GILLAM CAMPBELL592 Cameron Street, Atlanta, GA 30312

404.861.8669 gillamgray@gmail.com

portfolio

land suitability: hazard planningEmergency Energy Infrastructure Placement for the City of Atlanta

Demographic (Census Blocks)• Socioeconomically disadvantaged• Total population• Total housing

Hazardous (Census Tracts)• Building use and material type• Debris amount• Essential facilities: euclidean

distance

INPUT DATA

Residential Land Use Percentages

Hazardous (Census Tracts)• Building use and material type• Debris amount• Essential facilities: euclidean

distance

MODEL BUILDING OUTPUT

Weighted overlay ranking --> Most suitable selection --> Path cost allocation --> Connected areas of least cost path

land suitability: development planningWater Feature: Possible Locations for the City of Atlanta

INPUT DATA: Contour lines, Digital Elevation Model

INPUT DATA: Existing rivers and streams, slope

MODEL BUILDING OUTPUT: Areas ranked highest --> Areas from 100 to 1,000 acres

environmental gisStream, Catchment, and Drainage Point Definition for the Upper Chattahoochee Watershed (HUC8), and Urban versus Rural Catchment Rainwater Runoff

INITIAL PROCESS

Fill Sinks

Flow Direction

Flow Accum-ulation

CELL SIZE DEFINITION

Stream Definition

Stream Segmentation

Catchment Grid

Catchment Polygon

DrainageLine

DrainagePoint

Adjoint Catchment

DrainageLine

Stream, Catchment, and Drainage Point Definition• 1,000 cells per stream• 2,582 stream segments, catchments,

and drainage points

URBAN CATCHMENT

RURAL CATCHMENTUrban and Rural Catchment Rainwater Runoff• Using land use and land cover to

derive rainwater runoff coefficients• Unit of cubic feet per second• Urban catchment: about 900 cubic

feet per second per hour• Rural catchment: about 275 cubic

feet per second per hour

urban vegetation and tree canopy coverageTree Canopy Coverage for the City of Atlanta: a Methodology Definition and Geography Assessment

FREQUENCY OF LITERATURE REVIEW FINDINGS DIAGRAM

REMOTE SENSING RAW IMAGE

Study Steps• Explanation of study’s importance• Remote sensing• NDVI subset and supervised classification• Geography comparison; City Council District 2 has the lowest tree canopy cover percentage

(21%) compared to District 8, which has the highest percentage (70%)• Possible policy implementations

FINAL VEGETATION AND TREE COVERAGE TOTALS

GEOGRAPHY EXAMPLE: CITY COUNCIL DISTRICTS

socioeconomic gisDetermining the Relationship between Urban Vegetation and Socioeconomic Status for the City of Atlanta

NDVI AREA METHODOLOGY DIAGRAM

Determining a Relationship• Hypothesis: positive relationship between urban vegetation and socioeconomic

status• Regression between total vegetation (dependent variable) with all the socioeco-

nomic factors (independent variables)• Two factors proved significant (95% confidence level): population density per

square mile and housing valued above $500,000• Geographically weighted regression to predict urban vegetation per significant

variables

TOTAL VEGETATION PER CENSUS BLOCK GROUP

GEOGRAPHICALLY WEIGHTED REGRESSIONS

historic preservationRetrofitting Vacant Upper Floors of Historic Buildings in Downtown Americus, Georgia: J.W. Harris & Co. Building

Factors taken into account• Building history, including use and ownership• General interior and character defining features• Current demand of the town• Abiding by SHPO guidelines to achieve State and Federal funding

EXISTING CONDITIONS

Outcome: Two proposals for retrofitting• Two apartments geared for young professionals and families in Americus• Four single-room-occupancy units with individual bathrooms, and shared living space and

kitchen for the college-aged residents• Both proposals include the addition of a shared second-story deck to contribute an outside

environment that is previously lacking and an exterior staircase for convenient access

FLOOR PLAN PROGRESSION: Initial, Two Apartments, Four Single-Room-Occupancy

document presentation: sea level rise studio, georgia tech fall 2012

document presentation: sea level rise studio, georgia tech fall 2012

writing sampleEvaluating a Local Government’s Greenspace Plan: Decatur, Georgia;Land Conservation, Fall 2012

INTRODUCTIONStarting in the 1970s, the City of Decatur has been a planning heavy community. The advent of Marta started the need for more comprehensive planning for the city considering two Marta stations, and almost a third, lie within its boundaries. Since then, the City of Decatur has been churning out more and more plans to keep up with the needs of their population density. Like Dekalb County, the county in it resides, the City of Decatur is densely populated at 4,603.56 people per square mile. Dekalb County is the densest county in the State of Georgia at 2,757.94 people per square mile. Thus, intensive planning processes are necessary for a municipality that is over 1.5 times denser than the most densely populated county in the state (georgia.gov, 2012).

As of today, Decatur’s website boasts twelve sections under their master plan section. One of these sections is the Decatur Greenway Plan, which outlines the city’s certain inputs and hopeful outputs of this conservation plan. Originally, this Decatur Greenway Plan was called the Preservation Corridor Master Plan. However, Decatur has stepped back and taken away its identity as a master plan. In this way, the Decatur Greenway Plan is part of the city’s master plan rather than separate. Even if the city did not change any of the content of the conservation plan, by merely renaming the plan Decatur was able to portray conservation as a pillar of their planning efforts rather than a separate idea (decaturga.com, 2012).

Published in 2004, the City of Decatur uses sixty-three pages of wording, maps, and diagrams to outline the conservation aspects of the Decatur Greenway Plan. The second section below goes into detail of this portion of the city’s master plan.

ASPECTS OF DECATUR’S CONSERVATION PLANBefore discussing an evaluation of Decatur’s conservation aspect of their master plan, a more in depth look of the plan is needed. The conservation plan is broken up into four main sections, which are inventory and analysis, needs analysis and objectives, the overall conservation master plan, and implementation.

Inventory and AnalysisThe inventory and analysis section is broken up into sub-sections including overview, project history and context, project process, and existing conditions. These sub-sections illustrate the City of Decatur’s background of conservation and where current conserved places are currently located. Also here, the main goals of the greenway plan are laid out. Referring to their initial terminology, the city says that:

The initial goal of the Decatur Preservation Corridor was to promote greenspace, support,accessibility and preservation through the creation of a north-south historic preservation/greenspace corridor linking four major city environmental resources… [and] [by

providing a structured link and access to these sites, the first phase trail corridor would serve as a ‘demonstration project’ to support greenspace and historic preservation efforts in the city by promoting the use and visibility of existing assets (Decatur Preservation

Corridor Master Plan, p.I-1).

After community input, though, the conservation planners updated the plan and added two more preservation sites, which set the total at six sites that are to be connected via a conservation corridor.

As for history and context, Decatur based its initial greenspace conservation need on the findings of the City’s 2000 Strategic Plan. The first phase of goals and objectives were based on this earlier stage of the master planning process. From these goals, a project process was drawn up, which included this inventory and analysis section, stakeholder and community input, development and testing of concepts, and the creation of the final conservation plan.

The main part of this inventory and analysis section, though, is in identifying the existing conditions. Without going into the great amount of detail that the City of Decatur does, this section touches upon all of the numerous types of physical, natural and human made, characteristics found within the City’s small 4.2 square miles (georgia.gov, 2012). Some of the existing physical characteristics described include: the historical trends or Indian trails and railroads, urban density shared with neighboring City of Atlanta, creeks, parks, cemeteries, vehicular and non-vehicular circulation, historic sites, and landmarks. Along side the descriptions of these places are numerous and very clear maps illustrating specific areas and certain circulations.

Needs Analysis and ObjectivesThe needs analysis and objectives section is also broken up into multiple sections, two in this case, which are first: opportunities and constraints, and second: community input. As stated in the greenspace plan, the previous section of inventory and analysis “provides the basis for the analysis of opportunities and issues that drive the development of the corridor vision and design” (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. II-1). The plan outlines the vision of preservation for the six previously mentioned conservation sites, or anchor nodes, and their connecting corridors. But along with these six sites, it also outlines additional sites that would be appropriate to include in their greenspace conservation plan. Thus, even after initial community input added two sites for conservation, Decatur planners took it upon themselves to add even more areas of conservation interest. Again, this section has a detailed map illustrating the not only the opportunities but also the constraints of the City’s conservation and preservation sites.

In regards to the next sub-section of community input, and as mentioned in the previous section, the City of Decatur utilized community input for a much more accurate reading of the municipality’s needs and wanted objectives and goals. The planners were sensitive enough to the voices coming

writing samplefrom the community members that the city created a “citizen-based Greenspace Task Force” based on the intense input and opinions of the community (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. I-1). Intensive community input seems to be a mantra of the City of Decatur. For instance, in their most recent update to the city’s overall comprehensive plan, the 2010 Strategic Plan: City of Decatur, Georgia, not only did the community have incredible input as to the goals and objectives of the plan, they were also offered very in depth education sessions for total comprehension of the City’s intentions.

Conservation Master PlanRightfully so, the master plan section goes into the most detail. This section should be the most in depth because it needs to outline future action taken by a municipality. Decatur develops a concept statement in this section, which reads:

The Decatur Preservation Corridor is a city-wide, non-vehicular oriented access network that connects the City’s cultural, environmental, historic and community assets and neighborhoods. Encompassing a variety of on-road and greenway trail segments, the Corridor plan provides a guiding vision for potential greenspace acquisition, conservation easement opportunities,

and streetscape/intersection improvements (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. III-1).

And, also like the previous sections, the master plan section is split up into sub-sections, which are the concept, route typology, quadrant profiles, section drawings, and materials recommendations. The concept statement above covers the majority of the first sub-section, concept, except for one aspect. The City also touches on broad feasibility.

The route typology sub-section delves into the many types of route systems, which does not include a solely vehicular route; instead, all of Decatur’s proposed routes are either multi-modal or non-vehicular entirely. A lack of vehicles seems to align with the idea of maintaining conservation efforts, particularly because cars and the like take up more land than pedestrians and bicycles.

Each of the four original anchor nodes reside in one of the four of the City’s quadrants, which are discussed in the quadrant profiles sub-section. Even though the City eventually added not only two more anchor nodes but also many more points of conservation interest, they set a good foundation for their further conservation efforts by profiling the City into four, more manageable quadrants. Detailed descriptions of existing conditions, further actions to be taken, and development options for each quadrant fill this sub-section. Some maps are yet again in this section and detail implementation possibilities.

These maps, though, cannot compare to the number of diagrams in the section drawings sub-section. As stated in the title of this sub-section, these diagrams illustrate typical segments of roads that will fill the quadrants of the conservation plan.

Lastly in the conservation master plan section, the City discusses materials recommendations, which

is in reference to “newly constructed paths and trails outside of the Downtown Central Business District” (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. III-32). In short, this sub-section dictates streetscape redevelopment for the corridors of newly proposed route typology touched upon earlier in this section. An example is recommending “various mulches to granite dust to wood products and occasionally a soil stabilizer that is added to existing soil” for greenway unpaved paths ((Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. III-33). ImplementationThe sub-sections for this implementation section are phasing and priorities, cost analysis summary, and marketing for the success of the conservation plan. Within the phasing and priorities sub-section, the first issue the City of Decatur addresses in the implementation section is “stakeholder interest in fund-raising and contribution to [the plan’s] realization.” With that said, the City immediately jumps to refocusing on the original four conservation sites as the starting point for realizing this conservation master plan. They also argue the proposed “circulation system will serve as the initial catalyst to the overall system” of connectivity between the anchor nodes (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. IV-1).

The summary of the cost analysis of the project is very brief. Only a table referring to a few of the costs is included. Examples of such costs are that of paved trails, unpaved/soft surface, and shared bicycle lanes. The marketing sub-section is also brief. Basically, the City offers that an appropriate name and slogan should be picked for the conservation corridor.

PLAN EVALUTATIONIn the evaluation process, the City of Decatur’s conservation plan is looked at from two perspectives: from the operational system as a whole and from a more environmental, place-based viewpoint.

Entire Area as an Operational Greenspace System Since the City of Decatur is on 4.2 square miles, the City is talking about conservation at a very high ratio. This greenspace plan does not give specific area measurements for the anchor nodes and other areas of conservation it discusses, but the shear amount that the City wants to preserve is immense compared to the City’s size in total. Keeping the amount of areas the City wants to conserve in mind as a positive, it remains a negative that they do not give specific measurements for area sizes or ratios compared to non-conserved land.

Due to the already built up or urban density of the City of Decatur, and likewise of Dekalb County, the City has little room to guide and determine any future major development. No new neighborhoods are likely within the City’s limits. Thus, Decatur’s conservation plan does not specify any certain type of land use system, like conservation or cluster subdivisions. There is literally no room for such a regulation to be appropriate. The fact that Decatur does not use these types of regulations could, on the surface, seem like a negative. However, it is a positive because the City is not wasting resources, time, and energy on methodologies that, even though very affected for other municipalities, are not

writing samplerelevant for them.

One regulatory devise that could benefit Decatur’s comprehensive plan are TDRs, or transferable development rights. The conservation master plan section says that the plan is “[p]ossible only if easement[s] are granted by owner[s]” because “[i]t must be noted that these [connectivity] routes are hypothetical only, and are feasible only if the property owner is willing to grant approval of an easement for the proposed trail routes” (Decatur Preservation Corridor Master Plan, p. III-1). Even if the City attempts to use as much public space as possible for the plans connectivity corridors, it seems inevitable that at lease one resident’s land will be in the path. Even if no private land is eventually utilized, it should be important for Decatur to plan for such a situation. Thus, it would have been a positive for the City to discuss possible actions to rectify the taking of said private lands. TDRs are one of these possibilities. Without touching upon any remedies for land takings, Decatur left its conservation plan somewhat lacking.

As for budgetary concerns, Decatur briefly discusses this in the plan’s final section of implementation in table form. It is a positive, though, that this section is brief and in a table. In this way, the plan is more readable for the average resident. However, more detail as to how the City plans on obtaining financing and revenue sources would be ideal.

Conserved Lands, Parks, Greenways, and ConnectivityFor the most part, the City of Decatur seems to be focusing on maintaining already conserved greenspace but with more focus on creating corridors of connectivity between these preservation sites. The connectivity of corridors is an important aspect to this greenspace plan because it is crucial for the health and prosperity of the biospheres of these sites.

The amount of parks that the City of Decatur mentions in its conservation plan is incredible. As previously stated, the City’s total area is relatively small, thus the amount of parks it focuses on seems tremendous. Another positive aspect of this plan is that parks make up the entirety of the original four anchor nodes, or areas of conservation, that the City discusses along with many of the additional possible preservation areas.

As for connectivity, one cannot help but to reiterate Decatur’s corridors that link the many conservation areas. In other words, the connectivity that the conservation plan proposes is immense. However, the City does not discuss connectivity with surrounding jurisdictions. Given that the rest of Dekalb County is incredibly dense, in particular compared to all of the other counties in the state of Georgia, Decatur should at least mention connecting their greenspace to areas outside of their city limits. Not only should they mention it, the City should make concrete plans and methodologies to address this issue. Neither of which happen in this greenspace plan.

CONCLUSIONIn conclusion, the City of Decatur’s Greenway Plan is remarkable in respect to the amount of detail in plan preparation. The history, context, inventory, community input, needs analysis, and objectives preparation is incredibly thorough. And for the most part, the conservation master plan and implementation sections are good, too. However, the City left out some details that could have made their plan impeccable. With the addition of some regulatory issues clarification and accommodations with greenspace that lies outside of the municipality, the greenspace plan would have been superior. For inside the City’s limits, though, the greenspace plan is overall exceptional.

SOURCES

City of Decatur: 2010 Strategic Plan. 2011. Retrieved November 8, 2012. http://www.decaturga.com/index.aspx?page=590

City of Decatur: Greenway Plan. 2011. Retrieved November 8, 2012. http://www.decaturga.com/index.aspx?page=424

City of Decatur: Master Plan. 2011. Retrieved November 8, 2012. http://www.decaturga.com/index.aspx?page=153

GeorgiaGov: Decatur. Retrieved November 8, 2012. http://georgia.gov/cities-counties/decatur

GeorgiaGov: Dekalb County. Retrieved November 8, 2012. http://georgia.gov/cities- counties/dekalb-county