Sandy Springs to host Perimeter career expo ► PAGE 4
August 29, 2024 | AppenMedia.com | An Appen Media Group Publication | Ser ving the community since 1976
Leaders discuss strategies to buoy Perimeter market By HAYDEN SUMLIN hayden@appenmedia.com DUNWOODY, Ga. — Local leaders are scrambling to find growth options for the Perimeter market’s older office buildings and surface parking lots. Government and business leaders gathered at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse Aug. 22 for the first in a series of regional discussions into how the Perimeter market can prosper. Completed in early 2023, Dunwoody’s Edge City 2.0 study looks at the city’s highdensity commercial area. The plan is designed as a blueprint for future development around the Dunwoody MARTA station, Ashford Dunwoody Road and Perimeter Mall. When Georgia Tech Urbanist Ellen Dunham-Jones co-authored her 2009 book, “Retrofitting Suburbia,” with architect June Williamson, her vision for sustainable urban redevelopment entered the nation’s parlance. To retrofit something is to modify it with new technology to meet unanticipated challenges. Dunham-Jones documents successful retrofits of aging big-
box retailers, office parks and malls into more walkable and sustainable places. She said she thinks there are ways to improve models for American suburbs. Her book’s 2020 followup and topic of the Aug. 22 presentation is “Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges.” Following World War II, American suburbs shot out from urban centers and served as economic engines for a growing middle class. “By the 1980s, you started to really see this emergence of edge cities being suburban areas dominated by office parks and malls that were in conjunction with each other,” she said. “The whole pattern continues to evolve but has some pretty well-known unintended consequences.” Dunham-Jones said the results of sprawling suburbs are inefficient land use, siloed communities, overreliance on carbon emissions and widespread health issues. Dunwoody Economic Development Director Michael
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HAYDEN SUMLIN/APPEN MEDIA
Georgia Tech Urbanist Ellen Dunham-Jones discusses what future development in American suburbs can look like at the Aug. 22 kickoff of the speaker series, “Edge City: Shaping Tomorrow’s Perimeter.” Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse hosted the breakfast meeting with sponsors including the Perimeter Chamber of Commerce, Community Improvement Districts and the City of Dunwoody.
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