The Art of Living Well: The Auto and the Pedestrian Reconsidered In Strip Redevelopments ©
Faculty: Michael Gamble and Jude Leblanc
Course Timeline: Module II Fall Semester + Spring Semester 2003 October 12- December 7 January 5 - April 28
Number of Credit Hours: 9 total
Brief explanation of where the studio falls within the curriculum sequence: Masters Thesis Known as Masters Project within our institution, graduate students complete thesis research under the guidance of 1-2 professors in a studio setting. Topics and a study area are offered to the students in the late summer, and students decide among 3 to 4 studio platforms.
Pre-requisites to the studio: Masters Thesis requires that all required courses pertinent to the architecture curriculum be satisfied before commencing the final studio.
Approximate Number of Students: 12
Pedagogic Framework
Part I - Advanced topics in theory of architectural production focusing upon contemporary ethical dilemmas and the development of critical positions of design and deals with situating and applying the individual critical position toward research within the context of issues of a chosen Master's Project Studio - 8 weeks. Part II Architectural thesis projects emphasizing the integration of disciplinary and professional skills through the formulation of architectural propositions grounded in critical, speculative, and creative research. Thesis projects are conducted within Masters Project Studios focusing upon changing topics framed within a variety of critical and ideological constructs. 16 weeks
Project Overview
Our multidisciplinary team has just completed phase I of a grant to develop an analytical framework and design alternatives which seek to allay the gap between the automobile and the pedestrian in strip developments. The chosen study area is Buford Highway, Atlanta, Georgia, the most ethnically diverse corridor in the city - home to Atlanta's Asian and Hispanic population. The highway is unique with it's own special demographics and characteristics yet is representative of the major urban problems of many contemporary cities: ubiquitous strip developments that are single use, low density and auto oriented. Our hypothesis begins with an assumed link between health and the built environment. We propose that the relationship among vehicular/pedestrian circulation systems, parking and building affects health at the scales of the individual, the social unit of the neighborhood, and the largest ecological system. Furthermore, the investigation of the area was prompted by two additional observations. First, the population around Buford Highway, like the general population of Atlanta, continues to increase. Second, Buford Highway is an area of high pedestrian fatalities. This high fatality rate is probably due to the fact that Buford Highway was originally designed as an automobile corridor with essentially no pedestrian infrastructure. At least 24% of the Buford Highway corridor inhabitants do not own a car.
Core Objectives
- Introducing graduate students to applied real-world projects and the idiosyncrasies inherent in the overlap between policy and building.
- Formulating resolutions to difficult urban design problems in the context of a suburban greyfield rather than creating designs in a greenfield, clean slate context -Formulating design solutions in the context of the incumbent populations to avoid displacement and negative affects associated with gentrification
- Creation of designs and plans to be evaluated by different non-designer constituent agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Georgia Dept of Transportation, local governments, business groups, et.al.
Clients and/or user consultants involved
Georgia Tech Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development Center for Disease Control City of Doraville, GA DeKalb County, GA Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Program Georgia Tech Architecture Program Georgia Tech Center for Geographic Information Systems Georgia Department of Transportation
Approach to the Proposed Studio Process and Content
Interaction between the automobile and the pedestrian in an urban context in relation to urban design is a subject that is attracting more and more attention. The attention is not just at the level of transportation infrastructure users, but also at the level of public policy, city planning, engineering, urban design and public health. While the design of streets and the management of growth have been issues that have largely been relegated to municipalities and state government agencies in the past without much debate, many issues surrounding design choices and planning are causing many constituencies to question current practices from a variety of perspectives.
Buford Highway from the City of Atlanta through the municipality of Doraville forms a corridor that makes a great case study from many standpoints. It can be described as a corridor that made the transformation from a post World War Two rural highway to a 1960's suburban arterial road in terms of the design of the road, the demographics of its inhabitants and users and the strip style development constructed. Starting in the late 1980's the corridor began to change again. New constituencies in the form of immigrant and migrant workers as well as refugees started using the cheap available apartment housing located on Buford Highway. When family members or friends immigrated they followed to Buford Highway as well. The result is a population boom and one of the most ethnically diverse corridors in the United States. Soon a disconnect began to form between the inhabitants of Buford Highway and the design of the corridor. Buford Highway was once the primary means of traveling from Atlanta to the northeastern suburbs and beyond. The construction of the Northeast Expressway (Interstate 85) to the east and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to the west as faster connections has largely relieved it of this function. The design of the corridor is largely automobile oriented both in right-of-way design and the architecture of the developments on it. The facility largely lacks sidewalks despite being the most intensively walked suburban corridor in Atlanta; again a legacy of design of another era.
In the past problems such as these would be dealt with exclusively as traffic-engineering problems pertaining to primarily traffic flow and motorist safety. In the last ten years other issues pertaining to this disconnect and the need for paradigm modification in the way transportation provision and growth management currently exist in relation to built form have increasingly garnered public and research attention. Concerns relating to public health such as high rates of pedestrian fatalities resulting from the absence of pedestrian infrastructure, sedentary lifestyles and increasing rates of obesity in car-oriented suburbs, air quality concerns, psychological isolation, social parity and environmental justice, urban design and aesthetic concerns, connectivity models, & density and sustainability must now be taken into consideration when redesigning arterial suburban strip corridors.
Numerous studies that are now emerging are connecting the risks of sedentary lifestyle and increased rates of obesity with auto-oriented low-density development. A new link has emerged between health and the built environment. Walking is the easiest exercise, it requires no special equipment and if it can be integrated into a daily routine it seems to have the greatest impact. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health has correlated poor community design with health problems related to physical activity levels, respiratory health and air pollution, children's health, injury rates, mental health, social capital, accessibility, elders health and water quality issues.
Health issues pertaining to the study are qualified at three levels. The first issue, individual health, addresses health relating to urban form at the individual level such as exercise rates, obesity concerns and psychological isolation. The next health concern level functions at the social level, looking at the relationship between urban form and social issues such as environmental justice, transportation access, safety and housing. The final health concern level is at the environmental level addressing issues such as air-quality and sustainability in urban design and transportation systems. This level is linked to mode-split and vehicle miles traveled as it relates to urban and transportation design. I simplest terms, if people have the ability (with supporting infrastructure and land-use) to use non-motorized transport or transit to make trips in a denser urban environment it will lead to a reduction in trip length, time, and hopefully lead to improvements in air-quality. In addition it has the potential to increase trip chaining so that multiple trips and consequent increases in VMT can be avoided. If the supermarket is on the way home from the bus stop, an individual can make a quick stop to pick up daily groceries on the way home, there-by not making a special trip. A set of applied analytical tools for approaching the generic suburban strip and retrofitting it to accommodate new growth in an urbanizing context are needed. These tools take architecture, planning, engineering, safety, and public policy into consideration to develop prototypical models that can be applied. The strength of the Buford Highway case is its diversity and applicability. Buford Highway exhibits many conditions that are universally applicable to corridors around the United States, particularly in suburban Sunbelt contexts. The Buford Highway corridor is viewed locally as the poster-child for poor design, so if tools are created for correcting the disconnect they should have a large universal applicability factor. This Design Studio will take into account the analytical framework and master plans developed in phase I of the sponsored research described above (now complete, with funding for phase II currently beig sought), with Masters project students operating on various sites and scales within the context of the core objectives listed above. Student work will become a part of the larger research document and formatted to appeal to various local and national constituencies.
Responses to Reviewer’s Questions
- There is no direct response to the criteria, although the problem
that will form the focus of the studies is of great magnitude and international
concern. Assure that there is direct involvement with the community, not
just through experts.
Community contact is already underway from several different perspectives. The director of the Georgia Institute of Technology Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development is in the process of disseminating phase I of our research. We will meet with the Dekalb County Chamber of Commerce as well as the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) within the next month to discuss our initial findings and begin promoting urban design strategies for the two chosen study areas. One student enrolled in the Masters Project Studio is already very familiar with the study area and is currently conducting research from inside the community. Additionally, one of our GRA’s is conducting interviews with different constituencies within the community, working to establish narrative specificity and cross-cultural links between the infrastructure improvements and the community. A 2000 word description of the goals of this research project is currently being translated into Spanish and Korean. We envisage several key meetings with different community groups throughout the design studio.
- Assure that students have experiences that will enable them to consider
the social and environmental needs of various subgroups, such as people
who are culturally diverse, children; elderly, people with disabilities
of all ages, and socially disadvantaged people.
This is a challenging problem grounded in the everyday experiences of the inhabitants of the Buford Highway community, many of which are socially and economically disadvantaged. The corridor is a place that many of us pass through on our ways home, to shop or eat (very good food!). As described in the initial proposal, engagement with the social and environmental needs of various subgroups is the crux of the argument at many different levels. Ethnic make-up of those students enrolled in the studio, I feel there will be a variety of palpable, culturally diverse experiences revealed by and to the students/faculty throughout the course of the work.
- Assure that there is a critique process that is the useful and supportive
to the students.
Our students will have a variety of critics throughout the studio: members of the community and community/county officials; the state DOT; the previous City Planning Commissioner of the City of Atlanta, now on our faculty; the current director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development who was the previous head of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRETA); the director of the Architecture Program at Tech, a leader in the field of suburban growth study and New Urbanism; distinguished faculty; and committed professionals in the field of social science and health. Our intention is to invite key members of the CDC to participate in at least one review with the community.
For more information, contact Michael Gamble at michael.gamble@arch.gatech.edu and Jude Leblanc at jude.leblanc@arch.gatech.edu.
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Citation: Gamble, Michael & Leblanc, Jude (2003). The Art of Living Well: The Auto and the Pedestrian Reconsidered in Strip Redevelopments ©. Retrieved (Enter date here), from Universal Design Education Online web site: http://www.udeducation.org/teach/asj/gamble_leblanc.asp
