If you went to the 420 Fest in Candler Park last weekend or plan on going to the Inman Park Festival this coming weekend, you should be aware that these intown neighborhoods would have been a lot different had the initial vision of Freedom Parkway been realized.  The plan for the road that Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young backed would have extended past Moreland, had seven bridges, and wiped out the Olmsted parks along Ponce de Leon Avenue.  The intown neighborhoods galvanized against the Ex-Pres Way, as they called it, and formed a legal and an activist group to halt the clearing and construction for the road.  In 1991, ten years after the fight initially began, the city, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the intown neighborhoods reached a settlement that included a two-lane parkway that ends at Moreland and the vision for green spaces connected by a bike-jog path.

In this segment, we interviewed Cathy Bradshaw, a long-time resident and advocate for Inman Park, one of the main neighborhoods affected by Freedom Parkway.  Cathy provides a brief introduction to the neighborhood and then discusses the long fight over the road.  If you appreciate the green spaces of Freedom Park and the quality of life in Inman and Candler Park, remember to thank passionate residents like Cathy who worked hard to fight the road and preserve Atlanta’s intown neighborhoods.

This entry was posted on April 20, 2010 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Better Know a Neighborhood, Car Culture, Legal fights, Parks, Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.