Let's Talk: Atlanta Streets Alive
Envision transforming Peachtree Street, for just a few hours, into a public park. The street—once filled with cars—is now swarming with people biking, walking, rollerblading, playing catch, popping cartwheels, or simply sitting back and people watching. It’s not a dream! Inspired by Ciclovia, an open streets event in Bogota, Colombia, Atlanta Streets Alive has become over the past four years a community favorite by placing a unique spin on the urban street experience.
On May 19th Peachtree Street will close to car traffic for 2.7 miles along Peachtree Street between Ellis Street in Downtown and Spring Street in Midtown from 2 to 6 pm as nearly 70,000 people hit the streets. Streets Alive is a natural fit for Midtown Alliance and our goal to turn Midtown into a more exciting, sustainable and vibrant urban destination, and we’ll be hanging out at the corner of 10th and Peachtree in our new pocket park with lots of fun activities–but we’ll talk about that more at the end of this article.
In the meantime, we chatted with Atlanta Streets Alive event manager Matt Garbett of Atlanta Bicycle Coalition about why Streets Alive resonates so well with the Atlanta community.
Tags: Bike, Events, Midtown ATL, Community, Placemaking
Posted: May 13, 2013
Startup Stories: Techturized
I can certainly attest that a woman’s pride is in her hair. I cannot begin to tell you how many hours a week I spend on fixing my hair. I read through blogs that have answers to my questions about hair breakage. And I’ve definitely Googled “how to do a fishtail braid.” After almost 17 years of doing my hair without my mother’s help, I finally learned six months ago how to properly blow-dry my multi-ethnic hair by watching five DIY videos on YouTube. I have a basket on my dresser that’s overflowing with personal care products: hair spray, blow drying cream, shine serum, a curling iron and wand, two round brushes, three combs, over 250 bobby pins and counting, a dozen butterfly clips, and a range of leave-in conditioners that vary in height, color, and scent. To admit this is slightly embarrassing, but likely you have a similar scene somewhere in your home and may even have a Pinterest board that includes a couple of favorite hair styles you’re into (again, I secretly do).
With my apparent obsession for my hair, I’m sure you can understand my excitement and intrigue when I learned of a group of four young women turned entrepreneurs based out of Midtown Atlanta who were applying what they learned at Georgia Tech—computer science and chemical engineering—to the often tangled world of hair care, a $61 billion industry and major market in Atlanta. I got to meet up with Candace Mitchell, co-founder & CEO of Techturized—a startup exploring the endless possibilities of hair care technology—and chat about the company’s social network venture, MadameYou.com.
Tags: Innovation, Collaboration, Midtown ATL, Startups
Posted: May 8, 2013
Taking Care of the Earth
By Shelby Buso
“There was a tree, the prettiest tree that you ever did see. And that tree was in a hole and the hole was in the ground and the green grass grows all around, all around. And the green grass grows all around.”
The words of a song my son had to sing at school this week ring over and over in my head even now after Earth Day has passed. It was a long week of festivities and environmental education – from free energy efficient light bulbs at the 10 Tenth Earth Day event to electronics waste recycling at The Biltmore with Georgia Natural Gas. This week, full of information gathering and enlightening inspiration, was meant to remind us all to take care of the Earth.
Tags: Midtown Alliance, EcoDistrict, Sustainability, Green
Posted: April 29, 2013
Fostering innovation and economic growth
By Consider in the last 10 years, Facebook launched in 2004 and reached 1B active users in 2012, the first YouTube video played in 2005 and now users upload 72 hours of video each minute to the service. Twitter came on the scene and was a critical force in 2011 and 2012’s Arab Springs and double digit growth in the percentage of the US population over 14 that own smart-phones which are used more and more for everything but talking on the phone. They are now mini-computers, with high-resolution cameras, GPS locators, high-speed internet access, and millions of apps that fit every interest. If past history provides a window into the future, then the places that can innovate around technology growth areas will produce the jobs and companies of the future.
Today, the Midtown Alliance is embarking on a new initiative to strengthen Midtown’s burgeoning technology innovation district. The goal of this effort is to leverage the success that is already happening to further stimulate our economic development agenda.
Tags: Development, Midtown Alliance, Innovation, Collaboration, Atlanta, Midtown ATL, Economic Development
Posted: April 19, 2013
Let's Talk: Shipping Containers
Shipping containers have been used in cities worldwide to create unique, flexible retail environments—a new model of development that provides an interesting compromise between temporary and permanent. We chatted with plexus r+d President and architect Jordan Williams about how the planned shipping container for the Yumbii restaurant will be a special addition to Midtown’s retail landscape.
Jordan, tell us about the shipping container trend in retail environments and what makes them work so well?
Shipping containers are just now hitting the radar in Atlanta, but have been an increasingly popular component of architectural design and construction across the globe for the past two decades. The use of containers in architectural design is growing because it strikes a chord with several of the dominant themes that frame design and development in contemporary culture.Tags: Development, Midtown ATL, Restaurants, Urban Design, Pop-Up Shops, Retail
Posted: April 9, 2013