Sidewalks, Public Parks, and Getting People Where They Need to Go

I take the train every day from my apartment in Edgewood-Candler Park to my job in Promenade Tower in Midtown Atlanta. Luckily for me, I live right next to Edgewood-Candler Park MARTA station, and the Promenade Campus is also right next to Arts Center Station. When everything is working correctly, my commute never takes more than 30 minutes. I consider myself very lucky that I get to have this commute while living the car-free lifestyle that I choose.

Promenade Tower exists in a rather large block in Midtown; a block bordered by 15th and 14th streets, as well as the confusingly named Peachtree and West Peachtree Streets. Unlike many of the other blocks in Midtown, there is no North-South street in between Peachtree and West Peachtree. And this creates a unique situation that I have been thinking about for a while.

See that gravel path in the image above, represented with dark blue on the map? That path is walked by hundreds of people every day who exit Arts Center Station looking to reach the buildings on 14th St and beyond. I see people climbing this little dirt path every day. They walk in the dirt right next to a massive parking garage, only to come out on the other side onto a road without a sidewalk where they can easily be hit by cars entering the garage. Only after walking on the hilly grass besides the toll booth guarding the parking garage can they reach 14th St. The second half of that commute is shown below:

This is a very interesting phenomenon to me. These pedestrians could simply walk a few meters west, then head south down West Peachtree, and then head back east up 14th St to reach their destination, but instead they choose to take this shorter route even though it is actively pedestrian-unfriendly. It seems like the designers of this block didn’t truly understand the walking patterns of the local pedestrians. They either A. believed that building a big parking garage would force the pedestrians to take the longer route, or (more likely) B. didn’t put much thought into it at all. And that’s a shame, because that longer route isn’t just more pedestrian friendly, but it’s much nicer.

But this could all be about to change (Key word: could). You see there is another resident in this massive city block. Or should I say, a lack of a resident. And my office gets a first-class view of this ugly empty lot right in the middle of some of the most valuable land in the state of Georgia.

This lot, right in the middle of the city, directly next to a MARTA station, and surrounded by skyscrapers on all sides was supposed to have a residential tower, named Opus, starting construction around 2020. You can even see the temporary leasing office for Opus still there – it’s the small white building by the toll booths. Then some big thing happened in 2020, I can’t quite remember what that was, and all the plans for the lot went out the window. It sat there in its half-dug-up state for 4 years before the city finally bought it and announced what they were going to do with it: turn it into a park.

The announcement of the property being a park was met with mixed reactions. On one hand, parks are great, and Midtown doesn’t have a lot of them. On the other hand, the land is very valuable, and could easily see more development for the city. Look at the picture above. Pedestrians from Arts Center Station aren’t the only ones who use that horrible parking garage road to get to 14th St. Any time someone in our office needs to get to 14th or beyond, we have to walk through the parking garage and then exit where the pedestrians from earlier came out.

My hope is that the park accomplishes 2 things. First and foremost, I simply hope it’s good, effective, nice park space for the city. They haven’t decided what type of amenities are going to be in the park just yet, or even what kind of park it’s going to be. And there are probably more opportunities here than you realize.

But my second hope is that they take advantage of this construction to add some pathways, both from Arts Center MARTA Station and from the Promenade Campus, to finally make this large block walkable for pedestrians. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets hit by a car on the way out of the parking garage, or twists their ankle on the steep gravel hill or grassy area besides the toll booths. Either of these things may have happened already.

I will update this blog as the construction begins, and see what they do with the space. But I found this scenario interesting, not just because it applies to me directly, but because it’s a little insight into how people don’t always behave how city planners want them to. As urban designers, we need to understand where people need to walk and facilitate their travels, even when alternate options are seemingly better for the city and pedestrians.