Tag: Tennessee

Bill Fulton speaking last night in Nashville. Photo via Nashville Next.

Smart Growth America’s Vice President of Policy Development and Implementation Bill Fulton spoke in Nashville last night as part of the Nashville Next speaker series.

During the discussion Fulton unveiled new research about development strategies in Nashville, including ways the city could reduce costs and improve its bottom line. Here’s what attendees had to say about the talk.

Knoxville, Tennessee is refocusing development toward the city’s historic core and older neighborhoods, and the strategy is driving an economic turnaround for the city.

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, a member of the Advisory Board of Smart Growth America’s Local Leaders Council, says the city has focused on “strong, safe neighborhoods; living green and working green; an energized downtown and job creation and retention” during her time in office. The approach is bringing new businesses and residents to downtown Knoxville.

From right: Smart Growth America’s Geoff Anderson with Ken Rose, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Mitchell Silver, American Planning Association; and Arthur Guzzetti, American Public Transportation Association. Photo courtesy of the Nashville Area MPO.  

In 2010 Middle Tennessee’s mayors agreed on a milestone, ten-county vision for transit. Last month, leaders in the region met to talk about how to make those plans a reality.

More than 250 political leaders, transportation and land use planners, transit agency partners, developers, architects, engineers, academics, and non-profit advocates came together on October 25 and 26, 2012 in downtown Nashville to discuss the first steps of implementing the region’s innovative transit plan. The event was organized by the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee, and sponsored by Transportation for America, a joint project of Smart Growth America and Reconnecting America.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jimmywayne.

On August 21, Smart Growth America and the Tennessee Department of Transportation released Removing Barriers to Smarter Transportation Investments, a detailed policy analysis of Tennessee’s transportation infrastructure and projects.

Tennessee’s leaders are already looking to the document for guidance. “We now have a road map to a better transportation program that will promote job growth, stronger communities and a cleaner environment while using tax dollars more wisely,” Trip Pollard and Anne Davis, both of the Southern Environmental Law Center, wrote in an op-ed in The Tennesseean.

Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner John Schroer is part of the dedicated team working to make Tennessee’s transportation system more efficient and a better value for Tennessee taxpayers. As part of our new analysis, Removing Barriers to Smarter Transportation Investments, released in partnership with the Tennessee DOT, Commissioner Schroer writes an open letter to Tennesseans on how and why the department is working to improve its services. From the report:

Dear Fellow Tennesseans:

It is critical that our state continues to provide better services and infrastructure to our citizens and businesses, and more importantly in a financially responsible manner. I also recognize that the services provided by our transportation system are absolutely critical to sustaining and growing our state’s economy. It is therefore essential that all of us plan, build and operate our transportation system in a manner that balances the needs of rural and urban areas, businesses and communities, and preserves our way of life.

While we are all concerned about maintaining the current infrastructure at an acceptable level, we must also wisely use our limited funding sources to provide a transportation system that is efficient, dependable and safe for all users of the system. TDOT is focused on a planning a statewide, multimodal transportation system that enables both rural and urban communities to grow and prosper taking into account business needs, access to jobs, access to freight ports and airports, needs of transit riders, bicyclists, pedestrians, tourism and quality of life.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) has partnered with Smart Growth America to increase its efficiency and ensure the greatest possible return on Tennessee’s transportation investments. As a result, TDOT has compiled a series of recommendations designed to pin down areas for improvement, prioritize projects and streamline processes.

“Transportation investments are invaluable to driving economic recovery and prosperity across Tennessee,” says TDOT Commissioner John Schroer. “But as this report shows, we cannot be limited to old ways of doing business. We must enable and encourage more flexible, innovative and lower-cost solutions to state’s transportation needs. Prioritizing and designing projects to add the most value for their cost is smart, common sense policy in a time of fiscal constraint, and all Tennesseans stand to benefit from an even more effective Department of Transportation.”

The analysis, Removing Barriers to Smarter Transportation Investments, revealed TDOT currently has nine times more projects in its work plan than it has funding. As a result, some beneficial projects currently run the risk of falling through the cracks, while the service intent of others might be equally fulfilled through a less expensive solution.

Cumberland Park, on Nashville, Tennessee’s Cumberland River waterfront. Photo courtesy of the Nashville Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency.

Nashville, Tennessee’s Cumberland River has long been viewed as an industrial thoroughfare for barges to transport cargo. But as the city looked to improve its downtown in the 1980s, it came to realize that the riverfront could be an incredible asset to its revitalization efforts.

“Riverfront revitalization got started about 25 years ago when we began to realize that the city had turned its back on the river,” said Rick Bernhardt, a Planning Executive at the City of Nashville.

Memphis, Tennessee, a HUD Community Challenge grantee, held a forum last week to re-energize its regional economic and redevelopment strategy, which promises to generate over 1,500 new jobs with over $500 million worth of investment. 60 public, private, and non-profit groups are working together to bolster the regional job market, rehabilitate vacant and blighted housing, and improve transportation opportunities.

Smart Growth America Visits Middle Tennessee from CRT on Vimeo.

Crossposted from Cumberland Region Tomorrow.

Cumberland Region Tomorrow (CRT) recently hosted a network of quality growth experts from across the country to learn about successful quality growth models and best practices in Middle Tennessee. Participants from San Francisco to Boston learned about CRT’s successful model of collaborative leadership that is creating positive quality growth outcomes in the region. On the ground tours in Nashville, Franklin, and Leiper’s Fork, combined with presentations by local and state leaders, demonstrated how successful community revitalization and conservation efforts are supporting Middle Tennessee’s place-based economies through tourism and agriculture, and music.

Did Smart Growth Fuel the Property-Price Boom?
Wall Street Journal Development Blog, June 14, 2011
In a recent paper, though, Wendell Cox, an Illinois-based consultant and an adjunct scholar with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, argues land-use restrictions and planning policies like smart growth fueled property prices and became the engine of the housing boom and bust. The price decline on the “drivable fringe” was generally twice as bad during the crash, said Christopher Leinberger, a developer of “walkable urban projects” and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “And it was that part of the market that is the least regulated,” he said. Smart-growth areas or walkable neighborhoods within metro markets had price drops but they ultimately “held their value, thank you very much.” The problem, Mr. Leinberger added, was that “we built too much of the wrong stuff in the wrong location.”

A City Tries to Slim Down
New York Times, June 13, 2011
This city’s Broadway displays its own array of neon signs — two dozen fast-food restaurants, as diverse as McDonald’s and the local Indi’s — beckoning along a 2.8-mile corridor bookended by low-income neighborhoods on the front lines of a multimillion-dollar battle against obesity. The street symbolizes one of many hurdles facing officials here working to put a severely overweight population on a diet.

Poor public transit called threat to older Americans
Reuters, June 14, 2011
A new study says more than 15.5 million seniors, aged 65 to 79, will have poor or nonexistent access to public transportation by 2015. Many outlying suburbs and “exurbs” simply have few options for getting around for those who do not drive.

OC commuters urged to take public transit on Dump the Pump Day
KABC (Los Angeles), June 14, 2011
The Orange County Transportation Authority is encouraging commuters to give public transportation a try. They’ll even throw in breakfast. This Thursday is national Dump the Pump Day. It’s all about avoiding high gas prices by taking public transportation.