Ryan Gravel: How an old loop of railroads is changing the face of a city
Ryan Gravel: Come abbiamo costruito un parco di 35 chilometri nel mezzo di una città
Ryan Gravel is an architect and urban planner who played a key role in developing the Atlanta BeltLine. Full bio
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in college in the mid-'90s.
like a French anarchist --
I'd lost 15 pounds
by highways and automobiles
as a poster child for sprawl,
the way I understood
of infrastructure --
from point A to point B,
or sewage or energy,
and for our culture,
to the way that we live.
I was instantly frustrated,
the top end of our perimeter highway.
that were hurtling past me,
and their music blaring.
an inevitable outcome,
this condition in Atlanta
that I wanted to live in?
in architecture and city planning,
of old railroad circling downtown
for urban revitalization.
we would actually build it.
at an architecture firm,
to my coworkers about it,
to more people about it,
city council president.
around this idea:
for two and a half years,
and a handful of volunteers.
of people and ideas.
who were used to fighting against things,
as something that they could fight for;
of new growth in the city;
who saw their mission
by the shared vision.
aren't at the same table
and it was kind of weird,
fell in love with a vision
through their car windshields,
be building it otherwise.
our coalition was diverse.
were part of our story.
of the economic spectrum loved it, too.
they weren't going to be able to be there
that they'd be priced out.
that kind of story before, right?
the Atlanta BeltLine would be different,
than anything we ever imagined
subsidies for housing,
a list that continues to grow.
that were required to make it happen.
of implementation, and it's working.
of trail was opened in 2012,
over three billion dollars
the physical form of the city,
we think about the city,
for living there.
to the grocery store
to get in the car.
how ridiculous that is,
that their expectations for Atlanta
is exactly like sprawl
in highways and automobiles
within it, of course.
making millions of decisions
not only the way that we build cities,
for urban sprawl.
and strip malls and cul-de-sacs we wanted.
of the places we live
are happening at that time.
was breaking down barriers,
began its march
of our nation's promise.
business -- everything was changing,
and private sectors were colluding
before there were highways.
to understand and acknowledge
to some groups of people
in wonder and disgust, maybe,
of that inequity?
traffic hellscape?
urban displacement,
and permanent outcomes?
of our collective cultural decisions
from our experience in Atlanta
are playing out everywhere,
not only old railroads,
and obsolete roadways,
are reclaiming and reinventing
of all catalyst infrastructure projects,
for which similarly started
of being transformed
infrastructure again,
and fishing and boating
and flood control.
the lives of people.
the rest of us think about Los Angeles.
local food, urban agriculture,
early indicators of a really radical shift
with these catalyst projects today,
don't usually benefit everyone.
by this cultural momentum
prices and rents.
to not improve communities.
and transit and grocery stores.
to hold communities down
and address the financial realities
happen on its own.
to this goal in Atlanta,
who made it possible in the first place.
commitments to all those years
as my graduate thesis
with thousands of people
the BeltLine is being built for
as whether it's built at all.
whose lives we are changing,
we just need to speak up.
comes on our terms.
in the process of shaping change.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ryan Gravel - Urban planner, designer, authorRyan Gravel is an architect and urban planner who played a key role in developing the Atlanta BeltLine.
Why you should listen
Ryan Gravel is an urban planner, designer and author working on site design, infrastructure, concept development and public policy as the founding principal at Sixpitch. His Master's thesis in 1999 was the original vision for the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile transit greenway that, with fifteen years of progress, is changing both the physical form of his city and the decisions people make about living there. Now a $4 billion public-private investment in the early stages of implementation, the project's health and economic benefits are already evident through record-breaking use of its first section of mainline trail and $3.1 billion of private-sector investment since 2005.
Alongside project work at Sixpitch and research on similar "catalyst infrastructure" projects around the world, Gravel's new book makes a compelling case about what these unexpected assets mean for our lives and why they matter. In Where We Want to Live – Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities (St. Martin's Press, 2016), he summons the streets of Paris, the spirit of Detroit, the unruly Los Angeles River and dozens of other examples to illustrate how a new cultural momentum is illuminating a brighter path forward for cities. Through insightful narrative, Gravel articulates how projects like the Atlantas Beltline, New York's High Line and Houston's Buffalo Bayou are part of this movement and how they will ultimately transform our way of life with the same magnitude that automobiles and highways did in the last century. More than discrete projects, he argues, they represent a shared vision for our future that will require us to forget tired arguments about traffic, pollution, blight and sprawl -- and instead leverage those conditions as assets in the creation of something far more interesting than anything we’ve seen so far.
Gravel's early work as a volunteer and later across the nonprofit, public and private sectors has brought his long-term commitment to sustainable city building full circle -- from vision, to advocacy, to planning, design and implementation. He speaks internationally and has received numerous awards for his work on the project.
Gravel's latest pipedream is a nonprofit idea studio called Generator, to be funded in part by a bar. While juggling two kids, amazing projects like the Atlanta City Design and requests for help navigating impacts from the Atlanta Beltline, he's also taking time to look up and enjoy the city he wants to live in.
Ryan Gravel | Speaker | TED.com