[press.] Robert Kunzig’s cover story for National Geographic’s April issue was this hot take on the future of cities: “These five cities are taking bold steps to rein in sprawl.” Ok, so nobody is surprised to hear that Atlanta is the poster child for sprawl, but it’s a big surprise to see that one of the most ambitious strategies for combating sprawl has taken root here.

Excerpt > “When people talk about cities of the future, they’re often picturing something like the old Jetsons cartoons, with lots of robots and flying cars. Robots and flying cars are coming alright. But the key thing, if we want to have cities we love, is to remember who we’re designing them for: People. In the 20th century, we lost sight of that. Back then a different technological revolution was upon us—automobiles. We fell so hard for them that we redesigned our cities around them. Especially in the United States, we created a sprawl of highways and parking lots, strip malls and cul-de-sacs, a landscape that is accessible only by car. It’s a landscape that, as Atlanta urban designer Ryan Gravel put it to me recently, “is so not what the future wants.” > More