Last month, community leaders, public health professionals and University of Georgia partners gathered in Sandersville, Georgia for a Capacity Building Workshop focused on advancing the vision of the Hi-Lo Trail: a proposed multi-use corridor connecting Athens to Savannah.
Spanning eight counties– Greene, Hancock, Washington, Johnson, Emanuel, Bulloch, Effingham and Chatham– the Hi-Lo Trail is more than just a pathway. As discussed throughout the workshop, trails of this scale serve as critical infrastructure for community development, offering what planners often refer to as “triple bottom line” benefits: strengthening local economies, improving environmental outcomes, and supporting public health.
This event was collaboratively hosted by the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design, UGA Extension, and the UGA College of Public Health, as well as several state level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) programs: G-HOP, SPAN, SHINE, and REACH. Together these groups along with the Hi-Lo staff director and CED alum Mary Charles Howard (BLA ’08), brought together stakeholders from across the planned route to participate in the guided workshop session.
Turning Vision into Action
CED Senior Lecturer Donnie Longenecker presents at the workshop.
The morning began with facilitator training led by nationally recognized planning and public health consultant Mark Fenton. This segment focused on how to conduct pedestrian connectivity centric community meetings and facilitate local walk audits. Walk audits are a hands-on method for evaluating the built environment, allowing participants to assess pedestrian conditions, identify barriers, and uncover opportunities for improvement through direct observation.
The afternoon segment of the session kicked off with an overview of the Hi-Lo Trail’s long-term vision and the role of active transportation (walking, biking, and rolling) in shaping more connected and resilient communities. Participants explored key strategies for implementation, including interdisciplinary collaboration, short and long term timelines, and the use of low-cost, high-impact demonstration projects.
A central theme of the workshop was capacity building: equipping local teams with the tools and approach needed to advance trail planning within their own communities. County-based teams worked alongside resource partners from state agencies and regional organizations, emphasizing the importance of cross-sector collaboration in bringing large-scale projects that cross through many jurisdictions to life.
Learning Through Place: Walk Audit
A highlight of the workshop was a guided walk audit of downtown Sandersville led by Fenton.
Mark Fenton leads the walk audit in downtown Sandersville.
“Sandersville provided a great learning laboratory for our workshop,” said Fenton. “Participants immediately began to see approaches that would once again make the downtown and surrounding blocks functional, safe, and inviting for pedestrian and bicyclists, both residents and visitors. Simple measures such as a low cost median island or curb extensions at a keg crossing, or turning a lane on an oversized road into a dedicate two-way bicycle lane could be transformative!”
For many attendees, this experiential component brought to light the value of on-the-ground engagement. By moving through the space together, participants were able to connect planning concepts to real-world conditions and demonstrate how community input and lived experience can inform more effective and context informed design decisions.
Following the walk audit, participants returned to small-group sessions organized by county to identify next steps for advancing the Hi-Lo Trail at the local level. Each team worked to define priority areas for future walk audits, identify key stakeholders to engage, and propose potential “quick build” demonstration projects: temporary, low-cost interventions that can test ideas and build momentum. The session concluded with rapid presentations, allowing each group to share their ideas and learn from one another’s approaches.
