While no one on the Decatur City Commission brought up the potential walkability concerns of limiting residential child care to 10,000+ square foot lots at last night’s meeting, the popular national transportation website, Streetsblog, picked up my post from yesterday and ran with it.

In fact, we’re their front page story today!  Here’s the first few paragraphs from their post…

In the movement for sustainable transportation, it’s often the sexy stories that monopolize our attention: crazy anti-transit politicians, re-imagining streets for safer biking and walking, potential freeway teardowns.

But a lot of the time, when livability and active transportation come under assault, it’s in rather mundane circumstances. As this example from suburban Atlanta goes to show, some of the most consequential battlegrounds are still the local planning commissions and zoning boards.

Network blog Decatur Metro offers the case of the Decatur City Commission’s consideration of a new ordinance to allow family daycares on two major thoroughfares. Watch how quickly and ruthlessly the value of walkability is undermined, on the grounds of neighbors’ imagined complaints:

Actually that last paragraph should read “Decatur’s Planning Commission”, not the City Commission.

Picture courtesy of the City of Bartlesville.  Idea to use a cute picture of kids on a sidewalk, courtesy of Streetsblog.