Fond Farewell to Buckhead
It is with some sadness that I write this blog to announce that I’ll be leaving my much loved Livable Buckhead family. Since 2016, I’ve split my time from January to April between my full time job and the office of Representative Park Cannon, for whom I serve as Chief Legislative Aide. As of this year and due to the intense political environment at the Georgia State Capitol, I’ve been asked to transition to that role full time. I’m going to miss my teammates and the very supportive, patient people of Buckhead who have helped me along the way. I like to think that in what limited capacity I may have to shape policy in my new role, I’ll be carrying Livable Buckhead’s mission of sustainability and clean transportation with me. This role has taught me a great deal, and I’d like to share one major lesson:
In 2018 I was working at an office development in Midtown, practicing a sort of cowboy TDM as a team of one. I knew the basics of Transportation Demand Management from my city planning curriculum at GSU, but was largely winging the outreach aspect. I must have been doing something right, because the individualized approach that my employer had coined as “Mobility Concierge” was winning awards within the commercial real-estate field for being ahead of the curve on what many cities and states are now legislating – that office buildings and employers actively encourage their employees to take alternative modes to work, saving parking deck space, carbon emissions, and even healthcare costs. That’s when Denise Starling reached out to me, asking if I wanted to join the big leagues.
I was hesitant at first, I was dedicated to my Midtown/Downtown bubble and unsure if Buckhead’s cultural reputation would be a good fit for me. Today, as I prepare to clean out my office desk in Tower Place, I want to say without equivocation: I was wrong about Buckhead. Like a lot of my hip, scruffy, millennial cohort, I initially thought Buckhead was the exclusive province of Georgia’s elite. I won’t paint a caricature here because that demo certainly is represented, but is an essential part of what makes Buckhead the cosmopolitan, worldly city that Atlanta is. To assume that the blue-bloods are all that Buckhead has to offer would be a grievous mistake.
Livable Buckhead’s housing study crystallized this for me: Atlantans of many stripes want to live in Buckhead. Not just for the prestige of a Buckhead address, but because there are so many elements here of “Classic Atlanta” – the things that have made Atlanta a hub of Southern culture. Just outside the Buckhead Business district with its gleaming glass towers and many new apartment complexes, you can still find many of the single story retail strips and majestic, more vintage-style apartment buildings. These patinaed relics of the old Atlanta have an effect on me that I’ve only just come to appreciate. It’s that generation of old Atlanta that also captured the aspirations of my own parents who left rural Georgia as newlyweds in the early 1970’s. They uprooted from southwestern Georgia to find shopping, night life, music, cuisine, and a culture open to experience. This layering of Atlanta’s past selves is a reminder that people do not create lasting communities just anywhere, for no reason – we long to be together in places that express a shared story of who we are.
Buckhead is in many ways a focal point right now, but I hope as I depart that I can share this lesson that I have learned working with the diverse residents and commuters to the community:
When you form a mental picture of “What Buckhead is” – it is skyscrapers, it is mansions – yes. It is also home to a large segment of Atlanta’s elderly and retired persons, some of Atlanta’s most storied night life and cultural venues. It is one of Atlanta’s best-served communities by MARTA, and sees some of the system’s highest transit usage. Buckhead is diverse, growing, and a microcosm of the complex issues that America faces today. I invite you to look past the glitzy veneer of Buckhead’s reputation, and see the beautiful history and familiar struggles beyond.
