KKB 5th Annual Sustainability Summit Recap: Reimagining the Asphalt Jungle
On November 3rd, Keep Knoxville Beautiful hosted our fifth annual Sustainability Summit at the East Tennessee History Center. This year’s theme was Reimagining the Asphalt Jungle, which showcased roads, interstates, and parking lots repurposed into vibrant parks or public spaces in Atlanta, GA; Nashville, TN; and Charlotte, NC. We heard firsthand from experts about the divisions created by large interstates and parking garages, and how repurposing these spaces can bring divided communities together, provide an answer to the affordable housing crisis, and increase safety for pedestrians. If you weren’t able to make the Summit, we whipped up this handy recap so you can catch up on all the main topics of discussion!
Jack Cebe, The Stitch, Atlanta, GA
Jack Cebe presents at the KKB 5th Annual Sustainability Summit. Photo by KKB.
Jack shared an exciting project in Atlanta called The Stitch. Anyone who has ever bravely (or perhaps foolishly?) driven through Atlanta on I-75/1-85 knows the sheer massive size of the interstate cutting through the heart of the city. Known as The Downtown Connector, this interstate actually disconnects different parts of Atlanta – Midtown and Downtown – from each other. The Downtown Connector also divides Atlanta along lines of race and economic class. Downtown, once a vibrant and highly utilized area of town before the displacement caused by urban renewal, is now filled with parking lots and roads that service the interstate, so that drivers can get on and off the interstate quickly. The Connector also removed buildings, displaced people, and disrupted the physical and social fabric of Atlanta.
The Stitch seeks to resolve this division – or, if you will, “stitch” Atlanta back together. The Stitch will cap the interstate for ¾ of a mile with a 14-acre park. It will transform empty parking lots and underutilized properties into a vibrant park that will connect Downtown to Midtown by building over the interstate. The Stitch also provides opportunities for affordable housing, which is the most successful when it is integrated into areas with market rate housing. This can create connections across economic classes, in addition to the high-paying opportunities in Midtown that would become more accessible.
While this project is very exciting for Atlanta, Jack also has proposals for Knoxville. Downtown Knoxville is bordered to the east by James White Parkway, cutting off access to Downtown for residents of East Knoxville and to the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum (which was itself an urban renewal project in the 1960s that displaced many of Knoxville’s Black citizens). The area around the parkway and the Civic Auditorium and Coliseum is roughly the same size as Downtown Knoxville, but the space is utilized drastically differently. It primarily consists of the parkway, parking garages to service the Civic Auditorium and Coliseum, and the Knoxville Area Transit Center. This contrasts greatly with how Downtown is utilized – filled with shops, restaurants, parks, public art, theatres, offices, apartments, and of course Market Square.
Jack encouraged the audience to think about the opportunities that exist in Knoxville for underutilized spaces that could be repurposed into spaces that will be a fixture of pride for all of Knoxville.
Kate Cavazza, Urban Design Center, Charlotte, NC &
Eric Hoke, Civic Design Center, Nashville, TN
Kate Cavazza and Eric Hoke present at the KKB 5th Annual Sustainability Summit. Photo by KKB.
Kate and Eric of Charlotte and Nashville’s Design Centers respectively presented together about urban design. They touched on three major topics in their cities – interstate barriers, placemaking, and reclaiming public space.
Charlotte is a fast growing city and has many of the problems that Jack touched on – the effects of urban renewal, interstate disconnection, and economic and racial segregation. One way in which Charlotte is addressing the barriers created by interstates is through the Urban Arboretum Trail. The trail goes through several historically African-American neighborhoods concentrated along I-77 and I-277. The trail reclaims space underneath the interstates, connecting in a loop to lace together these neighborhoods using existing infrastructure of pedestrian and bicycle routes. In addition, Charlotte is beautifying the areas under the interstate through murals. The Trade Street mural underneath the I-77 overpass magnifies the story of the community that was displaced in the creation of the interstate.
In Nashville, the interstate bifurcated the music history-rich area of Jefferson Street and it is now in three divided sections. Many of the historic music clubs in which groundbreaking artists like Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Ray Charles, and Otis Redding performed were demolished. In an effort to reclaim these spaces, murals and historical markers have been installed underneath the interstate honoring the history of Jefferson Street.
In Charlotte, placemaking efforts involve creating a grant program that has provided over $200,000 to twelve new community projects since 2019. In Nashville, there is a focus on tactical urbanism, which is short term, quick win, experimental infrastructure. For example, a grassroots group called TURBO (Tactical Urbanism Organizers) created a road diet block party. They hosted a block party on a four lane road, utilizing two of the lanes for the block party and the other two for traffic. This allowed for the road to serve multiple purposes; it was a community space while still providing access for cars.
The final topic Kate and Eric covered was that of reclaiming public space. In Charlotte, the Five Points Plaza was the first public space investment in thirty years. A public street corner and parking lot was redeveloped into a gathering place, complete with a seating area, splash pad, and vibrant mural on the side of an adjacent business. Similar projects in the neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Prosperity Village were also created, with even more in the pipeline for the Greenville area of Charlotte.
In Nashville, Walk Bike Nashville and the Youth Design Team, a high school internship program through the Civic Design Center, upgraded the deadly intersection of Dickerson Pike and Hart Lane to increase its safety features. They painted glow in the dark crosswalks, creating bulb-outs that shorten the distance of the crosswalk. This idea of tactical urbanism convinced TDOT to paint permanent bulb-outs and crosswalks, exemplifying how tactical urbanism can create long-term change.
Caleb Racicot, TSW Design, Atlanta, GA
Caleb Racicot presents at the KKB 5th Annual Sustainability Summit. Photo by KKB.
Caleb discussed the importance of parking reform and the impact that parking has on cities and their downtowns. Parking is part of a larger framework of an auto-dependent society, where valuable land is designed for the transport and housing of cars. For example, from Market Square, an individual can walk within a quarter of a mile and find dozens of different kinds of uses for spaces or buildings – restaurants, offices, parks, theatres, etc. On the other hand, the area around West Town Mall is the same scale, but an individual would just barely be out of the mall parking lot within that same walking distance.
This disparity is because downtown Knoxville was built in a pre-automotive society. Parking lots and garages disrupt what downtowns do best – bring people together, create a vibrant space, and preserve historic spaces. Contrast to West Town Mall – despite the large numbers of shops and restaurants in close proximity to the mall, an individual is much less likely to walk to these places because they would have to cross busy roads and wide parking lots.
The reason for these large parking lots is because of parking requirements. Parking requirements are zoning ordinances that vary from city to city that require a certain amount of parking to be provided at new developments. These requirements first appeared in the 1920s and then became common in the 1950s. In Knoxville, we have parking minimums and maximums, but unusually, we also require commercial and industrial properties to provide the number of parking spaces for the number of employees, which can be very difficult to administer.
Caleb shared that the easiest regulatory solution is to get rid of parking requirements. If this solution is difficult to pass politically, then he suggested removing parking requirements in specific parts of town, such as historic, pre-parking areas of town that people love and want to preserve. In Atlanta, buildings built before 1965 don’t have a parking requirement, which exempts historic buildings and allows for their further preservation.
While Caleb acknowledged that the significant amount of parking we have won’t go away immediately, he suggested some changes in the meantime. He suggested taking out street parking to create pedestrian spaces or bike lanes. To combat the intense heat generated by parking lots in the summer, he suggested planting trees to help cool and provide beauty to the space. Similarly, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and TBS, owned a building in downtown Atlanta with a large parking lot, so he built a solar farm on top of the parking lot.
Caleb encouraged the citizens of Knoxville to reimagine what could be used with the large swaths of land that are used for parking. Through Caleb’s, Kate’s, Eric’s, and Jack’s wonderful presentations, they showed that the possibilities are endless; determination, imagination, and community support is the secret recipe that will help bring around these exciting changes.