The 'City Design Project' Aims to Make Atlanta an Intentional City

Two of the highest-profile planners in the city of Atlanta, Tim Keane and Ryan Gravel, have teamed up to lead a creative visioning process that could help lead Atlanta to a new era of planning and development.

1 minute read

May 24, 2017, 6:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Piedmont Park Atlanta

Piedmont Park, in Atlanta. | ciapix / Shutterstock

An Atlanta magazine article by Thomas Wheatley profiles the work of Atlanta Planning Commissioner Tim Keane and urban designer Ryan Gravel (famous for thinking up the idea for the Atlanta BeltLine) in making Atlanta a more intentional city.

"For the past 17 months, he and Ryan Gravel…have been working on something called the City Design Project, a kind of overarching vision for how the city should look and feel in the coming decades," writes Wheatley. "Over the next year, Keane and Gravel say, the project will start to take shape as its findings guide plans covering transportation, urban ecology, and housing—as well as the multiyear overhaul of the city’s zoning code, which has not been updated since the early 1980s."

Wheatley describes the findings and organizing principles behind the City Design Project, and teases the remaining question of what it will take for the process to bear fruit in the Atlanta of the future.

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