eightvillage
Designing place-based ecologies.
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Sweet Auburn Walks

Atlanta, GA

Generator is committed to the production of ideas about cities that nobody is asking for, but that just might change the world. We are a nonprofit studio that exists solely to pursue and amplify research, propose ideas, and generate dialogue that supports the future of cities. We are driven by ideas, rather than clients, offering a platform for concept generation, provocation, experimentation, and design. Generator engages Atlanta as a microcosm for every city, employing its urban laboratory to test ideas that can re-shape our future.

The focus for the first iteration of Generator Workshop was Buford Highway, a corridor north of Atlanta celebrated for the ethnic diversity of its people and food. Popularly named the “International Corridor,” over 1,000 immigrant-owned business make Buford Highway a destination for Korean, Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Central American, Somali, and Ethiopian goods and services. These conditions, however, are increasingly under pressure from rising real estate values. Like so many places, the corridor may become a victim of its own success. Through this course, Generator seeks to develop a wide range of creative ideas that can help leverage change to Buford Highway’s advantage, protecting its culture of diversity, innovation, and adaptation.

The course began with a dinner on Buford Highway, where we discussed the pertinent issues of the area, as well as the students’ personal aspirations and goals. After identifying a variety of concepts, students selected a specific idea, developing them through readings, research, analysis, and discourse. Final proposals were refined and articulated through class discussion of issues such as equity and resiliency, implementation strategies, political strategies, writing, and visualization. The final deliverable will included a draft plan for moving the idea(s) into reality. These ideas were presented at the "Ideas Fair", a gallery of the students' projects activiating an empty storefront on Buford Highway.

Services: educational programming, advocacy, outreach

Collaborators: Generator

Sweet Auburn Walks

Atlanta, GA

Sweet Auburn Walks focused on the 1/2 mile stretch of HIlliard St connecting King Memorial MARTA station to historic Auburn Ave. Hilliard offers a unique opportunity for creating an enhanced experience of activity, both during the day and at night. Our workshop sought to identify and create concepts for creative placemaking along the corridor with ideas coming directly from the community. The ultimate goal of these concepts was to enhance accessibility, appearance and sociability of the Sweet Auburn Historic District. The workshop hosted two-week sessions, each beginning with a “walk-shop” the first week, encouraging participants to explore Hilliard. Sessions would include a meal and dialogue about what participants discovered, and end with an ideation session of placemaking concepts for the corridor.

Our workshop was designed to flip the typical model of community engagement where a municipality creates concepts, presents them to a community, and those choices are subsequently voted on. For Sweet Auburn Walks, the goal was for the community to create the concepts and presents them back to the municipality and neighborhood in a bottom-up urbanism strategy. The captured the concepts from the workshop sessions and presented them in a gallery format dubbed the “Ideas Fair.” City council people, planners, placemakers, artists, stakeholders, and residents all gathered at the fair to experience a compendium of images and vocabulary showcasing the ideas the community had come up with. The Ideas Fair generated dialogue and call to action, catalyzing these grassroots ideas for execution.

Services: community engagement

Collaborators: Generator, Sweet Auburn Works