Cities like Atlanta, that have grown up in the age of the automobile and air conditioning, are making efforts to green their environmentally unfriendly buildings and spaces, explains Emily Badger.
Badger points to the dual curses of the car and the air conditioner, as causing Southern cities to evolve into places with congested and sprawling interstates and centralized air enclosed buildings with small windows and no natural air flow.
"It's the difference between a city that has grown up in the automobile age and a city that has grown up before the automobile age," says Paula Vaughan, the co-director in Atlanta of the Sustainable Design Initiative at the architecture firm Perkins+Will. Older cities are inherently compact and walkable (and further on their way to sustainability) because no one was driving anywhere when they were built.
Atlanta and its younger Southern counterparts are looking to change their unsustainable ways, however. "The downtown business district has launched a Better Buildings Challenge in which property owners are pledging to reduce their energy and water consumption by 20 percent by 2020." And as of this spring, "Midtown now has a 'greenprint' – a kind of sustainability blueprint that civic leaders hope will lead the neighborhood to become the 'South's first eco-district' (following a model of existing neighborhood-scale plans in Portland and Seattle)." The proposal lays out inclusion of higher-performance buildings, more green spaces and better-connected streets with Zipcar stations and walkable sidewalks.
According to Badger, the city has already made steps to rebuild their urban form and have retrofitted numerous buildings for energy efficiency, but the Big Peach still a ways to go. "People still have that notion of sitting in the highway in your car in the 90-degree heat to get to work," Vaughan says. "We're really changing that. I think it's going to take a while before people in other cities start recognizing that. But yeah, word is getting out."
FULL STORY: How to Green Southern Cities Built in the Age of Cars and Air Conditioning

Trump Administration Could Effectively End Housing Voucher Program
Federal officials are eyeing major cuts to the Section 8 program that helps millions of low-income households pay rent.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

Ken Jennings Launches Transit Web Series
The Jeopardy champ wants you to ride public transit.

Driving Equity and Clean Air: California Invests in Greener School Transportation
California has awarded $500 million to fund 1,000 zero-emission school buses and chargers for educational agencies as part of its effort to reduce pollution, improve student health, and accelerate the transition to clean transportation.

Congress Moves to End Reconnecting Communities and Related Grants
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee moved to rescind funding for the Neighborhood Equity and Access program, which funds highway removals, freeway caps, transit projects, pedestrian infrastructure, and more.

From Throughway to Public Space: Taking Back the American Street
How the Covid-19 pandemic taught us new ways to reclaim city streets from cars.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
Ada County Highway District
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service