Watching the all-way crossing phase for pedestrians & cyclists, at 5th & Spring Streets, always makes me smile.

Atlanta is paying a $1 million after being sued by a cyclist who was injured after hitting a pothole in Candler Park. A comprehensive series of well-maintained bike paths in the city would be expensive, but it beats injuries and lawsuits. www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news...

Outrageously high parking prices in a few luxe locations in the city are not an argument for "free parking everywhere." Bizarre outliers of price-gouging are not an excuse for expecting suburban levels of free parking at every location in the city.

"Car sewer" is a perfect phrase for describing problematic streets that are designed for moving cars and little else. Interstate highways are obviously going to be sewers, but city streets should be more. These are our most valuable public spaces. We need them to be great, not this:

Peachtree Center Station is in rough shape. This is from an escalator but there's similar weirdness all over the station. I guess the down side of building a (truly amazing) structure that's this large is that you have to maintain it.

The streetcar is coming back Feb 3rd! I'm excited. I like our little streetcar (though I'd like it even more if it was on the Eastside Beltline too). www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/01/12/m...

May Bob Weir's memory be a blessing! I love the way his endorsement of Harris/Walz can be neatly applied to equitable urban growth: "More good comes from focusing on building a world where disparities aren’t so pronounced that they cause friction and reducing the inequalities that create barriers"

It is past midnight and marta is still running trains every two minutes for the Hoosier faithful leaving Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Atlanta's transit turnaround is real, and I couldn't be happier

MARTA first said the new trains would be in service by last July. Then it was pushed back to April 2026. Now it's pushed back again until June. I'm not mad; it takes as long as it takes. But am I disappointed that MARTA overpromises on dates? Yeah. www.ajc.com/news/2026/01...

Today, three people will try to set a record for visiting all MARTA Stations in one day! (They already set one for Chicago's system.) They're starting at 3pm at the North Springs Station. Best wishes to them, and also to MARTA for no service delays! secretatlanta.co/marta-world-...

As I said here, it's nuts that N Fulton cities - but not City of Atlanta - can opt out of letting the compromised DAFC throw away tax breaks on projects in hot markets. Atlanta has lost hundreds of millions over the years from DAFC's irresponsible breaks. www.ajc.com/business/202...

Georgia gives Hyundai over $2.1 billion worth of incentives and they end up employing thousands of... robots.

My son, who needs to get from Old Fourth Ward to an event at Atlantic Station today: "It's ridiculous. It's a 20 minute bike ride but the MARTA trip is 50 minutes and only by bus. It's called Atlantic Station. Why isn't there a station there?" Indeed.

I'm grateful for being included in this AJC piece about the Atlanta Beltline's 20th anniversary and getting to share some thoughts, including my unshakeable belief in the importance of rail for the project! Kudos to reporter Zachary Hansen for a great writeup! www.ajc.com/business/202...

Highlights from 2025: it snowed! South Downtown construction boomed! New bike lanes! Proposed legislation against razor-wire on sidewalks! I got appointed to a City committee! And more... www.instagram.com/p/DS8-HDdlf_...

Happy New Year from Atlanta!

A challenge for 2026: The large trucks U.S. fire departments use demand wide lanes & intersections, which in turn encourage dangerous driving. If we switch to these European style, smaller trucks (this is in France), we can design much safer streets! Let's at least commit to making this change.

Here's me, longing for the optimism many of us felt for the old Multimodal Passenger Terminal proposal for Downtown Atlanta. The future looked so bright! open.substack.com/pub/atlurban...

I'm embarrassingly excited about MARTA's installation of new fare gates and Breeze machines. The broken gates at stations are going away in a few months and that's great news. mailchi.mp/itsmarta.com...

Sometimes when the buses aren't tracking, I'll walk into Downtown. Walking these car-sewer streets reminds me of why I prefer taking a bus in. Too much of Downtown is an island disconnected from the rest of the city by large corridors of grimness. Lots of room for improvement.

I ❤️ MY BMW (Bus, MARTA, Walking)

I want Atlanta to make this a goal: reduce the jarring contrast between being *on* the Beltline versus walking *to* the Beltline. Make our streets inviting for walking and cycling too. We can do this!

13 people were killed, dozens injured, and hundreds of cars were damaged in a catastrophic Georgia incident called: "we've built everything around cars and that was a mistake." Condolences to all, especially those dealing with death. We deserve a safer future. www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...

This is a pretty amazing transformation in Midtown Atlanta: it's the view of West Peachtree Street, looking north from 10th Street. The first one is from today and the second one is from 2012. We're having a nice MARTA/walking adventure in this glorious weather.

I'm navigating a busted sidewalk tonight while watching cars sail by on smooth asphalt, fresh from a recent resurfacing. Maintaining car lanes while allowing sidewalks to crumble is a choice. It's not inevitable, and the city can make better choices.

I enjoyed speaking with journalist Jeanne Bonner about plazas! This is a really good article, and not just because I'm quoted in it. Cities like Atlanta need to expect more from our public spaces. www.cnn.com/2025/12/19/t...

Power is out in NW SF, affecting traffic signals and 5G network. All Waymo vehicles have simply bricked wherever they were, creating traffic chaos. AVs still have no plan for emergency evacuation in urban quake or fire missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-w...

A report by JPMorgan Chase came out recently touting some of Atlanta’s housing policies. To the surprise of many, one of them was this rezoning plan. It preserves single family zoning in the most exclusionary (& arguably most politically powerful) parts of city, including most of Buckhead.

I placed the current and Zoning 2.0 maps side-by-side, and the only neighborhoods that I'm confident have been meaningfully upzoned are Pittsburgh, High Point, Summerhill, and Grant Park. They are all adjacent to the Southside BeltLine. Everywhere else, it's pretty much a one-to-one conversion.

This shit is way too confusing and you can only build 2 homes on one lot in the vast majority of the city. This is not good enough. Atlanta’s housing crisis will continue unless Atlanta leadership demands better.

Atlanta's Gulch development started off as part of the nationwide fight to host Amazon's HQ2. Remember that? Here's me complaining about it in Atlanta Magazine in 2018. The criticism holds up, IMO. Huge public incentives, questionable public returns. www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture...

A three-person team will try to visit every MARTA rail station in three hours for a Guinness World Record–certified achievement. The attempt is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 8, with a 3pm start at North Springs Station and a finish at Airport Station. 🫡 www.cbsnews.com/amp/atlanta/...

Attn: coffee fans... The new Spiller Park in Midtown (at the bottom of the 999 Peachtree tower) is adorable and it's open until 6:00pm! Sidewalk-oriented coffee tastes better. That's just science.

Oh hey we just did this We traded our big 2700 sqft suburban home for a 1400 sqft townhome in a walkable and bikeable area (for roughly the same price). We're more active, happier, and have no yard work! PS the old house is on the urban wildland interface so our fire risk is waaaaay lower now

How expensive does car ownership have to get before U.S. culture shifts and we collectively accept that car-dependent urban design is huge burden on personal finances? Apparently we still haven't hit that mark. Average new car price: $50k and rising. www.kbb.com/car-news/new...

APS says the saving from closing 16 schools is a mere $25M/yr. The TADs currently lose them $100M/yr. So Darin's question is on target.

Absolutely not. The Beltline *alone* is diverting ~$50 million/year and growing from schools just from its TAD/TIF. And $ from Grady and other basic services. (And this would be even larger if corporate properties were being taxed at close to market value as they are supposed to be.)

I have to wonder: would APS be in a situation where they have to close 16 schools if they hadn't lost out on funds for the past 20 years through Tax Allocation Districts?

BAM! This is how you do it. South Downtown is replacing a parking lot with a park, adjacent to a block of great old buildings that they're renovating 😍 See how that works? Instead of demolishing old buildings, we can demolish parking lots to create new park spaces. 👍

My 816 bus never showed up so I walked to lunch down Ralph McGill Blvd, where I spotted: A City of Atlanta vehicle parked on the sidewalk (a constant problem here). A crumbling sidewalk, though the car lanes are newly paved. A random wheel on the sidewalk. Stay classy, ATL.

For years I scoffed at the idea that "the market" would save us from car-centric cities & climate disaster, calling for politicians to lead. But city leaders appear too weak to enforce safe streets: www.washingtonpost.com/business/int... National voters enable this: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/c...

We should just be building more of Broad Street. This is the pattern. It's already here in Atlanta.

Due to freezing temps, ATL is opening two warming centers at 8 pm until 6 am tomorrow: Central Park Recreation Center Old Adamsville Recreation Center Also: we live two blocks from the first center & are proud to host this in our n'hood. People who block these are warped.

Important to note the Mayor and his goons tout Atlantic Station as best case example of a TAD, which I find dubious. It missed its economic development goals by 50%, BARELY paid back its bonds, and now we see that $250 million in subsidies couldn’t even keep one grocery store open permanently.

Come January, we’re bringing regular people into the democratic process. No more secret meetings and back room deals! Democracy is for everyone, not the elite few. www.ajc.com/news/2025/12...

How sad! The Publix grocery store at Atlantic Station is reportedly closing. This will be a big loss for the neighborhood, and for the entire mixed-use ideal of Atlantic Station, which opened twenty years ago as a major brownfield-redevelopment project. www.tonetoatl.com/2025/12/Publ...

I'm not anti car. I'm anti car-dependency. I'm pro "act like it's a city."

This video critique of the Atlanta Streetcar is getting a lot of views and comments. What are your thoughts about it? One issue that doesn't get enough exposure in the video is land-use. 1/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OFS...

Sunset colors on a giant parking deck. Seen while waiting for a bus at Civic Center MARTA Station this evening. Dear God, let me live long enough to see this parking deck come down and see rail-appropriate development replace it. Thanks and amen.

In case you're shopping for places to donate some money for end-of-year giving, with an Atlanta focus, I recommend Propel ATL. They do good work with promoting safer streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and everyone really. www.letspropelatl.org/donate