My Athens

My "Athens Rising" Archive

For a few months last year, I helped write the Athens Rising column--an opinion  column about local  development, planning and architecture issues--for Flagpole Magazine, the weekly alternative newspaper here in Athens, Ga.

The column's main writer--Kevan Williams--had asked me to write the column every other week while he traveled out West to places like Portland, Ore. And that's what I did--having fun, mostly--from August through December 2010.

Kevan's back in town now, and I'm off traveling abroad and happy--for now at least--to be free of deadlines.

Here are the columns I wrote:

• August, 25, 2010:  Future of Downtown Athens

• September, 8, 2010: A Look at a Complex Zoning Decision

• September 22, 2010: Exploring an Overlooked Neighborhood

• October 6, 2010: Adding Affordable Housing, Avoiding Gentrification

• October 20, 2010: Tapping Students for Downtown Density

• November 3, 2010: Grocery Store Dreams, Part 1

• November 17, 2010: Grocery Store Dreams, Part 2

• December 1, 2010: Dilapidated Buildings, Factories and Cities

 

Think Locally, Act State-ly, and Other Good Ideas

Think locally, act state-ly. It's all fine and dandy to get hot and bothered by who's going to be mayor and who's going to be on the commission, says Johnathan McGinty, but unless more progressives are sent to the State House which exercises lots of control over local governments, lots of important local changes simply won't happen. Want to provide property tax relief to low-income homeowners? Want the state DOT to start practicing a "complete streets" policy? Want the blue laws changed so we can get a full-service grocery store downtown? Help progressives get elected to the State House not just from Athens, but from districts throughout the state. It's a good suggestion. I'll be keeping it in mind as I decide where to make my political contributions next campaign season. (Don't blame Johnathan for the "act state-ly" abomination--he refrained.)

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"Worse than I remembered." That's how Pete McCommons summed up his recent trip down memory lane to the tense times preceding the admission of African-American students Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes to the University of Georgia. His memory was refreshed after reading We Shall Not Be Moved: The Desegregation of the University of Georgia by Robert Pratt.  It's a book McCommons recommends, and one I'll be reading soon.

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How about something even better? In his most recent Athens Rising column in Flagpole, Kevan Williams highlights positive developments in Athens, but he pushes a little--asking for more. About the new river overlook, he asks: why not a full pedestrian bridge? About a new effort to convert blighted apartment complexes into affordable housing, he asks if the new low-income residents will have to drive or take long bus rides to get to grocery stores. These are good questions--questions that seek to enhance the connectivity and day-to-day practicality of the city we live in. Does it connect? Does it help with daily life?  We should always ask these questions, even if we can't always realize them as fully as we'd like to.

First Impressions

Here’s a small collection of my first impressions of Athens, Ga., my new hometown since May 2008. I collect these jottings I made earlier now—while they’re relatively fresh—mainly because I’m interested to see how my thinking about the city will change over time. They’re not listed in any particular order. In the service of accurately recording them, any contradictions, incoherencies and superficialities have been left intact.

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Exuberant, subversive vegetation. Front yard gardens invade and colonize swaths of sidewalk surface. Tree roots attack from below. If people suddenly vanished from here, the plants would overthrow the pavement within a month.

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Pockmarked by poverty. Public housing projects here, there, everywhere.

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At night, there’s a casual romance to the place. You see lots of couples strolling together. Strings of lights sparkle from many porches. There’s almost always music floating in the air from somewhere.

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Two varieties of nonchalance are present here. 1. A pleasant informality perked with attentiveness and gently constrained by tact and patience. 2. A self-consciously cavalier attitude about promptness mixed with a distaste for precision.

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You can apparently keep discovering yet another really good place to eat here.

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The music of Athens itself: metallic drone of the cicadas, rumble of trains, almost inaudible trumpets of the Naval Supply Corps School, bursts of dogs barking, ambushes of party noises.

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Rusty water towers. Steaming ravines choked with kudzu. Lines of tall, fat cumulus clouds moving slowly on the horizon. Reclining cats, panting.

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A core of charm surrounded by yuck.

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Blacks and whites live in closer proximity here than in some other places I’ve lived. Yet, even more so than other places, the two communities seem to live parallel—not intersecting—lives in the same space. Awkward.

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Smart mayor. Helpful city employees. Citizens responded quickly, effectively to drought. Intelligent coverage of local issues, especially in Flagpole.

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