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City To City - Pedestrian-Friendly Cities - Atlanta by Patricia Dumas Individuals and neighborhood groups interested in improving the quality of urban living need to make their neighborhoods pedestrian-friendly, a goal that can be accomplished without embarking on costly projects. That is the message which concerned citizens are sharing with one another through the national organization Neighborhoods USA (NUSA). Last month NUSA sponsored a conference centered on the theme, Building Neighborhoods Block by Block. One successful program being carried out in Atlanta, Georgia enables residents to assist the city in enforcing code regulations. The city council approved legislation to permit citizens to patrol their neighborhood, identify minor code violations and issue warning notices to violators. Target infractions include illegal dumping, yard trash, junk vehicles, and overgrown vacant lots. The citizen efforts have been bolstered through partnership with the city's housing authority and with volunteer agencies. Operating throughout the city as a Code Enforcement Task Force, the volunteers are required to complete an eight-hour training course. The course teaches them how to view a property with reference to the code requirements and how to issue friendly warning notices to property owners and occupants. The volunteers also learn exactly what resources citizens can access for help in correcting the violations. The Atlanta program has succeeded in making that city's neighborhoods more attractive and safer for pedestrians -- a goal stressed by students of city revitalization efforts. Roberta Brandes Gratz, author of Cities Back From The Edge: New Life For Downtown, points out that cities should make neighborhood improvement a priority instead of focusing on "short-sighted" big development projects. Gratz states that "the interesting, economically growing areas of many of America's reborn or reviving cities are not the spanking-new office districts, or near-new sports stadiums, convention centers, and casinos. Young people and old, single and married, black and white, working and retired are moving back to cities, many to downtown. They are occupying live/work lofts and traditional residential neighborhoods, embarking on new businesses, starting restaurants, opening art galleries. Without dense mixed-use districts and a variety of solid residential neighborhoods, a downtown is condemmed to dependence on the outside, the tourist, the commuter, the detached visitor. In cooperation with Troy United Ink Corp., a not-for-profit corporation 
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