some food for thought this morning one more positive benefit from this article is the introduction of a new tag category on the PlanMetro blog: Only in Georgia. I bet I'll get to use it a fair amount in the future.

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P.S. Apparently the folks at the AJC realized there was a slight letdown from headline to content so they changed the title of the article to "Doraville subdivision preserves American turning point." Might have skipped over this one entirely if that was the headline I originally saw though. Thanks to the AJC for giving me a valuable and practical lesson in writing headlines.

A Flood of Attention for the AJC

I've always been leery of accepting the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a big city newspaper worthy of the reputation that other big city newspapers get by default. My opinion may have been affected by comparing it to other news sources here like Creative Loafing or even from my birthplace. I think they've done a fair job of covering the Hawks (thanks to their recently departed beat writer Sekou) in recent years but a lot of times their news coverage in general just seemed to be lackluster (I might have hinted at this a few months back.)

Well today I'm going to give them credit where credit is due. If you've seen their recent articles looking back at the September floods and doing a little bit of investigative reporting then you know where I'm going with this. These articles highlight a connection that is at the heart of what this blog is meant to focus on: community planning (or lack thereof) and the effect of natural disasters on communities. In other words, bad planning turns troublesome hazards into serious disasters.

Explosive development, poor planning and neglected infrastructure have helped turn even unremarkable rainstorms into costly, property-wrecking events in metro Atlanta, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation has found.

Actually, I think the AJC writers working this beat summed things up a bit better than I just did. They found that the Army Corps of Engineers told the community of Austell as early as 1964 that it was built in a bad place. In essence the local government itself has to accept some responsibility for being in situations like 100 and 500-year floods. I doubt anyone working for the city right now though was around back then for us to point the finger at them and remove from office.

Norfolk Southern at some point thought it was wise to place an intermodal yard in Austell even though their location was at "at the lower end of the 245 square mile drainage basin of Sweetwater Creek." Several government bodies tried to stop them from using this site but their attempts were in vain even though the railroad company built retention ponds to control runoff. We'll add go ahead and add Norfolk Southern to the blame list too.

Cobb County, the Atlanta Regional Commission, the State of Georgia, and even the federal government have their own piece of blame to take on to in this for not effectively regulating storm water runoff. We say that we want property owners to control their runoff but we let GDOT, the Department of Agriculture, the Postal Service, and the CDC off the hook for paying their fair share of impact fees.

Probably the worst part of this blame pile is that we place new homes in risky areas (especially ones for families that are probably first-time homebuyers) because we want new businesses, residences, and their tax dollars to come to our communities and we don't want to bother them with expensive fees and delays to cover all of our bases. Actually, the worst part of all this is that all of the entities I just mentioned (except for renters of course) will likely receive some sort of assistance from the federal government if there is a federal declared disaster in their area, which is exactly what happened in September for Cobb and 17 other counties in Georgia. Guess where those assistance dollars come from...your pocket.

So while we continue to hear about more recent disasters in the news its still important for us to look back and see how the people that are trying to move on after previous disasters are doing now and how we can avoid this happening in the future. I had a chance to see some of the areas around Austell affected by these floods and the evidence of the disaster was hidden by normal looking subdivision entrances despite the extent of the damage. Kudos to the AJC for spending time and energy on this (knowing that it isn't easy these days to justify staff time on old issues in the newspaper industry) and I hope that people in key places are learning this lesson, albeit the hard way.

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If you're from Atlanta I'd like to hear what you think about this issue in the Comments section. If you're not from Atlanta I'd like to hear about this issue from your neck of the woods (I know this problem is bigger than just our region and state's delusional way of planning and enforcement.)

Quick Hits - Tuesday, March 2nd

It seems my most successful contributions the past few days have been of the 140 character variety rather than full posts. In that same spirit (but with a few extra characters) come take a stroll with me this morning around the World Wide Web (does anyone still use this phrase anymore?):

• MARTA cuts to the bone: I knew it was really bad when they asked about cutting weekend service back a few hours in a survey to downtown commuters last week. By the time the state is ready to provide some level of funds (finally) there may not be much of a system left.
• The White House Office of Urban Affairs has a website: Good to know, when they start making things happen let me know. The Initiatives list is pretty thin at this point.
• Census ads are popping up: There was the Super Bowl one (I wondered what this was about, too much to think about with Super Bowl on) and this one I saw during a recent Hawks game. I even heard there were some ads with Rosario Dawson in them. I'd be interested to hear your opinions on what you think of all these but whether they're silly or not isn't that big a deal (the fact that I've spent more words talking about the Census then the other links tells me they're doing their job though.)
• Chile: Sigh. Another big one this past weekend. We've talked about this before though: same hazard, different depth & strength, different resilience. I think this one diminishes the focus on Haiti in a number of ways, mainly that we now will probably have a good example of recovery and a choppy and demanding example over the next few years.

That's all for now, enjoy your Tuesday.

Blogging without Borders (Trivia Question)

As a result of the Haiti earthquake response I've found some interesting groups that seem to follow in the path of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Today I'm testing out a new feature on this page by asking you the following trivia question below - I'll do my usual type of post later on today. Go ahead and see if you can guess the right answer (without using Google...)

Which one of these groups is fake?

Never Settle for an Email

We live and work in a world today that is increasingly reliant on a wide assortment of communication tools to talk to each other. We can email someone, chat with them on Skype/Messenger/Gmail Chat/etc., Tweet someone, send a text message, or call them on a variety of devices. Some people even use a more primitive form of communication known as a face-to-face conversation. All of these communication methods present opportunities to catch someone at the right time or miss them completely in the shuffle of dealing with all of the avenues I've just mentioned. The question is which one do you use if you need to get something done quickly.

It's fairly easy to default to email as Option #1. You have a record that you actually talked to someone, you can get notification that it was received by the other party, you don't have to worry about a character limit and you can access it on a number of devices. What you lose with emails is personality and tone (despite the fact that you can throw in a variety of colorful language and exclamation points when you want to.)

Emails aren't always the best option though. In some cases you are at a disadvantage if you get someone's email address and expect to get an answer back to you in minutes or hours. That's why my motto is Never Settle for an Email (ok, if I had a motto this would be it.) Let me give you a recent example.

My organization is expecting some large shipments of shelter kits to arrive in Haiti next week to go to families in need of solutions beyond bedsheets and trees that would not last through a Wisconsin winter. We have limited warehouse space in Port-au-Prince and we've decided that it would be ideal to work through other NGOs on distribution since its not our core compentency. Regardless of who distributes them they are needed by Haitians ASAP. Our goal was to secure agreements to distribute our kits in a number of communities in a way that would allow us to minimize the need for our warehouse space in the short-term.

After doing some assessment in one community we found a few groups that we thought could accomplish this task last Friday. I talked to one international organization that same day in person and sent a follow up email over the weekend with more details. I called a second organization and after not getting through to their field contact I sent an email with the information I wanted to share with them.  I attempted to follow up with both groups on Monday but still did not reach the second group by Wednesday. Luckily I received an email from our department head that mentioned that some senior folks from our end had talked to senior folks from the organization that had not gotten back to me and made a tentative agreement for us to work together. I now had my new route of access.

I sent a second email to this organization on Wednesday and dropped some of the names mentioned in the email I received earlier. This got me a reply back that night with 2 contact emails and phone numbers and one of those people called me back the following morning.

Getting back to my point - the lesson here is one email address is not enough if its really important and needs a reaction quickly. There are caveats to this since you have to judge how far you can go depending on your previous knowledge of the recipient and knowing when to push hard and when to ease up. I know my example involved other emails (and phone is better than that if you can't get a face-to-face) but again one email is not enough.

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Photo courtesy of Mark Manalaysay via Stockvault.

Haiti Earthquake Slideshow

I wanted to take a moment this morning to share something that was shown to me yesterday since it is very good work in my opinion dealing with the one month anniversary of the Jan 12 earthquake in Haiti. A colleague of mine (Ezra Millstein) spent some time taking these shots and providing some good narration in the background.

So, without further ado here's a presentation from a real pro: Haiti Earthquake Slideshow. It's a little less than 5 minutes long.

Ezra has some really good shots from his other work around the world that might interest you on his website (www.ezramillstein.com). I'm a bit jealous at how much more sophisticated it is over my little Blogger site here but its to be expected - he's been at this for a good little while. 

Going A Bit Beyond Google Maps

Some of us like to have things explained to us verbally while others like to glean new information in print or images. We can debate over how many prefer one method over another but to save time we'll start from that point. I like to think I can go both ways but I must say I have a special fondness for the right visual spin on a topic.

I grew up having 2 parents that worked in graphic design. This did not make me an artist or even someone with one iota of visual talent. What it did do is give me an appreciation for good design and bad design. In college this appreciation evolved to the point that I had a good deal of interest in GIS and maps (not the Calvin and Hobbes kind but ones that had a practical application.) I've always wanted to do a good bit of GIS and map work but I haven't really had a chance to dabble in it (outside of a upper-level elective in college) until recently when I came down a few weeks ago to work in Haiti.

I know there are some purists out there that would say that Google Earth isn't a robust GIS tool but its pretty darn good enough for me. I'm still learning how to use it but I thought I'd share some interesting maps I've recently come across just to showcase an interest of mine:

Shelter distribution: beneficiaries and coverage (as of 11 February 2010)

OpenStreetMap Haiti (currently using this on our GPS in the field)

UNOSAT Map of Comprehensive Building Damage Assessment for Carrefour (low-res version but will still take a little while to open)

Last but not least the following site offers up some interesting maps in general: Strange Maps.

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Photo courtesy of Emile Ogez via Flickr.