District 3 Westside Revive

The District 3 Westside Revive (D3) was a planning project in the west side of Atlanta which included several neighborhoods.

The district called for a community engagement process that focused on each neighborhood while keeping the relationship to the district in mind. To do this, the district was divided into nine subareas which drove the planning and engagement process. More detailed planning was conducted in Subareas 1-5. The Westside Land Use Framework Plan, adopted in November 2017, covers Subarea 6. Other planning efforts included Subareas 7-9.

The D3 planning process included thirteen workshops, several stakeholder interviews and reached over ten thousand people.

The engagement process focused the conversations around the Quality of Life Index which included seven categories: housing, jobs and services, education, the environment, health, safety, and community / civic engagement. The findings helped both reveal deficiencies and celebrate the strengths worth preserving in each community and lead to recommendations in land use and development, housing, and transportation.

Lastly, each subarea had two workshops. In the first one, general information about the neighborhoods was gathered. In the recap, the planning team presented land use and transportation ideas to the community, followed by an exercise where participants placed images of different development types on a large-scale map. The images and comments served as the basis for each subarea framework plan.

The planning team used a mixed-method approach where both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered under each category. This was done by using GIS data and conducting and exhaustive survey with answers geo-located on a gridded online platform. In the example shown to the right, the map depicts three layers of information overlaid on each other and extrapolated per grid square:

1) Proximity to parks (calculated using GIS);

2) Tree coverage (open data from the city);

3) Survey answers to the question of how satisfied community members are with their local parks.

Each category was treated with the same rigor and helped the team gain an in-depth understanding of the district. Learn more about the survey here.

In addition, each subarea workshop also included opportunities for participants to share their ideas and concerns on a district-wide level. This included a historic timeline and an oversized map of the district where general comments could be posted.

Stakeholder interviews, subarea workshops, and public presentations ultimately culminated in an actionable blueprint for the entire District.