Why Doesn’t Atlanta Have More Neighborhood Cafes?
Decatur Metro | February 21, 2012Creative Loafing food writer Besha Rodell asked this question over on their Omnivore blog, and I felt like there are few questions the DM community is more equipped to answer (aside from: Why are kids/old people (and/or drivers/bikers/pedestrians) so annoying in restaurants (and/or on the street)?)
She clarifies her question a bit in her post…
I’m not talking about coffee shops. I mean the neighborhood cafe, that serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night. I’m talking about the places in Paris where Parisians sit and drink wine and coffee and look iconically Parisian on the sidewalk. The panini place in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn that served Spanish wines and blood orange bellinis and great coffee and was open from approximately 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Or the place just up the street from that, which was basically the same concept except French, or the other place around the corner that was crammed with oversized antiques and had a great beer selection and the best brunch around, and where you’d sit on metal chairs in the leafy back courtyard and eat oysters at 3 p.m. or sausages at 2 a.m.
Why don’t we have that? Or something like that? In Melbourne, every neighborhood has about ten places that are coffee and wine oriented, where you can go to get avocado on toast for breakfast, quiche for lunch, and simple pasta dishes for dinner. The occasional pork belly sandwich, or more ambitious kitchen serving a light “new Australian” menu.
Yeah ATL, what the what?
Java Monkey? Kavarna? Open early to late; coffee, beer and wine; small but good menu; internet access; indoor and outdoor seating.
Believe the question is about Atlanta, not Decatur.
Good point. I was thinking metro area.
Kavarna is your standard-issue soup/sandwich/salad run-of-the-mill quick-pickup lunch-type menu. Java Monkey serves standard-issue sandwiches/sweets coffee-shop food. I don’t believe the article is describing such dime-a-dozen menus; rather, it is lamenting the lack of sidewalk cafes Manhattan and Paris are known for. I think we can assume the author is clearly already familiar with this area’s over-abundance of coffee-houses, and is sad there aren’t more cafe bistro-type places.
I don’t believe your comment is responsive to the article.
You are in good company; neither did DM.
Two basic reasons: Lack of sufficient density and restrictive, separated use zoning.
I blame obama. and lack of sufficient population density. but not necessarily in that order.
I agree with Scott –
And I don’t know anything about Melbourne but to make comparisons between Atlanta and Paris is just crazy talk!
You forgot lack of demand. If there was strong enough demand for these cafes, zoning laws would change and the businesses would find a way to make it happen.
I question whether there’s insufficient demand. There’s a growing body of research that upwards of 50% or more of homebuyers would prefer walkable cafes and services in proximity to their homes but live without them because finding it typically means either paying a premium to live in a higher end historic area or being more risk tolerant and living in a lower end historic area.
In Decatur, Oakhurst comes the closest to providing a neighborhood cafe culture (as opposed to downtown cafes) and I think a lot of realtors would tell you it’s currently the city’s most in-demand neighborhood.
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. There is undoubtedly a large and growing demand for walkable cafes and shops, especially in the many little neighborhoods located outside of Atlanta but ITP. But, I don’t think there are enough people who feel strongly enough about it to effectuate change. It is one thing to choose to buy or rent near local cafes and shops (and pay a premium to so do), but fighting city hall to change current zoning to bring cafes to you is on an entirely different level.
Plus, Cat makes an excellent point. I would love a local watering hole a block or two away, but if someone bought my neighbor’s house and tried to turn it into a bar, I would make the fight to open so long and so expensive, they would end up just finding a place downtown. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to try to “retfofit” these neighborhoods. I won’t say it is due to poor planning, but maybe due to an evolution of what people want.
So let me get this straight – the evidence that there is not demand for this type of amenity is proven by the fact that it is still illegal?
I guess no one wants to buy alcohol on Sunday mornings, or buy growlers from Twains. If there was demand for those things, they would be legal.
C’mon Dawgfan – anyone with a free market bone in their body would never make that argument.
I would say the opposite. Metro Atlanta’s history of laissez faire planning helped to create low density and therefore a lack of demand. Better planning and stricter zoning laws should have been in place long ago. If a municipality has zoning laws that encourage high density, then that municipality will have a dense population.
Maybe I don’t want to live that close to you.
Not necessarily. I have friends who live in Hoschton (and they tell people and actually believe that they live in Atlanta) because they wanted to live on a 2 acre lot. You can’t create demand for population density solely with zoning, and the collective desires of the community led to low density, not the zoning ordinance. More often than not, zoning is a reflection of the public’s demand. The government still works for the people (at least on some levels).
One more point. Fulton County didn’t adopt a zoning ordinance until the 1950s, and many of these neighborhoods and their respective densities were established long before we can blame this on poor zoning.
Less laissez faire and more just plain lazy. Most municipalities adopt the same zoning code template – we’re all familiar with it, it’s what makes Canton exactly the same as any recently developed suburb outside Kansas City or Denver or Orlando.
This zoning code itself is anything but laissez faire. It imposes a single use paradigm for development on entire counties. This zoning code outlaws the building of places like the Decatur Square or Oakhurst village.
And don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing sinister about this, it’s just laziness. Cherokee county pretty much just copy-pasted the same zoning code that Cobb had. This was the easiest way to green light development of farmland, so that’s how it happened.
This is why you hear the term “smart growth”, which ticks off people who don’t understand the point. It requires a thoughtful assessment of what the built environment will be. This requires patience and leadership. Any other approach is likely not “smart”.
Thank you, TeeRuss, for pointing out that post-WWII planning and zoning is anything but “laissez faire.” I couldn’t disagree more, Dawg, that the auto-centric zoning in place in most of the country is a reflection of community wishes. It’s all people know – or have known. There has been little choice in the matter at all.
The entire post-WWII development pattern was pushed on the public – through road subsides, FHA loan programs, etc. – as much as it was pulled into existence. If it was a reflection of 1940-1990 community wishes (which, as I said, is debatable) it certainly isn’t a reflection of where we are today, or where we are headed.
I encourage everyone to examine an alternative: the form based code ( http://www.formbasedcodes.org/what-are-form-based-codes ) and if you like it, or think it would work, let the current Decatur Zoning Task Force know about it. http://www.decaturmetro.com/2012/02/06/decatur-zoning-task-force-to-hold-first-public-meeting-march-14th/
Yes, the basic answer is because Atlanta has a comparatively low population density, even in our densest neighborhoods. Those Paris/European/NYC neighborhood cafes exist and are bustling because there are a lot of people living very, very close by. Also, don’t forget about middle class white and black flight and also poor zoning and planning ideas.
+1 for Java Monkey! DM, do you mean the kind of place that is actually in the neighborhood? For example a neighborhood cafe in the Great Lakes neighborhood. I’ve often thought the existence of such places would be fantastic, but I thought we didn’t have them here because most neighborhoods don’t want any retail within them so zoning supports that preference.
It’s not my question, so I can’t really clarify it. But she was asking the question about Atlanta, not Decatur, I believe.
I like the idea of a neighborhood cafe too, and have often thought that it would be a great addition to many Decatur neighborhoods beyond the 1/4 mile radius of downtown DEC/OAK. Problem is, few want to be the resident who has to live right next to such establishments.
That kind of cool ecosystem of intermingled homes and shops and walkable corridors requires different views of space as well as tolerance for a lot the very things we try to escape when we buy a home. Let’s face it: most people want the cool shops to be about 1-3 blocks away, let some other folks’ houses be a buffer! Most people don’t want to be the house next to the cafe/bar with live music that closes at 3am.
It’s also the car’s fault: we live fragmented lives. The examples cited sound like NYC or European cities where people walk/use mass transit, live near work, and are out and about at all hours. There’s community and all those little shops get lots of foot traffic, high volume of transactions (even if each one is smallish), repeat customers. The ATL model, in contrast, is that you drive there, do your thing, you leave; anonymity rules. So you always have tension between residents and businesses/their customers, in particular when customers show little respect for nearby residences (noise, litter, obnoxious behavior, competition for parking, traffic jams/speeding…) because, frankly, they don’t care–they are the equivalent of obnoxious tourists.
+1
I could not agree more.
Java Monkey is everything that this person is asking for. Perfect location, open late, pretty good coffee, nice beer/wine selection, delish sandwiches, sweets, large patio, live music, poetry, cozy non-sterile-starbucks atmosphere. When I think of authentic Decatur establishments, it is the first place that comes to mind!
And since I only live 5 blocks away (just the right amount of distance!), it’s definitely what I consider my neighborhood cafe. The rest of Atlanta is lacking for sure, though…
Many places within walking distance from Alons down Highland to Highland Bakery, if she was indeed asking about Atlanta proper.
Zoning. With a few exceptions, Atlanta is zoned in blocks rather than mixed-use.
The best example I can think of Atlantic Station. What a terrible snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory. They had the opportunity for street-level retail (including neighborhood cafe’s), but instead were forced to build street-level condos. At the same time, they zoned big-box retail and a huge Ikea was put smack-dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
I blame lazy, un-creative zoning that’s designed to make it easy to find one pure developer (pure residential, pure commercial, pure retail, etc.,.) per site rather than *gasp* encouraging developers to work together.
Atlanta is not walkable largely due to zoning.
Yes to this. I think bad zoning in Atlanta is the primary culprit when it comes to laying blame for a lack of walkable, transit-connected, mixed-use neighborhoods — the kind that would be fertile ground for Euro- (and Melbourne-) style cafes.
Over the last few decades, many of the zoning decisions in the city seem to have been a reflection of the detached-use zoning in the outer suburbs. Some corrections have been made, and we’ve seen a lot of nice mixed-use stuff crop up in the last several years, but more needs to be done.
what about Glennwood Park? That is a livable, walkable community with a few neighborhood cafes. But everyone here is right. It’s all about density of living. As the saying goes you need rooftops to build retail.
Who could afford to open a cafe? Not only would it be expensive to run but with all of the “discount” coupons available you wouldn’t even make a decent profit.
Lot’s of people say they want a neighborhood cafe but not enough people would support them.
Just saying.
No one is obligated to provide coupons to pull new customers in. But if a business does choose to advertise with coupons, they shouldn’t be surprised, annoyed, or rude if people show up with them.
At least part of the answer is simple: Stupid zoning laws.
Re-read my post. I never said there was no demand; in fact, I know and acknowledged that there is demand. My point is that there is not enough demand for people to start organizing and demanding zoning ordinances to be rewritten to allow for neighborhood cafes. This is only one part of the answer to the question as to why there are few neighborhood cafes. Population denisty is another (and probably the best) part of the answer.
To use Scott’s stat, over 50% of homeBUYERS prefer walkalbe cafes. Personally, I would expect that figure to be higher, espcially in ‘hoods like Decatur and Oakhurst. But, that doesn’t mean that 50% of homeOWNERS want them to start popping up in their neighborhood. Maybe the next neighborhood over, but NIMBY.
Damn, I did it again. This is a response to TeeRuss.
I also think in addition to zoning laws it is other things like history and culture that shaped this city into what it is now – urban/suburban sprawl. It grew up much differently than Paris and New York – and in many ways it is still a child.
You guys know unemployment is still above 8%, right?
There are a few pockets in Atlanta, the highlands being the most obvious where you can walk to dinner and treats afterwards conveniently and semi-safely. But there’s a fair amount of unpleasantness that makes walking distances (more than 1/2 a mile or so) undesirable except in during the day. And even in broad daylight last month, we were AGGRESSIVELY panhandled on Virginia at the meter paybox. The bleephole shouted as us, and it just got major ugly while we were trying to pay. Scary experience to say the least. And I have experienced the same thing on Ponce. Intimidating, and just not good for pleasant strolls really.
I know the kind of place Rodell is talking about, there are several in every neighborhood in Montreal, Java Monkey is not the same thing. If you could combine Java Monkey, Sun in my Belly, Cafe Alsace and the Cakes and Ale Bakery it would be more like that, but the real key is a lot of outdoor seating (which is probably where the zoning bit comes into play).
Why doesn’t Paris have more Waffle Houses?
Why doesn’t Melbourne have more taquerias?
zee scattered, zee smothered, zee covered …
Because we still have Treme episodes on the DVR that we haven’t seen yet and now we have to contend with the return of the Walking Dead. Going to neighborhood cafes is for broke-ass Parisians who can’t afford to stay home and watch middlebrow drama.
In seriousness (but I was totally serious before), Candler Park has a little cluster of joints at McLendon and Clifton that are not totally divorced from Rodell’s description of a neighborhood cafe.
Oh, also, the average US work week is like twice as long as the average French work week. So the French are arguably much more in need of places to sit around and drink wine.
There’s one more thing. Having now read Rodell’s blog post, I think she was kidding, or going for satire or something. The references to “a charcuterie” and “croque madame” are the tells. If you’re seriously looking to gather support for a position, you don’t go around saying things like “and why can’t I get a good charcuterie or croque madame in this one horse town?”
Paris/Brooklyn/Melbourne look the way they do because the areas you are talking about were developed before the car and before the idea of zoning was in wide force. I think many neighborhoods in Atlanta would benefit from less massive zoning. In the past (say pre 1900) where a cafe went was more of a neighborhood consensus. If someone opened up a cafe and it pissed everyone in the neighborhood off it would close from lack of business (only people in the hood would go the the cafe because no cars). Most areas developed post WWII in Atlanta have 2+ square miles without anything but houses. Look at everything north of N. Decatur Rd. in google maps. Then look at Decatur and see how many businesses fit in 4 square miles. Check out City LIfe by Witold Rybczynski ( he has some other good books also) for a good general overview.