Love: Ryan Gravel’s Vision for Atlanta

Ryan Gravel and the City Planning Commissioner Tim Keane teamed up over the past 18 months to put together a vision for how the City might take shape in the future. The document is remarkable for its fresh ideas and enthusiasm for the City.

Ryan’s letter in the introduction is a nice appeal to the City’s spirit. We’ve reprinted it in its entirety. It is titled “Love”

Love

The Atlanta City Design is not a plan. Instead, it’s a strategic realignment of plans, projects, policies and priorities - many of which are already completed or underway. Its purpose is to draw those plans together, capture our imagination, mobilize us to action, and instill in us a sense of accountability to our future that will result in an Atlanta we love.

The Atlanta City Design is the intentional shaping of the city to reflect our shared values, meet our opportunities and achieve our goals. Our hope is that this document will help all Atlantans discover their city, see its future in a new light and fall in love with this place we call home.

Love is important in city design because with love comes empathy and respect for the people and places around us. Love leads us to make better decisions about how the city is put together - who is included, who benefits and who we want to be a part of our day-to-day lives. We also know that only with love can our most ambitious aspirations be realized, because only love can commit us to the difficult negotiations, compromises, hard decision, work, and investments required to follow our dreams.

To inspire this kind of love for Atlanta, we have embarked on a city-led design for our future - an aspiration that compels us to think, and then act, on the shaping of our remarkable city.

Ryan Gravel
Lead Designer, The Atlanta City Design

See the full document here