Last night the Decatur, Ga., City Commission unanimously voted to enact a 90-day moratorium on tree cutting and then voted to defeat a temporary moratorium on the demolition of single family homes. The city will protect trees and not people. The three commissioners who voted against the teardown moratorium abrogated their responsibilities to the city’s most vulnerable citizens. Continue reading
Last night I attended a discussion of refugee resettlement efforts in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Horizon Theatre Company hosted the session, which was tied to the first run performance of Atlanta playwright Suehyla El-Attar’s Third Country.
I’ll make another comment about value engineering. It’s not just the numbers, but it is what we’ll be doing as far as memorializing a very important piece of history in the city of Decatur. And while there are opportunities for cultural gatherings and so forth, this will be a very specific one that has a very specific history and is someplace that needs to be noted as to what the Bottoms and the segregation of the City of Decatur and how far we’ve come. So thank you for your care in maintaining that piece throughout this project. — Decatur City Commissioner Kecia Cunningham.
The video is adapted from the March 18, 2013, Decatur City Commission meeting. For background information about the demolition of the Beacon property, read Separate and unequal: Preserving Jim Crow.
Street sign posted on Ansley Street advertising pre-teardown garage sale. Photo by author, March 3, 2012.
Decatur, Ga., City Manager Peggy Merriss released a memo today proposing that the Decatur City Commission consider establishing a temporary moratorium on the demolition of single family homes. The city manager’s memo comes eight months after I made the same request in a petition [PDF] delivered to the Decatur City Commission and more than 18 months after I first suggested it as a Decatur resident. Continue reading
Ever wonder why some radio towers are painted in alternating bands of orange and white and others aren’t? The story behind the federally mandated paint scheme goes back to the earliest days of aviation and broadcasting.
WSB broadcast tower, Atlanta, Ga.
Queen Elizabeth II visited Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1991. Her itinerary included parts of the Capital City typically avoided by most visitors, royal and otherwise. An affordable housing development in the city’s Southeast was one of the places Queen Elizabeth visited.
In 2007, I interviewed people who were involved in coordinating the visit and who were principals in the housing development. The Washington, D.C., Local Initiatives Support Corporation continues to post excerpts from the oral histories done to document their history. Continue reading
Possible Purple Line substation house. MTA photo.
The Purple Line is a proposed 16-mile light rail corridor. Once completed, it will link suburban communities north of the nation’s capital in Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. First proposed more than a decade ago, state officials breathed new life into the project in 2007 to connect Metro transit stations in New Carrolton and Bethesda as well as the business districts between the two communities.
Planning for the project, including engineering and environmental studies, are underway. Construction could begin as early as 2015 if funding is secured.
Purple Line route. MTA map.
The Purple Line will require multiple support structures and buildings, including 18 power substations, 14 signal bungalows (small buildings with radio and signal equipment), and a nine-story ventilation tower in Bethesda’s central business district. Residents who live along the proposed alignment told the Washington Post that they are concerned about potential impacts from the power facilities known as traction power substations. Continue reading
The riots that tore through Washington, D.C., after Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968 left many neighborhoods physically and emotionally scarred for decades. Columbia Heights was one of the most adversely affected. Continue reading
Suburbia is inherently automobile oriented. It is a cultural landscape dominated by strip malls, subdivisions, and clogged transportation corridors that demands deference to cars. The people who moved to the suburbs brought with them cultural traditions that included a wide array of religious beliefs. As ranch houses and more immodest dwellings sprouted in residential neighborhoods after the Second World War, churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship were built for the people who lived in them.
Suburban intersection, Dunwoody, Ga., near an Orthodox synagogue.
Orthodox Jews, like their Reform, Conservative, and non-Jewish neighbors, rely on cars to survive in suburbia. Trips to the grocery store, to work, to school, to summer baseball games, and to the mall all require getting in a car to make the trip. Unlike their neighbors, however, Orthodox Jews must hang up their car keys for the weekly Sabbath and for other high holy days because of religious laws prohibiting certain activities that include work, carrying objects, pushing and pulling things, and operating vehicles. Continue reading
I think gentrification has made the neighborhood less of a neighborhood — Oakhurst resident, April 2012.
Last week the National Council on Public History released a post on its History@Work site previewing clips from the rough cut of my documentary video, Oakhurst: An Oral History of Gentrification. In its Facebook update announcing the post, the organization noted: “This is what gentrification looks like.”