Tim Keane interview, October 2015
Atlanta’s planning commissioner Tim Keane has taken a job in another city. Reflecting on his years here, I recall what a wonderful spokesman he was for good urbanism — something that we definitely needed.
It was always a pleasure to hear him talk about remaking the public realm of Atlanta’s streets, or focusing new development into better directions.
I knew as soon as I saw this tweet from Keane that he was a kindred spirit and a force for good. It’s a photo he took of Courtland Street in Downtown Atlanta just before he started his job as commissioner. He was obviously dumbstruck by the sight of 'car sewer' streets like this in the historic center of the city, and took it as a call to arms.
Keane was kind enough to sit down with me after he arrived in 2015 and chat about urbanism. Here’s a transcript of his answers to a couple of my questions.
[Me:] How can the city address the problem of what I call “drive-to urbanism,” where you have little pockets of walkable density that aren’t connected to each other or to the rest of the city by any means – at least not in a comfortable and safe way – other than car?
[Keane:] The step that will address the issue you’re raising is a complete rethinking of the streets. Not in a small way but in a big way. Not, “should we repair the sidewalk and put in the ADA ramp,” but to utterly think of the right of way as a different thing.
The streets in Atlanta, with very few exceptions, are completely maxed out for the car. We’ve scraped out every bit of the right of way, over many years, for cars. And for cyclists and pedestrians it’s a bit unnerving. That’s something we’re really going to need to face over the next few years, having to carve out space from our streets – from the cars and for the others.
The quality of life in our city, going forward, is completely dependent on the way we can remake our streets for something other than cars – for walking, for cycling. Whereas before we thought the only way to get our quality of life higher was to get the congestion down and get the cars through the intersection faster, now it’s the opposite of that. And not in the suburbs, where you’ll probably want to still eke out every bit of space for cars; but in the city.
The city can’t be a better suburb than the suburbs. All we can do is be a better city. We’ve got that market. We’re the city. Well, what does it mean to be a better city? What it means is that you can walk and ride your bike and get on a bus or a train for some things. Let’s take Marietta Street and Howell Mill Road. Those streets could be remade into streets where you’d love to ride your bike or go for a walk.
And this includes people who drive everywhere and never get out of their car. We all share this. This is not an us versus them thing. You might drive to every single thing you do. You might drive two blocks to the drug store.
The issue, though, is that your trip two blocks to the drug store is going to get more difficult whether we remake the streets for bikes and peds and transit or not. As a matter of fact you might argue that it’ll get even worse if we don’t because not only you – who wants to drive two blocks to the drug store – but everybody else who’d rather walk or bike has to drive. It’s as simple as that.
Do you think that’s something that has to be sold to Atlantans as far as winning over hearts and minds on this issue?
Oh my gosh, it’s a huge job. I mean it’s just been proven so many times. This is not something we made up.
And what we’re really talking about is you’ve got in places like West Midtown or in lots of places like Ponce City Market where things are getting denser – but what about the urbanism? That means the streets. Yeah, we’re getting denser, but is it becoming an urban place?
I would argue that the private sector in many cases is doing a fantastic job. If you look at Atlanta compared to other places just in the south – because in every city people are building stuff like this to some degree – but if you compare Atlanta to what’s going on in Charlotte or Raleigh or other fast growing areas, the quality of the private sector [here] is high, comparatively. Everybody’s trying to innovate architecturally.
The issue is the public side of it – the public realm and coming to grips with that kind of remaking. I mean, you’ve got the private realm remaking former industrial properties and commercial properties, remaking them into denser, more urban style forms of living. But what about the public realm?
And by “public realm,” you’re mainly talking about the right of way of streets?
I’m mainly talking about streets. The reality is that streets are the most prevalent and significant public spaces we have. The city is pursuing the remaking of Martin Luther King Boulevard on the west side. And that should become a great public space.
And when it comes to these things I’m not necessarily talking about big streetscape projects where you’re really fancying the street up. That’s not the point. It’s not to be tricky about the streets. It’s to be meaningful about how you allocate space on our streets for everyone. And I mean the cars, the pedestrians, the cyclists, the transit vehicles. Inevitably, what that means, is that the pure right of way that has been devoted to just cars goes down. Perhaps significantly.
Chicago has done a great job on some of their streets in downtown. They are carving out space for bikes and transit for this very reason: “We can’t beat the suburbs of Chicago on driving but we [meaning downtown Chicago] can beat them on everything other than driving.” It’s an economic development issue for them. They’ve invested in their bike infrastructure so that jobs would come there.
We’ve gotta be really aggressive about bikes because people who are moving to cities, they expect to either not own a car or to not use it that much.
