Walkable communities are big in real estate. Websites list a home’s “walk score” along with how many bathrooms it has. Now, some of Atlanta’s once car-centric, sprawling suburban neighborhoods are trying to change with the trend. But it can be a struggle to become more walkable for places that weren’t designed with pedestrians in mind.
‘Sidewalks To Nowhere’
In Sandy Springs, workers are re-doing a road that leads to an overlook and a dog park. Mayor Rusty Paul visited the construction on a crisp fall day, when the appeal of a walk along the winding road was obvious. The view across a golf course was of hills in full-on fall color. But before this construction, there was no sidewalk.
“We first started this project several years ago because we wanted to create more pedestrian-friendly area not just here but all across Sandy Springs,” said Paul.
Sandy Springs, like a lot of Atlanta’s suburbs, didn’t have many sidewalks. Now everybody wants them, said Paul.
Workers build a retaining wall along a new sidewalk in Sandy Springs. Mayor Rusty Paul said building sidewalks can be expensive in the hilly city. (RYAN NABULSI/WABE)
“I hear, ‘When are my sidewalks going in?’” he said.
But it’s not that easy, said Paul. Sidewalks cost a lot and take planning.
Sandy Springs tried one approach, where any new construction or major remodel also had to have sidewalk, even if there wasn’t one on the rest of the block.
“Which lead to a lot of sidewalks to nowhere,” said Paul. “A patchwork of unconnected sidewalks.”
Epicenter Of Sprawl
The lack of sidewalks is not really Sandy Springs’s fault, said Dan Reuter, the community development manager at the Atlanta Regional Commission.
“You have a whole bunch of places like Atlanta that really grew after the invention of the automobile,” he said, “and, during a period when outward expansion, or as you might call sprawl, was very popular, a lot of families moved – particularly baby-boomers.”
Now, tastes have changed.
“I probably had keys in my hand when I turned 16,” said Reuter. “My daughter is 16 and has no intention of driving.”
Walkable Development
This road in Sandy Springs leads to a park, but didn’t previously have a sidewalk. (RYAN NABULSI/WABE)
The ARC supports more walkable development not just for the millennials, though, said Reuter. It’s also for seniors, for families with kids and for people who just want to drive less.
And those areas don’t have to be right in a city, said Skylar Olsen, an economist with the real estate website Zillow.
“Some of the most successful places where people are searching a lot and where homes are going very quickly, are in those connected urban, walkable areas – where you can get to that Starbucks around the corner or that new nice restaurant,” she said.
Those can be places out in the suburbs too, as long as they have an urban, central feel.
Olsen said she can’t attach an exact value to a sidewalk in front of a house, but she does see a pattern.
“We have certainly found that those walkable areas tend to do better over time,” she said. “They were more resilient during the housing bubble bust, and they’ve since appreciated much faster.”
Retrofitting The Suburbs
Sidewalks are a fundamental piece of that new real estate reality. And Byron Rushing, a planner at the ARC, said Atlanta’s not just the epicenter for sprawl.
“We are also the epicenter for how to start to change and deal with it and grow and move in different directions,” he said, with academics, planners and developers in Atlanta, all working on retrofitting the suburbs.
Sandy Springs is now taking a different approach to adding sidewalks. Instead of the “sidewalk to nowhere” ordinance, the city is prioritizing where to put them – around schools and parks, for instance.
It’s going to take time, though, said Mayor Paul. Infrastructure is expensive.
“We’re probably 35 years behind and rapidly trying to catch up,” he said, “but you don’t have a 35-year backlog that you can wave a magic wand and make it come into being all at once.”
Paul said the city has already built more than 32 miles of sidewalk in the past 10 years, and hopes to build at least that many more in the next decade.
“I mean, we’re going to get it done,” said Paul. “It’s not going to happen next week, next year, probably, maybe not the next decade. But we look at it like a salami. We’re going to keep slicing it till we’ve got enough for a sandwich.”
And the soup on the side of that sandwich is a city center that Sandy Springs is building, which will include restaurants, businesses, housing, government offices and a performing arts venue. The website promoting the development is plastered with a drawing of people walking and talking along broad tree-lined sidewalks.
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