Farewell to Tim Keane

Tim Keane was the Commissioner of City Planning in Atlanta for almost seven years. He was recruited from Charleston, SC. Atlanta was fortunate to have him and wish him well in his new role.

Tim Keane, former Commissioner of City Planning in Atlanta
Photo from Atlanta Department of City Planning

An internet search of Tim Keane will turn up a seemingly endless collection of images in which Tim Keane is speaking or meeting with members of the communities in Atlanta. He was tireless in his work to reform the City’s Planning Department and ended his work here by drawing attention to the need for thoughtful design.

Tim Keane’s Background

Tim has an undergraduate degree in planning and a graduate degree in architecture from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He was also a Knight Fellow in Community Building, City Planning and Design at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

Before coming to Atlanta, he was the Director of Planning, Preservation and Sustainability for the City of Charleston in South Carolina for sixteen years. He played an important role in Charleston’s recent popularity as a wonderful place to live and tour.

Progress in Atlanta

Tim left his position in Charleston to help right the ship of Atlanta’s Department of Planning, a department long known for its internal fiefdoms and conflicting instructions to those seeking building permits. During his tenure in Atlanta, he worked to rewrite the City’s zoning ordinance and rework its tree ordinance. Both are lightning rods for neighborhoods and developers yet Tim took them on to improve the City and position it for further growth.

Tim spent the last years of his time in Atlanta working to change the focus and expectations of the citizens. Atlanta has a collection of awful buildings, particularly some of the new construction in Midtown. They’re often large buildings yet the exteriors are poorly executed with cheap materials. They’re a stark contrast to earlier buildings that were more thoughtfully designed by architects like Phillip Johnson, Michael Graves and Gordon Smith.

In an ADPRO (Architectural Digest) article published in January of 2019, Tim speaks about the importance of better buildings:

“We’ve put too much emphasis on zoning, that you can make a great city based on zoning, and that’s just not the case. Residents look at the design of buildings, and they don’t know or care about the zoning. They look up and ask, ‘Does this building inspire me?’ That’s what we need to focus on in Atlanta, to keep insulting buildings from happening.”

The ADPRO article by Timothy Latterner does a nice job explaining how the City doesn’t have design standards and thus can’t impose strict rules on projects. Still, developers have an interest in working with the City to plan a building that’s not going to receive a significant amount of attention for its poor design.

We applaud Tim’s candor and willingness to take on these issues, even when it means having to find a polite way to say we can and must do much better.

Best Wishes!

We’re sorry to see Commissioner Keane leaving though we wish him well in his new endeavor. Boise is a beautiful city and will no doubt benefit from Tim’s guidance. He can be a great asset to the community if they’ll work with him. We hope they can keep him longer than Atlanta did.

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