On Wednesday January 28th, 2015, the Council hosted the Cobb Advisory Committee Meeting, which featured Bill de St. Aubin as our guest speaker.
Bill de St. Aubin, CEO of Sizemore Group – an Atlanta-based architecture firm that is known for designing and planning healthy towns and campus environments – spoke about helping the Town Center Area Community Improvement District take a long-term approach to smart growth, creating spaces that instill a spirit of community and serve as catalysts for other development and redevelopment.
He presented to attendees about the process of bringing together the community – including city and county officials, property owners, local employers and employees, residents, and KSU staff and students – to gather input from all stakeholders, analyze how the area has grown, anticipate future needs, and capture the personality of this unique area. As a result of such a thoughtful and comprehensive process, the Town Center area is better connected, and new spaces take advantage of the area’s natural beauty, prioritize stakeholders’ safety and healthy, and honor the area’s culture and history. He also drew attention to easy, affordable solutions to problems faced in cities, such as how something as simple as a separate bike path alongside the road could impact the community in profound ways. Bill backed up his proposals by citing various methods of development that have already been proven to be effective in many cities around the world. These kinds of ideas have the power to completely change the Georgia development landscape.