Newspaper Page Text
Y
!
j
i
r
i
►
i
1
I
[
►
*•
We are the closest we've come to getting
a downtown roaster plan In decades, with
Athens Downtown Development Authority
board members and Athera-Qarke County com
missioners both seeming eager, at a meeting
last week, to hire Jack Crowley (and a couple
of plucky grad students), Atlas-like, to single-
handedly shoulder the job of determining the
future of downtown Athens.
Crowley, the former Dean of the UGA
College of Environment and Design and current
head of its Environmental Planning and Design
program, made dear at a presentation to the
ADDA board that he would operate primarily
as a professional consultant, and not as an
academic, if contracted to produce the master
plan. He rattled off a list of many of his pre
vious projects around the hemisphere, most
notably a downtown master plan for Tulsa,
OK. Crowley has also lent his name to some
controversial projects in Athens, includ
ing his pitch for streetcar service along the
little-used rail line through downtown and the
UGA campus, and a proposal for two highrise
apartment buildings on the edge of Dearing
Street. Likewise, Classic Center Director Paul
Cramer repeatedly invoked Crowley in pitching
the currently under-construction convention
center expansion.
Crowley offered to do the work essentially
for free, with a $30,000 price tag to support
a few graduate students and provide materi
als. He also described an input process that
would be largely informal but "absolutely
transparent." The first step, tie said, will be
to define the actual boundaries of downtown
as it functions, which differ from the legally
defined zone that ADDA is charged with
managing. (Given that the study area would
likely spill beyond the area of ADDA's purview,
Mayor Nancy Denson seemed eager to put up
ACCs fair share of the cost, supplementing the
authority's money.) From there, he'd go about
meeting with business and property owners,
block by block.
There are some deficits that were noted:
this plan won't provide a thorough market
analysis or a detailed study of infrastructure.
Last fall, the Mayor and Commission put a
temporary moratorium in place to consider the
capacity of downtown sewer lines. Perhaps
they should look at spending a little more to
hire consultants to complete those supple
mental analyses, ensuring that Crowley has
the most accurate and up-to-date information
as he conducts this plan.
This a big opportunity, and while Crowley
is an enthusiastic and competent resource, it's
worth asking whether we've fully considered
‘
all the- possibilities that going this rout* has
to offer. In order to make this process into
a true and effective partnership, its param
eters have to be defined a bit mom broadly
than one faculty member and one docu
ment. The College of Environment and Design
has a world-class faculty and a world-class
Community Design Center, and those are
resources that Crowley didn't realty discuss '
as he described his team of one, {Hus some
unnamed grad students.
Perhaps it's worth slowing down for just
a moment to consider that Crowley's services
might be only one ingredient in a successful
sustainable and accountable process, If Athens
is going to partner with its university to plan
for the future, the partnership should be much
fuller, so that as needs change over time, the
plan that Crowley authors can be updated and
truly evolve.
Crowley's eagerness and enthusiasm should
be taken note of in a town so frequently para
lyzed by inaction and indecisiveness, but we
should make sure that we can guarantee this
isn't just the work of a single person. Crowley
claimed that he's been on "all the sides of the
table that deal with urban development," list
ing off his resume of real estate, planning and
development jobs and projects. But there are
so many other variables that define downtown
Athens as something other than a development
site. There are the dishwashers, bartenders and
line cooks; musicians and artists and baris
tas; studiers, partiers
and procrastinators;
panhandlers and street-
preachers and a global
network of expats who
all love this city and
call it home, even when
they haven't been back
in years. Has Crowley
sat on all of those
sides of the table?
This project is a seri
ous exercise in trust,
with the entire notion
of downtown planning
on the line, along with
the university's and the
College of Environment
and Design's reputa
tions as community
partners. If the process isn't accountable
enough or doesn't produce enough buy-in
across the broad network of Athenians, it's
unlikely well get a second try. Athens' reputa
tion is that of a creative city, and downtown
Athens is, in a way, our collective work.
Crowley appears finally to have spurred us to
action to protect and enhance it.
On the front end, we need to be creat
ing the necessary partnerships among the
university's various resources, local business
groups and local governmental departments,
to make sure all are part of the team and on
the same page... We also need to explore new
input techniques that harness the creative
and crafty ethic of Athens. Rather than sit
ting back and watching Crowley work, we need
to make sure that we've crafted a plan where
we're all sharing the load.
If you've got ideas about the down
town master planning process, the Athens
Downtown Development Authority is eager
to hear them. Send them an email at master-
plan@downtownathensga.com.
Kevsa Williams alhensrising@flagpole.com
. "If we find that SCAT (the Supreme Council
of the Armed Forces) stands firm against us
as we try to fulfill the demands of the revolu
tion," said Fateroa AbouZeid of the Muslim
Brotherhood as the final results of Egypt's
presidential election last weekend rolled in,
"we will go back to the streets and escalate
things peacefully to the highest possible level.
"Now we have a new factor in Egyptian
! politics, the Egyptian people themselves." she
{ continued. "(They) wilt not accept a return to
| the old regime in any form, not after so much
I Egyptian blood was shed to remove it." Well,
! maybe.
There's nothing like
j an election to make
I things clear. Now all
j the cards are on the
| table in Egypt and the
last round of bidding
has begun. The army
i has opened with a very
| high bid in the hope of
j scaring everybody else
off, and now the other
players have to decide
whether to call or fold.
Sometimes, even ir.
long-established demo
cratic states, the play
ers simply fold in order
to avoid a destructive
constitutional upheaval.
That's what the Democratic Party did when
the United States Supreme Court awarded the
state of Florida and the presidency to George
J W. Bush in the disputed election of 2000.
It was an outrageously partisan decision by
the 5-4 Republican majority in the Supreme
Court, but if the Democrats had rejected it
the United States would have faced months
or even years of political turmoil If they had
foreseen the devastation that the Bush presi
dency would cause, they might have done oth
erwise, but at the time their decision seemed
wise.
It is possible that the Egyptian
"opposition"—an uneasy amalgam of the
secular and leftist young who overthrew the
dictator Hosni Mubarak on Tahrir Square 16
months ago and the Muslim Brotherhood
(which initially avoided direct confrontation
with the old regime)—will also just fold. After
16 months of upheaval, so many ordinary
Egyptians just want "stability" that the army-
might win a showdown in the streets.
The problem is that the Egyptian army has
bid much higher than the U.S. Supreme Court
ever did—so high that if the other players
fold, they lose almost everything. This is a
brazen bid to revive the old regime, minus
Mubarak, and restore the armed forces to the
position of economic privilege and political
control that they have enjoyed, to Egypt's
very great cost, ever since Gamal Abdel
Nasser's coup in 1952. •
On June 14, just 48 hours before the polls
opened for the second round of the presiden
tial election, Egypt's Supreme Constitutional
Court announced that last year's parliamentary
election, in which Islamic parties won almost
three-quarters of the seats, was conducted by
rules that contravened the constitution.
There was a legitimate question about
whether the political parties should have
been allowed to run candidates in the seats
reserved for independents. No, said the court,
all of whose judges were appointed by the old
i regime. But rather than just ruling that there
roust be by-elections in those seats, they
declared that the whole parliament must be
dissolved.
This bizarre decision presumably meant
that the 100-person constituent assembly cre
ated by the parliament to write Egypt's new
constitution was also dissolved. The army still
swears that it will hand power over to the
new democratically elected president on June
30—but he will now take office with no parlia
ment and no constitution to define his powers.
Might there have been some collusion
between the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces and the Supreme Constitutional Court
in this matter? Is the Pope a Catholic?
On June 17, only three days after the
Court handed down its judgement and just as
it was becoming clear that the old regime's
candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, would probably lose
the presidential election, the SCAF issued
an "interim constitutional declaration." It
effectively gives the military legislative pow
ers, control over the budget, and the right
to pick the committee that writes the new
constitution.
Since that committee will not report until
the end of the year, in the meantime there
will bi no election for a new parliament. There
wilt be an elected president, but he will not
even have authority over the armed forces:
the army's "interim constitution" strips him of
that power, and no doubt its tame committee
will write it into the new permanent constitu
tion as well.
The SCAF can't have come up with all this
in just 72 hours after the decision of the
Supreme Constitutional Court on the 14th.
There had to be a lot of coordination between
the military and the Court beforehand. You
could call this a "constitutional coup," but the
more accurate phrase is "military coup." So
what can Egyptians do about it?
They can go back to Tahrir Square, this
time student radicals and Muslim Brothers
together, and try to force the army out of poli
tics. That will be very dangerous, because this
time, unlike February of last year, the generals
may actually order the soldiers to clear the
square by gunfire. Or the opposition, aware
that the mass of the population has no appe
tite for more confrontation and instability,
may just submit and hope for a better day.
If it does that, the Egyptian revolution is
dead.
GWynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journal
ist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Can Professor Jack Crowley's one-man master plan realty capture the diversity of
experiences that makes Athens so vital?
f
6 RAGPOLE.COM JUNE 27,2012
SAMY 8A00F