I found Decatur, Ga.’s “missing middle” housing. It turns out that it wasn’t missing after all. Most of it — affordable apartments, duplexes, etc. — ended up in Atlanta area landfills. A snapshot from 2011-2014 appears in the Ruined Decatur blog.
Ann Crichton was elected to the Decatur, Ga., City Commission in 1971. Her colleagues in 1977 selected her as mayor of the municipality that is organized under the “council-mayor” form in which the mayor is a ceremonial position. Individuals are “elected” by their peers to chair city commission meetings and to perform other symbolic functions.
Crichton, an Agnes Scott College graduate, became a nationally recognized expert in municipal government, community development, and affordable housing. After being ousted from office in 1979, Crichton went on to serve as President Jimmy Carter’s Atlanta-based regional director of the Economic Development Administration. After that, Crichton briefly moved to the United Kingdom before returning to Atlanta and founding her own economic development consulting business.
How can a self-styled publisher/editor/reporter have “One Of The Oldest Women In The World” living in his community of only 20,000 people and not know it?
Or, how did the Washington Post and suburban news outlets miss what the residents in a historically Black community were telling them for years about an old bridge?
I am looking for sources who can speak to the role journalism plays in gentrification and erasure. Have a story? Let’s talk.
Yesterday’s Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission discussion of the National Register of Historic Places nomination of the William A. “Woogie” and Ada Harris House was billed as an opportunity for public comment.
With no public notice (beyond listing on the HRC agenda posted on the city’s website) and no notification by the city’s historic preservation community, community groups, and other stakeholders, the 10-minute discussion was a master class in public participation minus the public and minus participation.