Brandon Valentine

Places matter, or all of East Nashville is divided into two parts

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:27:00 -0500

Places matter, and that sense is less common that you might think. For the past 60 years this city, like our nation at large, has willfully ignored the effects that quality of place have on us. Beauty and its absence have powerful effects on people, yet we have placed so little value on beauty that we have built whole neighborhoods, cities and a nation that dehumanize and demoralize us. The public realm and its attitude towards people not only express our values as a society, they in turn influence those values. As we have allowed ourselves to build isolated, detached buildings that do not respect or engage people, the social contract has dissolved. We have begun to accept lack of respect for the public realm and the loss of social decorum as inevitable.

In my neighborhood, East Nashville, nowhere is this effect more striking than on Gallatin Road, a main street so thoroughly depressing none of us has the heart to call it Main Street any longer. East Nashville is by all accounts a progressive neighborhood, full of passionate individuals and leaders, striving to lead the best type of urban life where community and shared responsibility come before personal motives. Quite recently we all witnessed the incredible kindness and generosity East Nashvillians are capable of when citizens of all stripes and means dropped everything to help our neighbors recover from devastating flooding. Yet each day as I depart my house in Eastwood for a job that takes me to Germantown I cross a physical manifestation of the divisions that remain in our community.

Like a scar bisecting our community lies a road which shows so little respect for any human who might use it that we only dare travel it armored in our cars. If you have not tried walking down Gallatin Road, try it sometime. It is an experience not unlike walking down the side of an interstate highway, and about as rewarding. As vehicles speed by you may find yourself sandwiched between them and a chain link fence. The psychological effect of this experience is one of utter fear and desperation. As neighborhoods we have been forced to turn our backs to this expressway, looking inward. Goodbye Main Street, hello Woodland Street. Goodbye Gallatin, hello McFerrin.

This has left us with a glaring gap in the social fabric of our neighborhoods. As you enter East Nashville you don’t see the progressive, socially aware neighborhood you were promised. You have to make a left or a right turn to find that place. Instead you see the least among us, forced to travel this no man’s land on foot day in and day out to access public services like the bus. Remember that experience of walking down Gallatin Road? Imagine doing it day in and day out for years, and what sort of effect that might have on your psyche. This is what we ask our poor to endure, and we expect them to find hope and aspirations among it. Try lifting yourself out of poverty when the message of the physical world is that we don’t even respect you enough to build buildings that acknowledge your existence. Instead we’ve placed them 50 feet from the road, to make sure the rich are able to drive a safe distance away from you before entering the building.

How many neighbors and friends do you know on your side of Gallatin Road? And how many do you know on the other side? Anything disturbing to you about those numbers? Gallatin Road is, at present, perhaps the single greatest lost opportunity in our neighborhood. Gallatin Road should be Main Street, a street that embodies the very best our community has to offer. It should tie together our neighborhoods, and bring us closer as neighbors. It should treat our citizens rich and poor alike humanely. Above all, it should lift our spirits to set foot on it, rather than crush them.

There was a time in our history when we did not need legislation to achieve such goals, because building places that mattered was a part of the social contract. It was understood that buildings express our aspirations as a people and that it is necessary to build buildings, blocks and places that lift us up. From that era we get streets like 2nd Avenue and Lower Broadway, plazas like War Memorial and the Public Square (just now reactivated from an earlier era), all places we as citizens unquestioningly defend the integrity of. Threaten to build a building with 2 acres of parking in front of it on one of those streets today and even the libertarians among us would be lying in front of bulldozers. It is part of our human character to value places of great beauty and harmony. And when we are given places of value, we come out to walk among them, bump into one another, and our civic life is richer.

Nashville has been blessed in recent years to have a growing number of leaders looking out for opportunities to build better places and create a richer civic life, and bit by bit, piece by piece, legislation has passed that sets the framework for how we return to building places of value. Chief among these achievements are the Downtown Code and Gallatin Pike Improvement District Special Plan. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Councilman Mike Jameson, who has quietly and persistently worked to fix our city’s zoning requirements to effect these changes. I am deeply concerned now that some of those achievements are about to be undone.

The first rumblings of this began recently with the temporary relocation of the Greyhound Bus Station to the old Hansen Chrysler dealership on Charlotte Avenue. The North End leadership is understandably upset. That bus station has been an eyesore for as long as I’ve lived in Nashville. In handling the relocation Metro departments and councilwoman Erica Gilmore appear to have conspired to keep the location a secret until the last possible moment. While their behavior is deplorable and in violation of the spirit of our open meetings policy, it has absolute nothing to do with the downtown code and it is equally deplorable that they used the DTC to justify their actions. Before the DTC was passed, the Hansen Chrysler property was already zoned to house a commercial business like Greyhound. Don’t blame the DTC for Greyhound.

The downtown code, admittedly a dense read, is designed to protect neighborhoods from exactly the kind of eyesore that the old bus station presented. The repeal of the DTC leaves inner city neighborhoods open to more business like Greyhound, not fewer. Under the DTC if a business pulls permits to improve the property and they demolish 5% or more of the existing square footage or add 25% more or at least 1000 square feet to the existing structure, they are required to build/fix sidewalks, plant street trees, landscape existing parking, and all of their new construction must meet the standards of the DTC, leading to better buildings and better places than previously existed. The Hansen Chrysler dealership is ugly, and in an area of the North End desperately in need of new life. The Greyhound station, for better or worse, is a vital part of Nashville’s transportation infrastructure. Because we decided to build the MCC, we have to move it somewhere. By placing it inside the DTC, we’re making sure that it cannot again become the eyesore it once was. If this is indeed a temporary move, I hope their permanent location is also inside the DTC.

Even more pressing though is District 5 Councilman Jamie Hollin’s proposal to exempt his district and the north side of Gallatin Road from the SP zoning plan it now enjoys. I have a great deal of respect for Jamie and think he’s the best kind of councilman a neighborhood could hope for, one who listens, but on this I think he’s just plain wrong and in danger of undoing years of work to improve our neighborhood. While some of the details differ, the SP zoning for Gallatin Road is of the same spirit as the DTC and is designed to repair the rift in our community. It’s not perfect, and I could rattle off a list of things I would improve, but it’s the best tool we’ve got to improve the public realm in our neighborhood. I’m disheartened that Councilman Hollin jumped directly to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If there are improvements to be made, let’s improve the thing, but we need these tools if we are to build places of greater substance and value than those we inherited.

The best example we have of urban design on Gallatin Road at the moment, the 5th and Main building, broke ground 2 years before the SP plan was approved. While in general this is a good building, walk by it sometime. None of the entrances are at grade with the sidewalk, instead presenting a low concrete wall to the street and pedestrians. Another barrier between the sidewalk users, mostly the poor in our community, and the building above. Without the SP, even the most well intentioned developers will get these things wrong, and assuming developers are well intentioned is a fool’s wager.

The idea that the costs associated with SP compliance are somehow prohibitive strikes me as a straw man. The greatest cost of building a new building or an addition to an existing building has little to do with whether it’s on the front or back of the lot or how many windows it has. It has a lot more to do with the raw cost of labor and materials. Compliance with the SP over time is going to make it easier to build in our neighborhoods, not more difficult. As the existing building stock is renewed and becomes of greater quality, property owners will find banks more willing to make loans to improve existing properties. Rising property values have a compounding effect. This is what we should be aiming for, not the status quo.

The only part of the SP which seems controversial to me is the part that restricts what types of business may locate in the area. I believe a healthy neighborhood needs all types of businesses within it, including auto repair shops, pawn shops, appliance repair, etc. People need places to work and those uses should not be segregated to areas outside of our neighborhoods. I just want those businesses, when they locate here, to be made to build buildings of substance that engage the street and respect passers by. Eventually a street full of such buildings will begin to price less desirable businesses out and they will spill over into side streets where they’re less visible. But if those businesses have the capital to build the sorts of buildings we aspire to, I don’t see why we should prevent that.

If property owners resist the SP, I am looking to our leaders in Councilmen Jameson, Cole and Hollin to explain to them the benefits the SP bring to the neighborhood and to their property values. And it is my sincere hope that Councilman Hollin will reconsider his proposal to exempt District 5 from SP zoning.

Yours in Eastwood,
Brandon Valentine

Ghosts of Shopping Past - The Morning News

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:02:00 -0600

Ghosts of Shopping Past - The Morning News

Demolished! 11 Beautiful Train Stations That Fell To The Wrecking Ball (And The Crappy Stuff Built In Their Place) » INFRASTRUCTURIST

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:23:33 -0500

Demolished! 11 Beautiful Train Stations That Fell To The Wrecking Ball (And The Crappy Stuff Built In Their Place) » INFRASTRUCTURIST

MySpace CSS Music Player, Mp3 Player, Media Player Fix | Dreams Like Fire - Portfolio Of Joe Hickman

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:31:01 -0500

MySpace CSS Music Player, Mp3 Player, Media Player Fix | Dreams Like Fire - Portfolio Of Joe Hickman

Garrison Brothers Distillery - Welcome - Texas Bourbon

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:34:44 -0500

Garrison Brothers Distillery - Welcome - Texas Bourbon

Southern food restaurant Monell's files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy | tennessean.com | The Tennessean

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:59:24 -0500

Southern food restaurant Monell's files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy | tennessean.com | The Tennessean

"If they differ, you fail."

Tue, 19 May 2009 20:03:26 -0500

“If they differ, you fail.”

- Me, Re: rspec

"Any male outfit that includes both a white patent leather (or plastic) belt, and matching white..."

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:35:30 -0500

“Any male outfit that includes both a white patent leather (or plastic) belt, and matching white shoes.
The Full Cleveland is found many places, not just Cleveland. It is particularly common at American Legion dances.”

- Urban Dictionary: full cleveland

Bill Moyers Journal: Juan Cole & Shahan Mufti on Pakistan

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:09:43 -0500

Bill Moyers Journal: Juan Cole & Shahan Mufti on Pakistan

"With its ample production budget, SUPERTRAIN attracted a rich array of period talent, including..."

Sun, 17 May 2009 03:14:04 -0500

“With its ample production budget, SUPERTRAIN attracted a rich array of period talent, including Vickie Lawrence (aka Momma for Momma’s Family), retired footballing superstar Don Meredith, and Alan Alda’s dad. Plus this gem of credit line: “Charlie Brill as Robert, the Hairdresser.””

- Watch: SUPERTRAIN! Express to Terror!! » INFRASTRUCTURIST

"The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York’s..."

Sun, 17 May 2009 03:07:21 -0500

“The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York’s Grand Central Station at 11:15 p.m., arriving at Montreal’s (now defunct) Windsor Station at 8:25 a.m., a little more than nine hours later. To make that journey today, from New York’s Penn Station on the Adirondack, requires a nearly 12-hour ride. The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian Hiawatha in the 1950s took about four and a half hours; today, via Amtrak’s Empire Builder, the journey is more than eight hours. Going from Brattleboro, Vt., to New York City on the Boston and Maine Railroad’s Washingtonian took less than five hours in 1938; today, Amtrak’s Vermonter (the only option) takes six hours—if it’s on time, which it isn’t, nearly 75 percent of the time…
…Obama’s bold vision obscures a simple fact: 220 mph would be phenomenal, but we would also do well to simply get trains back up to the speeds they traveled at during the Harding administration. Consider, for example, the Burlington Zephyr, described by the Saturday Evening Post as “a prodigious, silvery, three-jointed worm, with one stalk eye, a hoofish nose, no visible means of locomotion, seeming either to be speeding on its belly or to be propelled by its own roar,” which barreled from Chicago to Denver in 1934 in a little more than 13 hours. (It would take more than 18 today.) An article later that year, by which time the Zephyr had put on the “harness of a regular railroad schedule,” quoted a conductor complaining the train was “loafing” along at only 85 mph. But it was not uncommon for the Zephyr or other trains to hit speeds of more than 100 mph in the 1930s. Today’s “high-speed” Acela service on Amtrak has an average speed of 87 mph and a rarely hit peak speed of 150 mph. (The engine itself could top 200 mph.)”

- Why trains run slower now than they did in the 1920s. - By Tom Vanderbilt - Slate Magazine

"In any case, the credit fiesta is over, and the “consumer” economy with it, because..."

Mon, 04 May 2009 18:40:48 -0500

“In any case, the credit fiesta is over, and the “consumer” economy with it, because industrial growth as we have known it is over. It’s over globally, too, though all regions of the world will not experience its demise the same way at the same rate. The Asian nations may swap things around a while longer but China is basically screwed. They have less oil left than we have (which is saying, not much at all) and they won’t corner the rest of the global oil market without starting World War Three. Meanwhile, they’re running out of water and food. Good luck becoming the next global hegemon. Oh, and Japan imports 90 percent of its energy; India over 80 percent. Fuggeddabowdit. Credit will not vanish everywhere overnight — even in the USA — because it is not distributed equally everywhere. But it will vanish in layers, and here in the USA a very broad layer of the lower and middle classes are now losing their access to it in one way or another — personally, in small business — and they will never get it back. Anyone who intends to thrive in the years just ahead had better plan on doing it on the basis of accounts receivable — and what they receive might not even necessarily come in the form of US dollars.”

- Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : The Bottom

"So let’s face it: any President who sought to destroy the political power of the Investment..."

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:03:28 -0500

“So let’s face it: any President who sought to destroy the political power of the Investment Banker Aristocracy in a frontal assault would be defeated if not destroyed. Any president of either party who dares even mess around the edges of the real power structure gets “the treatment.” Is there any strategy would might actually work? How about “give them enough rope to hang themselves”?…If you set out to completely discredit the bankers and eviscerate their political power, you’d proceed exactly as Obama has done, enabling it to reach its reductio ad absurdum conclusion of fat bonuses and tax-funded bailouts in the trillions of dollars, at which point the public will rise up in fury, doing the work which was impossible for you, a new “liberal” president.”

- charles hugh smith-Obama’s Secret Plan

"Now, former Merrill Lynch chief John Thain — of thousand-dollar trash-basket infamy —..."

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:59:38 -0500

“Now, former Merrill Lynch chief John Thain — of thousand-dollar trash-basket infamy — has come back out of the woodwork to backbite BOA’s Ken Lewis over who-said-what in regard to a treasure chest of bonuses divvied up during the blur of TARP payouts last fall. Thain complains of being unemployed since then — though one wonders why he doesn’t just shut the fuck up, buy half of Nantucket with his untold millions of booty, and learn to play the oboe or something. This giant CEO cat fight was just getting interesting when the Mexican flu pulled the news-plug on it.”

- Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : The Joker

Using imapsync to backup / archieve your Gmail emails | Bitubique.com

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:14:12 -0500

Using imapsync to backup / archieve your Gmail emails | Bitubique.com

REGex TESTER v1.5.3 - test/validate regular expressions, online tester

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:34:35 -0500

REGex TESTER v1.5.3 - test/validate regular expressions, online tester:

AJAX Regex Tester is damn handy.

" Mr. Obama looked to be the man-on-a-white-horse — on the exhaustion of Reagan-Bush..."

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:12:25 -0500

“ Mr. Obama looked to be the man-on-a-white-horse — on the exhaustion of Reagan-Bush Jesus-Republicanism — but he’s coming off more like Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans, duc d’Orléans) in 1793, with perhaps Newt Gingrich waiting offstage to become Robespierre in 2012 — and some obscure US Army captain now toiling in Kirkuk slated to become the American Napoleon of 2015. As you’ve surely heard a thousand times now, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. The enormities of Wall Street today are a little like those of the French Ancien Régime at Versailles.”

- Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Note: Hope = Truth

"It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of..."

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:58:47 -0500

“It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs’s latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke’s work station to Lloyd Blankfein’s cappuccino machine.”

- Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : The Coming Siege of Austerity

"The Spurs said tests showed Ginobili had an increased narrow edema and stress fracture in his right..."

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:23:54 -0500

“The Spurs said tests showed Ginobili had an increased narrow edema and stress fracture in his right distal fibula.”

- San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili out for remainder of season - ESPN

Tumblr should let you embed videos of an arbitrarily large size

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:30:13 -0500

Tumblr should let you embed videos of an arbitrarily large size