Our community planners and designers spend a lot of time supporting communities grappling with housing challenges, especially in landscapes where our natural resources are under threat. Our housing studies for cities as compact as Cornelia, or as broad as Morgan County, usually focus on strategy: how can we tweak policy to encourage sustainable growth? How can we discourage sprawl, invest in stronger communities, and reduce impacts to our most productive land?
While focusing on strategy is critical for Georgia, it is only the first step toward cultivating stronger communities and ecosystems. The next step is to map out exactly what these strategies could look like on the physical landscape.
Over the next year, we’ll have a chance to do just that. We’re working with the City of Chickamauga (Walker County, ~3,000 residents) to envision how to apply thoughtful land use planning principles to a large area of its downtown.
For several years, the City has been considering how to redevelop the site where the old Crystal Springs Print Works Factory once stood. The City-owned site spans roughly 130 acres of different character–some pavement, some greenspace–that could boost economic development, provide new housing, and connect downtown to historic resources through trails and pedestrian improvements.
The City teamed up with Georgia’s Rural Center to find and engage a partner to develop a vision for how this site could support long-term economic growth and community benefit in Chickamauga. Knowing our principles and our history of leading Good Urbanism 101 trainings, they came to us.
We are thrilled to help Chickamauga reimagine this site, steward growth toward their downtown, and support connections to northwest Georgia’s natural and cultural resources.
