\nthe old Pine Grove Elementary<\/a>.\nWhy let it sit and molder when it could be a hotel, art space, apartments, a megawatt solar generating facility, or all of the above?\n\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are many jobs in this. The Five Points redevelopment is an example of what she’s talking about. It’s a lot better than building more sprawl: safer, less expensive, more jobs, less energy cost, more energy independence, better health, and more community. Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones spole January 2010 at TEDxAtlanta, Retrofitting suburbia In […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,14,264,265,16,1148,2,88,21,23,73,24,449],"tags":[3936,2639,8717,3212,8705,3934,1319,8820,8701,2417,1190,7,3935,1392,8731,2877,8714,1167,8767,2337],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-economy","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-environment","category-fpsc","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-solar","category-transportation","tag-accidents","tag-art","tag-community","tag-death","tag-education","tag-ellen-dunham-jones","tag-five-points","tag-fpsc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-tech","tag-housing","tag-lowndes-county","tag-pedestrian","tag-pine-grove","tag-safety","tag-school","tag-solar","tag-sprawl","tag-transportation","tag-widening"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-qg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/images.ted.com\/images\/ted\/180452_113x85.jpg\")
<\/a>\nIn the last 50 years, we’ve been building the suburbs with a lot of\nunintended consequences. And I’m going to talk about some of those\nconsequences and just present a whole bunch of really interesting projects\nthat I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that\nthe big design and development project of the next 50 years is going\nto be retrofitting suburbia. So whether it’s redeveloping dying malls\nor re-inhabiting dead big-box stores or reconstructing wetlands out\nof parking lots, I think the fact is, the growing number of empty and\nunder-performing, especially, retail sites throughout suburbia gives\nus actually a tremendous opportunity to take our least-sustainable\nlandscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places. And\nin the process, what that allows us to do is to redirect a lot more of\nour growth back into existing communities that could use a boost, and\nhave the infrastructure in place, instead of continuing to tear down\ntrees and to tear up the green space out at the edges.\n<\/blockquote>\nHere’s \nthe video:<\/a>\n\n\n