August Studio Hours

Three August Studio Hours sessions took place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, August 19 – 21, at Atlanta City Studio. These Studio Hours were intended to allow the Project Team to take a step back from the mile-to-mile intricacies of the alignments and to think broadly about the RiverLands’ approaches to Equity, Ecology and Health, Safety and Accessibility.

These three Studio Hours sessions were small focus groups composed of invited experts from various fields. While the discussions were robust, they mark the start of long-term stakeholder and community engagement on these topics while the RiverLands project and team moves forward with the project. These sessions welcomed in people new to the project, so each session started with a concise overview of the RiverLands project’s goals and process thus far. On Monday, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Ph.D., MPH (National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, Spelman College) and Richard Milligan, Ph.D. (Georgia State University: Department of Geosciences) led a discussion around how to use tools, data and partnerships to approach equity in planning for the RiverLands. On Tuesday, Jessica Norris, Aiman Duckworth, and Jennifer Dowdell (Biohabitats) unpacked the methodology behind their trail suitability analysis, then opened it up for discussion with guests. On Wednesday, Erin Thoresen and Mike Sewell (Gresham Smith) led the group in two activities centered around Health, Safety and Accessibility.

Equity Studio Hours – Main Takeaways

• Lots of precedents were mentioned for preserving affordability, including the land trust model that the Beltline has been integrating, as well as inclusionary zoning and partnerships with workforce development opportunities, like Southface’s Culture-Resilience-Environment-Workforce (CREW);
• The Los Angeles River was mentioned as a precedent for thinking about to partnerships early on and engage throughout the planning process;

• The team heard concerns about job creation – opportunities to scale up existing, hyper-local workforce development projects;
• The question was raised whether the Design Team has dedicated enough resources to engaging a broad audience, and how this might be addressed in the future.

Ecology Studio Hours – Main Takeaways

• The overall purpose of this session was to gut check the suitability analysis and make site specific recommendations;
• The team reviewed trail types like boardwalks and soft surfaces; the effect of wide vs. narrow paths; and whether to bisect or trace an edge for protecting ecosystems like meadows and interior forests;
• The core resource in the area is the intact forest. Questions were raised about relative value of old growth versus new growth and how that was incorporated into the analysis;
• Participants identified a need to designate high-intensity areas and/or specific uses like on-leash dog walking areas along the future Greenway.

Health, Safety + Accessibility – Main Takeaways

• Consider emergency response and vehicle access when identifying locations for public access; think about how emergency responders will get to the greenway or other site
• Consider opportunities to measure and track potential changes in health; this is an opportunity to set some benchmarks and track progress over time
• Make the greenway adaptable and flexible – design it so that it can evolve over time (not too prescriptive)
• Design choices should reflect the built environment and take into consideration density of population and activity; where more densely populated, the trail could (should) be wider to accommodate more users; where less populated, it could be narrower and provide fewer activity points
• Where possible, plan for or recommend safe connections between parking areas and the river or trail – think about how people walking or on bike will get between cars and the trail
• Think about the density or frequency of crossing opportunities and consider placement/location of bridges accordingly