After reading the letter submitted by Beth Pullias and re-reading the original article by John Munford, I was dismayed at the amount of uninformed rhetoric printed in The Citizen.

The proposal to build a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) by John Wieland for the undeveloped 89-acre tract is not an un-Peachtree-City-like concept. The ideals that the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) of TND development are in fact the basis for the original village concept of the city.

When my family moved to Peachtree City from Cobb County in the summer 1989, I was in third grade and had until then experienced a typical suburban childhood experience.

Growing up in Peachtree City when the village concept still held ground (at least from my memory), I remember when the majority of the retail and office buildings were located within each village.

The now baby Kroger served the north end of the city (along with the shopping center with the old A&T grocery store and Partners Pizza) with the Crosstown Kroger serving the south end of the city with Westpark Walk providing a mix of shopping and small movie theater surrounded by office use including the old Peachtree City Information Center.

This made the majority of shopping easily accessible via golf cart, by bicycle (as I mostly experienced the city as a young man), by foot, and by car.

The concept of placing the small retail/commercial developments in an area where they are surrounded by residential allowed each area of the city to have its own village center.

These smaller developments were made accessible to bicyclists, pedestrians, and golf carts because they were bordered by roads with slower moving traffic.

Since the city plan was originally developed in this manner, I was given a city to explore with parents who were comfortable with allowing my freedom to roam because I wasn’t leaving our village.

Now fast-forward to the city that I come back to visit, and all I see is car-oriented development along the busiest roads in the city.

It is no wonder The Citizen is filled with letters and stories from angry citizens protesting the changes to the city.

The city is no longer an ideal model of planning, but has come to symbolize the errors of operating a government that has failed to keep a steady eye on the plan for the city.

If I was living in Peachtree City today, I would not allow my son the same freedom that I was allowed as a child to explore the new retail developments that are sprouting up around the busiest roads in the city, producing typical suburban developments where speed of entry for the automobile as a design methodology discourages pedestrian uses.

The underlying reason for the discontent among the citizens is the fact that there is no vision for the city.

As a result, we have seen the development of an active group that wants to block all development, regardless of the quality, out of a misplaced view that this is the answer: Preserve what is left of the original vision of the town that once was.

The error in this can be seen in many different examples across the city where people fought to stop development cold instead of working with the development team to produce a project that would fit with the vision of the city, and in the end the developer built an end product that was a failure for the fabric of the community.

The cycle continues to repeat itself because we have politicians who fail to provide a steadfast vision of the growth of the city and instead cower to the whims of whatever direction the wind is blowing.

Traditional Neighborhood Development is a planning concept that returns the city back to the inhabitants and away from the car-oriented suburban development of the past eight to nine years that Peachtree City has experienced.

The city (and the residents) should be excited that a developer with a long-standing relationship with a community wants to come in and produce a project that is aligned with the original village concept that is completely lost on most residents of the city.

I encourage every resident to learn about the concepts of the Congress for New Urbanism and of Traditional Neighborhood Development. We have some great examples in Atlanta of TND projects including Glenwood Park, Vickory, and downtown Woodstock.

I’d encourage John Wieland Homes to contact Ellen Dunham-Jones, the program head of the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech, and have her come to Peachtree City to give a presentation on the benefits of TND planning to inform people like Beth Pullias.

If you want Peachtree City to become another Fayetteville, Riverdale, Union City, Newnan, or even East Cobb, then listen to the wealth-envy, socialist rhetoric of someone like Beth Pullias and ignore the real problem facing Peachtree City like all of the politicians are doing.

If you want to work towards steering the city in the direction that it was originally planned, then encourage the city to hire a design professional to work with the history of the city and the residents to produce a development plan that encourages smart growth and sustainable design practices.

William Norris, Assoc AIA LEED AP

East Cobb County, Ga.

[Norris is a graduate of McIntosh High School (class of 2000), and a graduate of Southern Polytechnic State University with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 2005. Currently residing in East Cobb County with his wife and son, he is an apprentice architect for an “international architecture firm” in Atlanta.]