Best of 2020: The Corner
For many folks—including Strong Towns staff members, and including founder and president Chuck Marohn (he wrote about it here)—once you start seeing our cities through a “Strong Towns lens,” there’s no going back. It’s like scales falling from your eyes. As one of our board members put it, “Once you learn the truth about the Suburban Experiment, you can’t unlearn it. You can’t stop seeing it. It drives you crazy, and it doesn’t let you go.”
I love how Genevieve Barber describes her own experience in this article first published back in August: “For me, learning the basic Strong Towns message has been like filling my pocket with questions. I can no longer step onto the street without them.” Barber tells the story of standing at a neighborhood intersection (“the meeting of two stroads”) and asking questions about it—about what it is now, and what it could be: Is it building wealth? Do people struggle there? And more. Her article is also a powerful reminder to me that having access to questions like these may not be enough if I don’t slow down enough to actually pay attention. — John Pattison, Content Manager
Memorial Drive and Boulevard. Source: Google Maps
The corner of Memorial Drive and Boulevard, a stone’s throw from Downtown Atlanta, is an unfriendly place. Cars stream off of I-20 heading into the city. Traffic lanes are wide, the pavement cracked. Crosswalks are faded, and drivers turn so sharply that pedestrians hurry across the street, even when they have the signal. Strong Towns readers would instantly recognize this as the meeting of two stroads, with all the dangerous implications for people in cars, on bikes, and on foot. This intersection is not somewhere to linger.
But then a couple months ago a handful of neighbors gathered at Memorial and Boulevard for a modest, leaderless demonstration. They wore masks and spaced themselves along the curb, holding homemade signs. Traffic was light, even at rush hour: schools weren’t in session, and many people continued to quarantine if they could. The group dispersed before dark, but returned the next day, and the next. The demonstration made the front page of the neighborhood’s newsletter. Allies trickled in from other neighborhoods. A text chain got started and quickly ballooned to over 40 people. The demonstration has continued since then, same time and place every weekday night. It’s been dubbed “The Corner.”
For me, learning the basic Strong Towns message has been like filling my pocket with questions. I can no longer step onto the street without them. On neighborhood walks in the past, I might ask myself, “Where am I going?” and “Did I bring bags to pick up dog poop?” But soon after discovering Strong Towns, I started looking at the infrastructure on my walks—street lights, storm drains, the condition of sidewalks. Questions like, “Why is this street so wide?” came to mind. When the water line feeding my house ruptured it took a full crew and an excavator three days to fix it. Luckily for my budget, the rupture was on the city side. I pay property taxes, but a child could do the math and know that my repair cost the city far more than it would earn on my taxes over the course of a year, or longer.
Still, Boulevard and Memorial remained an intersection to avoid, not a place for curiosity. That is until I joined The Corner. In between surges of traffic I started to really see the place, and fish around in my pockets for those Strong Towns questions.
Is this intersection building wealth for Atlanta, or is it a liability, increasing our debt and saddling the next generation with the cost of its upkeep? There’s a brand new business on one corner, a heath care provider. Fingers crossed for its success. Another corner holds a sprawling auto repair shop surrounded by chain link fence. Across the street rises a tall brick wall ringing a cemetery, and our demonstration stands on the final corner: a half-acre lot strewn with broken glass, housing a boarded building. This area of Atlanta is booming. High-dollar townhouses rise just a block away. You can’t walk far without passing a construction site. Yet last year all four corners of this intersection, totaling roughly two acres of land, brought in less that $20,000 in property tax for the city. Since the auto repair shop was the only business generating sales tax, that too is bound to be negligible.
How much does it cost to maintain this intersection? A pop-up storm drenched our demonstration one night and we watched the sewer fill and overflow. A major sewer separation project was completed about twenty years ago. Watching water surge from the grate and pool on the street., it’s not hard to hear the clock ticking towards significant maintenance or replacement. When it comes to pavement, seventeen lanes come together at this intersection, and they are not pretty. My favorite demonstration spot is close to an evil divot in the pavement that rattles any car that hits it. This, too, will need to be fixed, along with repaving, restriping, updated traffic signals—a near-future debit hanging over our department of transportation.
Who has the power to maintain or modify this intersection? The City of Atlanta controls Boulevard. Since many other city streets require urgent attention, it’s no wonder the divot and neighboring cracks, potholes and heaves remain. Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) controls Memorial, and Strong Town’s readers will not be surprised that they give little attention to this intersection when they have projects like the new I-285 interchange at GA 100 (cost now ballooning to $800 million) on their mind.
Do people struggle at this intersection? This has been the most uncomfortable Strong Towns question to consider. I knew the bus stops did not provide shelter—I’d noticed that from my comfortable car, or hurrying past on my bike—but I’d never stopped long to watch the afternoon sun bake the two concrete benches. I’d never had to take more than a few breaths of the boiling, August air. I’d never noticed that much of the sidewalk is one continuous curb cut, meaning that vehicles can easily run off the road. There are no street trees, no buildings close to the street with awnings, no planters, no bollards, nothing to protect someone on foot from the heat or passing cars. If it weren’t for a towering oak in the cemetery that casts just enough shade for us, our demonstration would not be possible. Little comfort that is to those who must pass this way on foot day after day, or wait here for the bus.
What is the true nature of this intersection? For our city’s wastewater engineers, it could be a dozing liability, clock ticking towards sewer replacement; for GDOT, it’s a trifle far down the list of priorities; for Atlanta’s tax commissioner, it’s a lost opportunity. If you’re waiting for the bus, it’s a cauldron. Depending on whether you travel by car, bike or on foot, the intersection is a nuisance, a disappointment, or a hazard.
Our demonstration has not ended, and of course neither has the evolution of this intersection. The past week saw an interesting development. A couple of vendors have joined us, laying out t-shirts, hats and face masks on their tables. An all-female car wash called “A Woman’s Touch” popped up. Just a few days ago someone came to sell Italian ices. I have no idea if these are “sanctioned,” if they have licenses or if the owner of the abandoned lot even knows. They may not last, but these small businesses have brought new life to the intersection. Could they be an example of the “spooky wisdom” Chuck Marohn talks about in his book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity? Together, are we demonstrators and small businesses establishing a “place” in a lot that for years has been a “non-place”?
Regardless of whether the message of our demonstration endures, I want this intersection to give to Atlanta rather than take. Strong Towns has offered me compelling questions to ask. I don’t have many answers, but simply standing here night after night has been powerful. It’s only by lingering, watching, experiencing, that I can honestly explore how to help this place contribute to Atlanta, and what small fixes might immediately help the most vulnerable users. Following Strong Towns has a way of vivifying places. If this intersection could speak, I imagine it would say, “If you want to know me, you’ll have to stay a while.”
Editor’s Note: For towns and cities across North America, the path from insolvency to financial productivity and resilience happens one intersection, one block at a time. Thousands of local leaders just like you are taking action in their cities. Will you help us expand this movement even further by becoming a Strong Towns member today?
About the Author
Genevieve Barber lives in the old mill community of Cabbagetown, Atlanta. Strong Towns helped her wake up to what it means to be an active citizen. You can connect with Genevieve on Twitter at @ChelseaTrnsplnt.