Between Two Creeks: Lessons from a Walking Tour

A Jane's Walk Tour in the Kirkwood Urban Forest Preserve

Equipped with a yellow vest and megaphone, I recently led a walking tour along sidewalks and nature trails, crisscrossing through a local neighborhood I've grown to love. The layers of infrastructure, history, watersheds, forests and urbanization in Atlanta's Kirkwood have been fascinating me for years, ever since I started attending a church there and then volunteering at the urban farm next door.

Last year I participated in a walking tour with the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), where a local artist introduced us to murals along the Beltline trail. The event was part of an annual, worldwide "festival" of volunteer-led walking tours held in honor of Jane Jacobs, who as an activist and journalist in 1960s NYC advocated for safe, walkable, community-oriented cities. As a civil engineer, I am both inspired and goaded by Jacob's idea of "eyes on the streets." I not only have the opportunity and responsibility to be an observant, responsive citizen, but also to design sites and infrastructure that encourage helpful, collaborative interactions between all the inhabitants of a city. Participating in this first Jane's Walk tour also made me aware of the importance of storytelling and how "big-picture," city-wide problems can often have "small-scale," local-level solutions, which build momentum as we work together and think creatively, iterating over time.

This spring I saw a fresh invitation for Jane's Walk applications on MODA's website. Kirkwood immediately came to mind. Maybe I could figure out how to introduce others to the rich connections I was experiencing firsthand? A walking route was the first big question to answer—but a rough idea for this formulated quickly, too. Sugar Creek flows along the edge of the urban farm in Kirkwood. I stroll down to the edge of the water almost every week, listening to the birds. Just a few blocks east is Hardee Creek, which flows through a forest obscured by old houses, apartments and strip malls. Just downstream of these hidden green spaces, the parallel creeks disappear beneath one of Atlanta's busiest commercial corridors and then a major interstate.

These personal experiences and neglected waterways became the backbone of my tour. But what kind of tour guide would I be?

When I visited Walt Disney World earlier this year, I was amused by the corny jokes from the Jungle Cruise boat ride captain. I figured using humor could help break the ice on my tour, especially if there was low turnout. But I also needed interesting facts, and the finesse to string them together into a compelling narrative. I checked out books on Native Americans and the Civil War, spent weekend afternoons walking the neighborhood, read blogs and listened the podcasts, asked friends who lived nearby about the local stories. I even used an AI assistant to iterate the "perfect" itinerary along with milestones and talking points.

When the sunny, breezy afternoon arrived, over thirty people showed up for the tour. I creased and re-creased my note pages and fiddled with the switch on the megaphone my friend leant me. It was exciting and nerve wracking to see several coworkers, newer friends from church, older friends from college, and colleagues from the naturalist program I'm participating in this year. Plus, there were more than half a dozen strangers who learned about the event from MODA. I looked at my watch, doubting we'd be able to move quickly enough. Which landmarks and facts would I need to nix when everyone grew bored?

What calmed me down was the enthusiasm and warmth in the crowd milling around me. Sure, I delivered some humor with a couple awkward jokes. But it was also my wife's encouragement and willingness to take pictures that steadied my voice. It was the farmer with the big white beard who introduced us to the goats and chickens. The farm director who let us cut through her backyard to get us further into the neighborhood. The friend who donned another safety vest to direct traffic around our gaggle of urban explorers. It was truly an afternoon of synergy and enriching connections. There was invigorating engagement when we stopped at the historic marker for the Battle of Atlanta, when we cut down several busy blocks of Memorial Drive, and when we gathered below a huge tree to talk about forest preservation.

When we reached a split in the route, a chorus arose in support of taking the longer way back in order to see remnants of the 19th century street car tracks. This feedback was music to my ears. When we returned to the farm director's yard, I opened the gate to a stream of smiling faces following behind me.

Walking, I've learned, is an act of participation and exploration, of slowing down time, observing with all our senses and asking questions about who we are, where we came from, and who we want to be. Somehow, my interests and work in land development, local history, environmental stewardship and community building can amount to more than the sum of their parts.

Functional infrastructure can take decades and countless dollars to build, and can tear apart communities just as easily as it can sustain the thrum of our daily lives. However, the stringing together of our interests, skills and relationship networks is something we can all build daily, in even small ways. A healthy ecosystem or city is a work in progress, and it starts with you and me.

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