Westside Communities Alliance

A partnership between Atlanta's westside communities and institutions of higher education.

Special Topics: Poverty and Social Justice SSOC230

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Sheri Davis-Faulkner, Adjunct Professor in Sociology/Anthropology, Spelman College

This interdisciplinary course encourages students to studying poverty through the narrative lens of social justice.  Critical race feminism, the guiding theoretical frame, allows students to examine U.S. poverty by centering subjects (individuals and groups of people) within economic, political, and social systems.   The course explores hyper-visible contemporary narratives and images of poverty, juxtaposing them with less visible social justice activities.  The class will collectively work to contextualize our popular knowledge and perceptions of poverty and “the poor” historically and politically.  Students will reflect on social theories and actions to construct their own definitions and theories of poverty.  Finally, teams of students will support four local organizations that serve challenged communities in the areas of health care, environmental justice, education, and economic development; focused exclusively on communities that surround Spelman’s campus.  This course supports the Shepherd’s Poverty Alliance internship and Spelman’s Project Impact initiative to serve communities within a 1.7 mile radius of campus.

 

Northside Drive Transit Corridor Studio

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Mike Dobbins, Professor of Practice, School of City & Regional Planning, GA Tech

This Fall 2012 Studio course proposed planning and design for a multimodal boulevard that frames Atlanta’s core center. The biggest goals of the studio were enhancing mobility through and access to destinations in the corridor and connecting to west side neighborhoods and the Atlanta University Center campuses. The final product of the course will inform decisions related to accommodating transit, hierarchizing intersections, identifying transit stop locations, proposing cross-section typologies, design speeds, access control for adjacent land uses, streetscape design, parking location and treatment, accommodation of bicycles, pedestrian design and crossing standards, utilities relocation, signage, and similar details. Ideally, this plan will be able to guide Atlanta’s Comprehensive Development Plan and the ConnectAtlanta plan. The students held several public meetings and workshops to ensure input from the community was incorporated into the plans.

See the most recent update on the project here.

For more information, please visit: http://www.northsidedrvision.gatech.edu/

Common First Year: COA1060 Healthy Communities Project

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Ann Gerondelis, Director of Common First Year, College of Architecture, GA Tech

In this course, taught in Fall 2012, Georgia Tech’s COA freshman class explores the following questions: How can the disciplines of the designed, built and lived environment improve the health of our communities? What solutions can we imagine for our local communities? Two of the four freshman class projects are focused on the Westside of Atlanta.  Dawn Riley’s class explores low-income communities, focusing on nearby English Avenue. Claire Pardo’s class studies the concept of “healthy places” with a focus on the Howell Mill area.

Atlanta Brownfields Program: Area-Wide Planning Program Grant

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Nancey Leigh, Professor of City and Regional Planning, College of Architecture, GA Tech

Nathaneal Hoelzel, PhD Candidate in City and Regional Planning, GA Tech

With a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the City of Atlanta, along with Atlanta BeltLine Inc., Invest Atlanta, and a Georgia Tech class in the School of City & Regional Planning is working with the community to develop specific measures of success for the Project in addressing the brownfield impacts in the Project Area. The Project Area consists of 11 Neighborhoods, 3,282 acres, over 25 Brownfield Sites, 3 TADs, and 4 NPUs in southwest Atlanta.

The City of Atlanta received a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for brownfields training, research, and technical assistance for a defined project area located in South Atlanta. Brownfield assessment, cleanup, and reuse are integral components of EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment.

The Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Pilot Program is designed to help communities confront local environmental and public health challenges related to brownfields, and benefit underserved or economically disadvantaged communities. The area-wide planning approach recognizes that revitalization of the area surrounding the brownfield site(s) is just as critical to the successful reuse and cleanup of an individual brownfield site. For purposes of this project however, grant funds will only be used to deliver training, research, and technical assistance which in turn will facilitate the assessment, cleanup, and reuse of individual brownfield sites in the target area, although, environmental benefits are anticipated to take place in the community at large as a result of individual brownfields revitalization.

As the brownfields area-wide plan is implemented by the City of Atlanta, and properties within the brownfields-impacted area are cleaned up and reused, it is anticipated that there will be positive environmental outcomes related to air and water quality, such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, reduced stormwater runoff, and substantial reductions in pollutant loadings in local waterways. It is also expected that these types of environmental outcomes at brownfields would accommodate the growth and development that would otherwise have occurred on undeveloped, greenfield properties.

 

WCA Staff at Proctor Creek HIA Workshop

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Source: WAWA

WCA staff members Sheri Davis-Faulkner and Mackenzie Madden attended the Health Impact Assessment Workshop on May 23rd at the U.S. EPA Region 4 Headquarters downtown that focused on green infrastructure in the Proctor Creek communities. An HIA is a tool used to objectively evaluate potential positive and negative health impacts of a policy or project before it is implemented and provide recommendations to minimize adverse health impacts and maximize beneficial impacts. The goal of conducting such an assessment is to ensure that health and equity are considered in the decision-making process and that impacted communities are engaged. Please see the Health Pathways link below for more information.

The workshop was facilitated by representatives from Georgia Health Policy Center, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency. We were joined by community members Yvonne Jones, Tony Torrence, and Shaheed Dubois among others. In addition to learning about the Health Impact Assessment process, we learned about the Boone Boulevard Street Project. This project has been chosen by the City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management to address some of the community’s flooding concerns and will be implemented in collaboration with planned road diet improvements. The proposal includes a combination of planter boxes, permeable pavements, bioretention areas, and planting strips. Please see the HIA Proctor Creek link below for more information.

The Advisory Committee (37 members) will hold their next meeting will be held on July 23, 2013 from 9:30 am – 12:00 pm. The next Community Engagement meeting will be held at a date TBD.

For more information, please contact Tami Thomas-Burton at (404) 562-8027 or at Thomas-burton.tami@epa.gov.

 

HIA Proctor Creek Health Pathways

HIA Proctor Creek