Bowen Choice Neighborhood Transformation Plan

Details:

  • Atlanta Housing

  • Atlanta, GA

Highlights:

  • Integrated stormwater management

  • Affordable and mixed-income housing

  • Incorporating Bowen Homes history and cultural context in design elements

  • Multiple street connections to adjacent neighborhoods

  • Hybrid public engagement process

Description:

The Bowen Choice Neighborhood Transformation Plan is a 2-year effort with Atlanta Housing to reimagine the former Bowen Homes public housing site. This plan has the potential to transform a section of Atlanta, rebuild needed affordable housing, build capacity through major partnerships with community-serving groups, honor Bowen’s history, physically connect neighborhoods, and become a model for public housing redevelopment. The extensive public engagement process involved an outdoor “Return to Community” meeting, 3-day charrette that included a neighborhood seminar on Good Urbanism, and an open house to gather feedback on the concept plans.

Four key design strategies guided the overall design:

  • Street and trail connections to Carey Park and other surrounding neighborhoods respect the site’s former street network, but deviates to create a more connected internal grid and to align to streets in the surrounding neighborhoods

  • Stormwater management is integrated into park spaces.

  • 2,000 to 2,400 housing units provide differentaffordability levels.

  • Using memory of place in design to preserve the hill on the northwest side of the site highlighted in OutKast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” video and creating a Stormwater Lawn, adding a daycare explosion memorial on the location of the former daycare, preserving street names, and using the pedestrian streets to recall the courtyards.