Suddenly, Anything Is Possible

So I was at a place called Joe's Tavern (the kind of place with an outdoor brick patio with a tree growing in the middle of it) on Juniper Street in Midtown Atlanta last night, having a pint of beer for the first time in something like ten years (it came with a slice of orange on the rim of the glass. Orange. I had to ask poor, sweet Brad the waiter what on earth I'm supposed to do with the orange!) (And did you know that Budweiser has been buying up many small local microbreweries?).

I was finishing up reading an excellent book called Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods, by Dan Chiras and Dave Wann. I had started reading it at that log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains several weeks ago, and had dragged it all around my suburban town, in the pannier of my bike to the pool and back, and now found it fitting to be finishing it in the shadow of numerous cranes building condos all around this little neighborhood joint in the middle of the city, a fan blowing on my hot face, my feet and heart and head having logged many miles since page one.

I had left my house on foot, walked uphill and down the block to the bus stop, taken the bus to the MARTA train station (after running into a high school boy I knew on the bus and talking the entire way), ridden the train to Arts Center, and strolled over here to meet my husband for dinner before catching the play in which my friend David of the Stage is appearing. (The kids were both away for the night.) (And nice dancing, David!)

So I was sipping my beer, the orange poking me in the eye, and thinking about one of my favorite sculptures of all time, which I had just passed in front of Symphony Hall. From a distance, it's a metal man holding a globe. Up close, you see that the structure is comprised of hundreds of tiny metal people all linked together, holding each other up, sort of like that wrecking ball in the truly excellent movie, Ants (the one starring Woody Allen) (not to be confused with A Bug's Life, by the way).

Yet this night I wasn't thinking about wrecking balls. I was thinking about building blocks, and about the big news I have to share with you, the amazing thing that has happened this week. Turns out the citizens of the town in which I live, a northern Atlanta suburb with a very active neighborhood association that has managed to keep the town from looking like a strip mall even as it has exploded with residential and business growth, has voted to make the town a city, the first new city in Dekalb County in 71 years. It will be the 14th largest city in Georgia, if you can believe it.

I am beside myself with excitement, not because I agree with the vision that has been laid out for this new city (I haven't seen anything that could be remotely called a vision yet), and not because I even know anyone who is emerging as the leaders of this new city, but because:

1. My daughters get an outrageously unique opportunity to view and participate in the creation of a brand new city (and learning about how government works and how to be a good citizen is on my list of Things You Need to Learn in Life).

2. Suddenly anything is possible, and you know how I thrive in the realm of possibility.

So what does a blogger do, of course? I locked in the URL for Sustainable Dunwoody, naturally, and already wrote my first post. I have a front-row seat to the creation of a new city, a city that represents citizen needs in 2008 and perhaps anticipates the changes of the future, and I will be bearing witness to it. It will be way more local than FoodShed Planet, but then again, maybe not. Maybe Dunwoody, Georgia is no different than Anywhere, USA or Anywhere-in-the-World.

And so I sat there at Joe's, sketching out my vision for Sustainable Dunwoody: the editorial focus I want to cover, the folks I want to contact, the mirror I want to hold up for all the world to see, and perhaps, the change I hope to find reflected there.

But back to Superbia. This breezy, infinitely readable book by seasoned neighborhood planning experts gives a wide range of suggestions whether you are building a community from the ground up (think co-housing) or trying to retrofit an existing community stifled by social isolation and excessive resource consumption and vision-impaired by government incentives, municipal zoning laws and bank lending policies. After a fantastic couple opening chapters that blew away any other thing I have read about the changing face of suburbia, the authors take an incremental approach to evolving communities, with small, immediately-actionable suggestions (add benches in public spaces in your neighborhood and watch community connections expand) that grow into way-outside-the-box innovations.

As I have been reading this book, I have been noticing and realizing the many very good elements that exist in my neighborhood already, things on which we could definitely build to create a more sustainable community. And now, with cityhood on our side (the city starts operating December 1, 2008), I find myself walking around singing that song from Godspell, "We can build a beautiful city, yes we can, yes we can . . ."

Catchy, isn't it?