Though it dropped three points from last year, Decatur remains Georgia’s “most walkable” city according to Walkscore.com for a second-straight year.

The city received a score of 63, 4 points ahead of the second-place North Druid Hills neighborhood.

The city of Atlanta, which obviously has some very walkable neighborhoods, received an overall score of 53, due to the large areas outside of the city’s core, which are quite unwalkable.  Atlanta ranked 20th among the nation’s largest cities in walkability.

Decatur’s Linda Harris alerts us to the city’s latest walkable honor; receiving a Silver Level designation in the inaugural round of Walk Friendly Communities’ uh…Walk Friendly Communities.

The national organization gave out 11 awards this year, with Seattle the only city to achieve Platnuim status.  (No one walks as hard as they do in Seattle!)  Ann Arbour, Arlington, Hoboken, and Santa Barbara all achieved Gold status, while Decatur shared the Silver level with Charlottesville, Va (Home of the great Parking Lot Movie!)

What aspects of Decatur helped it score a Silver?  Luckily, WFC has a quite detailed website.

Decatur is designated as a Silver-level community due to outstanding management of development and parking, top-notch educational and outreach efforts, and progressive evaluation methods. Highlights of Decatur’s application include:

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11Alive’s Doug Richards contacted me yesterday and inquired about Decatur’s recent accolade of being deemed “Georgia’s Most Walkable City” by Walkscore.com.  I rattled off a couple potential contacts and suggested that he also might want to include a “CCP Games Moving to Decatur” angle to make the story a bit more topical.  Above is the result. (Also, if you’ve been wondering about CCP Games current location, watch the video.)

Walk Score, the website that calculates how “walkable” any location is based on the proximity of surrounding amenities, has compiled a list of “walkscores” for Georgia’s 65 largest cities and guess who came out on top?

According to the list, Decatur ranked as the state’s most walkable city, followed by Augusta and Atlanta.

Of course, any list limited to “cities” in Georgia has inherent problems since much of the state’s populated areas aren’t even classified as cities, even in urban areas.  Also, there are certainly parts of Atlanta with higher populations and Walkscores than Decatur – Atlantic Station comes to mind – but still, Decatur’s ranking is an impressive achievement for a city that wanted to replace the Old Courthouse with a parking lot just 50 years ago.

Thanks to the city’s Linda Harris for pointing this out!

Both “walkability” and “child care” in the same post?  It’s a Decatur blogger’s dream come true!

Tonight, the Decatur City Commission will vote on approving amendments to the zoning ordinance to allow family home daycares in R-85 and R-60, approved by the Decatur Planning Commission last week.

So?  Well, of particular note is a conversation recorded in the minutes from the Planning Commission meeting (page 22) between some of the commission members and Planning Director Amanda Thompson.  The issue at hand is the lot size requirement in the proposed ordinance, because while the state regulates 35 square feet per child of indoor space, there is no outdoor requirement.  (In Georgia, family daycares can watch a max of six children per day.)

In response to an unrecorded question from commission member Scott Doyon, Ms. Thompson explained that she had recommended a 10,000 square foot lot size “because it would allow an adequate play space as well as a buffer between neighboring properties.”  She also admitted that most R-60 lots are smaller than 9,000 square feet and thus would not meet the minimum lot size to allow a family home daycare.

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