More than a year ago, the Nashville Civic Design Center—this city's institutional advocate for smart and informed urban planning—tapped Scene contributor Christine Kreyling to write the text for the center's most substantive piece of intellectual property to date, The Plan of Nashville. The book, which Vanderbilt Press is about to release, is the product of citizen workshops and designers' and planners' interpretations of those ideas, all condensed and explained in what the center hopes will become a road map for urban planning and design in Nashville.

Here, just prior to release, Kreyling sits down with the Scene and discusses the book's recommendations and what it hopes to accomplish for Nashville's cityscape:

Q. What is PON and what does it hope to accomplish?

Here, just prior to release, Kreyling sits down with the Scene and discusses the book's recommendations and what it hopes to accomplish for Nashville's cityscape:

A. It's a 30- to 50-year vision plan for the central city and the first-ring neighborhoods. The inclusion of the neighborhoods that frame downtown, recognizing the interdependence of the two spheres, makes the plan pretty unique in Nashville's history. The ultimate goal is to make the center hold, to heal the damages brought by urban renewal, the interstates and sprawl.

Q. Is it simply suggestion or do you think it will become a public policy of sorts for the future of Nashville's cityscape?

A. It's not intended as a regulatory document. The point is to guide public policy, serve as a litmus test for the pros and cons of future individual development proposals. By enabling each part of the city to be understood in relation to the whole, the plan can help avoid the piecemeal planning Nashville has suffered from in the past. Building a convention center downtown, for example, was a good idea. But turning the center's back to Broadway wasn't, and Lower Broad is still suffering from the consequences.

It's also unfortunate that we began to construct the new Beverly Briley building for the criminal courts before the plan emerged, because the structure blocks the east axis to the State Capitol. One theme that emerged in the community workshops was that Nashville doesn't "feel" like a capital because you can't see the Capitol. William Strickland intended the east face of the building to be the front door or ceremonial entrance—that's why Jackson's statue is on that side—but visual access to that facade eroded over time. The plan presents the east axis as a series of stepped plazas going all the way to the river. Had the criminal court designers had access to the plan, they might have picked a different placement that would have enhanced, rather than obscured, the connections between city and state.

Q. What current development initiatives could be impacted by PON?

A. Let's take SoBro as an example. The most obvious development on the horizon is the baseball stadium on the old thermal plant site. While the plan doesn't literally place a ballpark there, it does say that public access to the riverfront—preserving green space on the banks and creating sightlines to the river—should be an important component of any development plan. SoBro is notably lacking in park space because in the 1980s the city sold off the existing parks for condo development—for which a park could have been an amenity. This is the kind of short-term thinking that the plan is intended to prevent.

The plan for future development of the Metro campus on Rutledge Hill is another development that needs tweaking. Right now, proposals for the build-out really only consider the needs of Metro for future office and parking space and ignore the relationship of the campus to Rutledge Hill and Rolling Mill Hill.

These days, everybody chants the mantra of "mixed-use," but we still tend to think in terms of individual building sites, however large, like Rolling Mill Hill. The plan insists that, to build a neighborhood, you have to weave together all the elements across a bunch of sites. That's why, for example, the plan presents a new elementary school between Fourth and Fifth Avenues South in SoBro. Kids attending could be those of downtown workers until there are sufficient residents to populate the school. A neighborhood school is one of the traditional elements of place making.

Q. What glaring weaknesses in Nashville's grid or planning/urban design culture does it identify?

A. Everyone who's ever tried to traverse the city during rush hour can identify this one: the transportation infrastructure. Identifying how to fix it, however, isn't so easy, but I think the plan makes a good start.

Where we went wrong—in addition to investing most of our public monies to serve the freight truck and the SOV—is in conflating the need of the long-distance traveler for high speeds with the need for efficient, if not high speed, local circulation. We've asked the interstates to serve both purposes, with the result that they serve neither well. And the traditional pikes, such as Gallatin or Nolensville roads, have been compromised by all the retail strung out along them whose curb cuts and stop lights slow down traffic.

The plan analyzes the various needs a transportation infrastructure must serve and suggests multiple modes—including, obviously, mass transit—to do so. I understand that the people who live near I-440 are upset about the plan's treatment of that road as a long-distance corridor. But I hope when they actually see the book, they'll realize that part of the plan is to gradually eliminate all the local traffic on I-440, which should cut down on the impact on their neighborhoods.

Transportation presents a very complex series of problems. And the plan really needs to be modeled extensively on the computers of the planners for fine-tuning.

Q. Can you identify the single most important finding of PON?

A. If I have to pick just one, I guess I'd say the Cumberland River. Not that we ever exactly "lost" the river. But we've ignored its potential as a prime asset for recreation and just plain visual enjoyment. We're still largely treating the river as a 19th century artifact, a road that moves. The river was the first interstate, but it hasn't been a major commercial artery for a very long time. Yet it's still lined with warehouses and truck parks; we're still dumping chunks of concrete to hold the banks.

The overwhelming theme that emerged from the community workshops was that the Cumberland is central to Nashville's identity, the place where the city started and the citizens now want to return. As a result, the plan grows the city—parks and neighborhoods—toward the river and establishes more bridges to cross it.

Q. Is there any sense yet of whether Nashvillians will buy into the ideology it sets forth? Or do you think it will be a tough sell?

A. Well, given that the Nashville Civic Design Center staged six months' worth of community meetings and workshops all over the city, and that close to 800 citizens participated, what's in the plan shouldn't exactly be a surprise to those who are committed to improving Nashville's built environment. The plan is rooted in the principles and goals, tries to fix the problems, that these participants identified.

The tough part is getting your hands around it, conquering the inertia that always seems to follow the presentation of a plan—as if a plan is an end rather than a point of departure. NCDC is mounting an extensive education campaign to make people aware of the contents of the plan. But we still have to figure out how to harness the civic energy that brought forth the plan into getting it on the ground. That will take an organizational structure to enable interest groups, such as Cumberland River Compact, neighborhood organizations and anyone else who wants to be involved, to take a piece of the plan and make it happen.

Q. How much of it rests on the government going forward and how much on private developers and architects?

A. The plan is a four-legged animal, resting equally on all of the above, as well as community activists and neighborhood groups. This is not a scheme for new public expenditures, but a guide for getting the most out of the public and private expenditures we're going to make anyway—and the saving of future expenditures for replanning and reconstruction. Within the next 30 years, the city will spend many millions on public projects, and private developers will spend many millions on improving their properties. The plan charts a way to get the biggest bang for our bucks toward the public interest.

A. The plan is a four-legged animal, resting equally on all of the above, as well as community activists and neighborhood groups. This is not a scheme for new public expenditures, but a guide for getting the most out of the public and private expenditures we're going to make anyway—and the saving of future expenditures for replanning and reconstruction. Within the next 30 years, the city will spend many millions on public projects, and private developers will spend many millions on improving their properties. The plan charts a way to get the biggest bang for our bucks toward the public interest.