Atlanta too hot for cool people
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007A quiet warrior for smart growth is leaving Atlanta’s sprawl, pollution and increasingly hot climate behind for the Far North. I wonder whether a scary spiral is underway around here: forward-thinking people leaving because they see problems on the horizon.
Jim Chapman shamed the rest of us with his selfless lifestyle and forward thinking. He biked around this town since 1992 while he studied transportation at Georgia Tech and worked in a job advocating saner planning. When I first met him, he was executive director of an organization before its time: Georgians for Alternative Transportation.
Now he’s a planner and researcher for Lawrence Frank and Co., which is run by one of North America’s leading experts on sprawl’s hidden subsidies and costs. Frank is himself an Atlanta refugee: In 2003, he moved from Georgia Tech to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he’s now a professor.
Chapman, his wife Jennifer and their kids are moving back to the couple’s hometown: Rochester, N.Y., on the relatively cool shores of Lake Ontario, where the economy’s been suffering for years. People move all the time. The Chapmans are moving to be close to family, and Genesee Cream Ale. Whatever the reason, Atlanta didn’t have what it took to hold on to a smart guy who’s helped make this community richer.
There was plenty of joking about fleeing north as Atlanta gets hotter at a going-away party for Chapman on Saturday. But the joking reminded me of my growing unease that the region’s increasing heat, severe droughts, special-interest-toting politicians, dependence on coal and pesky mosquitoes are going to turn our metro area into a depressed hell-hole. I’m wondering how widespread the concern is.
