Mixed-Use Ideas for South Metro

Planners and designers love the idea: A little of this and a little of that all combined in a dense and efficient mix. It's a national trend in the design of new developments - spurred by rising oil prices, changing demographics and economy and eras - that can be seen in the Atlanta area and is being proposed by planners and designers throughout the southern metro area. It's called mixed use development. Rather than rigidly separating industrial, retail and residential districts, mixed use development combines them. Tom White, a planning director with the Atlanta Regional Commission, said some mixed use developments are vertical, with stores opening up to the street, offices filling out the middle floors and housing taking the upper level. Other developments are taking the mixed-use idea, but implementing it horizontally, with a shopping center surrounded by condos and townhouses. "People like it, they like to have a portion of the market in closer proximity. There are some real travel impacts that can be demonstrated," White said. "The trips that you have to take are shorter." Recently, the ARC has proposed a number of mixed-use developments be built along a redesigned Tara Boulevard. In Henry County, a mixed-use development is underway at South Point mall on Ga. Highway 20. The finished development will have 700,000 square feet of retail, 500,000 square feet of office space and 1,000 residential units. Nearby in Spalding County, the city of Griffin has done an extensive redevelopment study, paying special attention to the idea of mixed uses. In Hapeville, an economic development team has unveiled an extensive overhaul of the city's design, all working around the mixed-use idea. "It's a more efficient use of the infrastructure that happens to be very compatible with what the market is telling us." said ARC's White. Proponents of mixed-use developments have looked to historic self-contained neighborhoods in places like New York and Europe. "Zoning was used to make sure we separated noxious uses from each other," White said. That separation of uses was accelerated by the increasing popularity of automobiles and the desire for a little bit of space - a yard and a fence - to raise a families. Public policy, especially following the end of World War II and the "baby boom," favored suburbs. "We went towards low density suburban communities and at the same time had many road projects. The result of that has been that our travel requirements have [increased]," White said. "The separation causes, not unexpectedly, a lot more travel to occur." While congestion frustrating the residents surrounding cities in the late 20th century, designers and planners began to look at other ways to use space and turned towards mixed-use. Today, an aging population and fewer children have made the development design an interesting option to many. "This is only the beginning of the shift back to mixed-use," White said.