I was going through some old planners this morning (trying to clear out as much clutter as possible these days) and I found this drawing for a house we used to live in. The house is pretty small so I wanted to add on a space the length of the back of the building to serve as a flex lounge/dining area with a wood stove.
The house has an unloved gravel area in the back that would definitely not be missed. The design would have been terrible for insulation with all that glass (on a north-facing side no less), but I still like the drawing and thought it would be fun to save and share.
For the last week or so I’ve been thinking about the Celtic holiday of Samhain. I don’t know much about the Celtic holidays, but I read a book once about a home called Bealtine Cottage and at the very least the idea of Bealtine planted a seed in my mind.
After some deep dives, I’ve learned that Samhain is essentially the “pagan” holiday that Catholics co-opted when they created All Hallows Eve (and All Souls, etc.). In a further twist of colonialism, it is also basically the origin of Dia de los Muertos – a holiday some see as a Catholic invention/amalgamation of existing rituals and beliefs.
Anyways, a witch on Instagram made a video saying that tonight is actually the best time to set resolutions and to plan for the work ahead. This night marks the end of the Celtic year and the beginning of the “dark half” of the year. This is a time when we are inside more, when gardens and farms have begun to rest. We often use this time to focus inward and draw close to friends, family, and partners.
With all this energy in the air, I decided it was time to take some small steps of preparation. With the help of our kids, we cleaned out several bags of toys and started to organize their play area. That felt like a nice small win. I am thinking about the fact that I’ll be inside more soon and feeling a desire to organize and repair more in general – there are so many projects that weigh me down more than I even realize.
I also decided to start the new Life Designer workbook from Intelligent Change. I bought it before the Samhain connection, but soon realized that it would be perfect for this (new) new year.
At it’s core, it’s a workbook to plan the next ten years of my life. On October 31, 2035, I’ll be 47 years old. I actually started crying just typing that sentence.
Oh, I also cried when I filled in this dedication page:
I really do not want to get older – I don’t know how else to say it. On the other hand, there have been so many days in my adult life that I’ve just wanted to be over so that I can sleep again.
I know that I have to fix my days before I can fix my years. And since I can’t avoid age, I can’t avoid work, I can’t avoid relationships, hopes, disappointments, responsibilities, etc., I know that it’s time to start thinking about what I want to build on the years I’ve lived so far. Because “the next ten years” are already here.
With my fear of getting older, it was encouraging to fill out this chart of the years that I’ve lived so far and see how many I presumably have left.
Even if I live to be 70 or 80 I still have a lot of life ahead of me. The first time I posted this page I did it wrong so this is a new photo. Also, I decided to black out the years that I was in the closet. I cried for a moment when it sunk in that I’ve only lived around 15 years of life not in the closet. Hiding took such a toll on me that I need to label those years differently. Also, being in the closet delays adolescence (like what a 15 year-old would be experiencing) so the past three years have looked very different than they would for someone who is not going through that.
I’ve only just started this workbook, and, based on the witch’s advice, I would like to finish it between now and the Winter Solstice. (update – I’m still working through it as of 1/20/26, but I’ll finish it when the time is right)
With the seasonal shift toward intentions, I also thought about books I might like to read over the next 12 months. I’ve pulled together a stack that I’m pretty excited about and replaced the one under my side table that has been sitting there for months (years?), mostly unappreciated. This new stack was chosen more carefully and I’d love to actually see the stack tick down as I read each one and the shelf empty by the next Samhain, 2026.
I started the Foucault and Sennett books around 2008 and 2011, respectively. I’ve only read the first chapter or so of each, but they have both been so influential to how I think about things that I’ve decided I’d like to finally finish them. Along with those two books, Orlando,100 Boyfriends, and The Glass Menagerie continue to round out my gay literature cannon. I Who Have Never Known Men and Envy (a personal problem, unfortunately) are two foreign language books I’m looking forward to. Finally, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, a book I started during a hard time last year and have decided to pick back up during a new season of loss.
So much of this post may seem like I am trying to control my life, but I really do want to lose control more than anything. I want to let go of legalism, perfectionism, and self-criticism, especially. I am not going to feel like a failure if I don’t read all these books or achieve the life I envision exactly. I just know that there are some things in my life that almost never feel like work (even when they are work). I desire/intend to do much more of the work, to spend time with the people, and to inhabit the places that give me that kind of energy over the next 40 seasons of change.
During a recent visit to Maymont I noticed a small island of grass that I can’t stop thinking about. It feels like the perfect opportunity for a small meadow of perennials at the intersection of the more formal Maymont Mansion and more “natural” Robins Nature Center and Maymont Farm sections of the property.
The long, tear-drop shaped island of grass is in the middle of the photo below, but of course I already have ideas for the area along the creek as well.
Compared to the yucca project, this feels somewhat realistic. I would need to borrow black tarps to kill the grass, enlist some volunteers to clear the area a month or so later, install plants collected from my garden, and spread leaf mulch in between. It would be nice to put a small stick and twine “fence” along the edge while it’s getting established as well as a “Prairie in Progress” sign and some educational materials about the benefits of these types of gardens.
The cost of this could be essentially free. Here is a list of plants I can think of off the top of my head that I would be able to contribute:
Anise hyssop
Echinacea / coneflower
Mountain mint
Showy goldenrod
Milkweed (1 or more varieties depending on how they spread)
Coreopsis
Panicled aster
Rudbeckia / black-eyed Susan
Rattlesnake master
Spiderwort
Wild garlic
Aromatic aster
Bee balm
Foxglove beardtongue
Groundcovers including violet and wild strawberry
While doable, it would still require a lot of work obviously. I would need them to commit to watering for the first couple of months after install and provide ongoing support like cutting it all down to about a foot off the ground in the fall, weeding, and continuing to add more plants. Still too much for me right now, but a really fun thought.
The other day while I was walking through downtown Richmond I stumbled on a small space with huge potential. It’s basically just a concrete slab, but what makes it special is that it’s located right in the middle of a city block. The concrete is connected to one building that forms an “L” around it. The area is accessible by three different alleys which all meet at the base of a somewhat beautiful, mature tree.
With some love, this could be a place to congregate just like the La Colombe near Logan Circle in D.C. The benefits of using these interior spaces is that they are quieter than the city streets and they are often cooler in the summer months because the buildings provide shade. They are cozy spaces, the diffused light is relaxing, and there is something charming about the irregular shapes. I love the surprise and delight of waking down an alley, turning a corner, and finding something you wouldn’t have expected,
The approach that is most familiar to me (I actually worked and parked in the building to the left years ago) is below. I love the way the buildings frame the old window and steeple of Second Presbyterian.
After you turn to the right, you start to get a glimpse of the destination. The area also starts to become more charming: the alley transitions to cobblestone, instead of a parking garage you have old brick and stained glass, and the tree is visible as well.
Despite being completely forgotten and unloved these granite stones are beautiful and the whole section would clean up very nicely.
This is the view from the space that I’m interested in. I appreciate how much there is to look at even in this small space. It feels like the medieval section of a city: winding, ad hoc, dense, and built to the human scale. The tree would also provide shade in the summer and a beautiful accent.
Here are two views of the actual space.
I am so in love with this idea. I had a similar vision for a space in Tyler many years ago and still believe in the potential of this sort of retrofit to bring new life and charm to cities. Whatever zoning process that’s required should be fast-tracked. Whatever the building around this space becomes (it’s currently being renovated), this should be a cafe or similar commercial space, with bistro lights, live music, and otherwise completely transformed into a beautiful and charming refuge in the middle of downtown Richmond.
A few weeks ago I woke up with a lot of climate anxiety. I could hear rain on the roof of our house – rain that 50 years ago might have been snow or sleet. We had just returned from a trip to New York City where it had also rained on an unseasonably warm December evening. I had global temperature charts and thoughts about crazy weather stressing me out before I even got out of bed.
When I came downstairs, the first thing my kids wanted to do was play with toys that we brought back from the city. As a parent I’m used to suspending whatever anxiety or “grown up things” are on my mind to enjoy my kids in the moment. On this particular day I found myself playing with, of all things, Magic Snow. It really is pretty cool. You add water to this very fine powder and it grows into a fluffy snow that we played with for an hour or more before school. On the inside I was wondering if at some point magic snow would be the only snow left. On the outside I was laughing and enjoying myself and the simple joy of parenthood
Since that day, my five-year-old asked several times if we were going to have a white Christmas and whether it was going to snow at all this winter. My niece also recently asked her mom if it was going to snow this winter and when she heard it might not immediately said, “We have to compost!!” Sometimes parenting feels a little bit like the movie “Room” where you are creating a reality within the safety and coziness of your house, neighborhood, etc. On the other hand, while I do want to keep my anxiety to myself, I don’t want to try and keep reality out more than I have to. I want to start to bring in age-appropriate books and conversations about climate change just like I want to do with other complex topics. This experience also pushed me to focus on solutions rather than abstract fears and sadness for a lost planet that we haven’t even entirely lost. So, yes, I’m going to continue to compost and I want to start buying carbon offsets again. I’m probably going to buy a children’s book like Bright New World or one of these. While I read about a hopeful future to my kids I hope to start to believe it for myself.
Yesterday morning I found myself dreaming about a plot of land for sale in East End Henrico County, just outside Richmond city limits. It’s 8.72 acres for $180K located very close to the center of the city and I think it would be an amazing chance to plant a pollinator meadow to restore the ecosystem and have it be managed as a park by Henrico County.
I’m imagining walking trails, giant woodland sculptures, and it might have some elevation that could be fun with a lookout tower at the top. The grounds at Glenstone would be a good inspiration. This plot of land looks like part of the East End Henrico landfill – I think the one that was shut down by Henrico County. I’m sure there are liabilities with owning a former landfill (environmental concerns, seepage, etc.), but I know it’s been done before and this could be a good chance to do it in the Richmond region.
I already emailed the Capital Region Land Conservancy, and I probably won’t go any further with the idea, but I wanted to at least post it here as a personal memory of the dream. At some point this is exactly the kind of restoration project I’d like to be a part of.
Update: I heard back from the Executive Director at CRLC and he told me that the information on Zillow was incorrect – there are actually only two acres for sale about seven miles west of the location – kind of bizarre. I still love the idea of course 🙂
I recently read an article about three colleges in Virginia that are showing signs of financial trouble. Apparently the “enrollment cliff” is set to begin next year and all institutions of higher education in the US will be affected by a shrinking domestic applicant pool. Some Virginia schools like Sweet Briar College have threatened closure and others, including HBCUs such as St. Paul’s College, have ceased operations.
The article reminded me of an idea I’ve been mulling over for at least a decade: that colleges and universities could somehow incorporate retirement communities into their campus life. While the enrollment cliff approaches, the Silver Wave (or Tsunami) is already over a decade in and will increase in the years to come. By 2030, there will be nearly a billion people over the age of 65 worldwide – by that same year, older Americans will make up 21 percent of the population.
This post is more of a brain dump, but I do hope to do more research, look into case studies, and hopefully plan some field trips to consider the different aspects of an intergenerational college campus. The following are some potential positive outcomes I’ve considered over the years.
There are obviously incredible financial benefits to building retirement communities. Baby Boomers will need places to live and they have the wealth and benefits to afford high-quality options.
Retirees will have the benefit of living in a vibrant place full of enrichment opportunities including
Cultural events
Continuing education
Sports
Dining options
Wellness facilities
Retirees could elect to be buried on campus in a cemetery or columbarium, a beautiful location where they could be remembered and visited
Retirees could serve in a number of capacities on campus
Formal and informal boards for oversight
Advisers for student organizations
Mentors for students
Serve in the career center based on their professional experiences
Volunteer in the community
Students from many different disciplines could benefit from having older neighbors
Psychology students would benefit from their research being more diverse in terms of age
History students could practice interviews and gathering personal narratives and incorporate first hand sources, artifacts, and perspectives into their research
Students in the medical and allied health professions would benefit from practical experience volunteering with community members that have health needs
Business students could do market research to understand the needs and desires of a growing consumer population
Philosophy students could consider the meaning of life with people who are near the end of it
Biology students could study their bodies after death to learn about degenerative diseases
Colleges and universities could bring a new and innovative option to the market
With a commitment to diversity and inclusion these communities could be safe spaces for individuals at the end of life
With their beautiful and walkable campuses, colleges would be the ideal setting for active, enriching retirement life
With their endowments, colleges could invest in all sorts of solutions to improve quality of life for residents in ways that aren’t available to existing retirement communities
There is enough demand for retirement communities and the associated labor that institutions could even transition into “work college” models like Berea, Warren Wilson, and others to reduce or remove the need for tuition
While writing this post I learned for the first time that there is a project underway to “reimagine” the empty campus of St. Paul’s College which seems exciting. A non-profit, SPC4LIFE, is organizing to purchase and reopen the college in some capacity and their mission, “creating an equitable, family-based academic environment,” seems to align beautifully with a multi-generational campus design.
Ever since St. Paul’s College closed I’ve been imagining it as the perfect location to try something like this. It’s only an hour outside Richmond and only a little farther from Durham which seems like a good location – inexpensive and accessible. One of my favorite aspects of the college campus is how integrated it is with the town of Lawrenceville, a historic and walkable area with amenities for residents to enjoy. A lot of the town appears to have been demolished, but there might still be enough of a historic core to inspire rezoning if needed and future dense, mixed-use developments.
I am definitely going to follow along with their progress and I am going to plan a visit some day to see the town, the campus, and imagine what it could all look like with some vision and a lot of work.
There was a time when Detroit was in worse shape than today. In 1805, the entire settlement burned. There may have remained remnants of buildings and streets, but for the most part, Detroit was simply a memory.
Just a few years before this fire, America invested in the idea of a completely master planned city: Washington D.C. There had been many American cities planned out of the raw earth, but none compared to the beauty and design of D.C. When Detroit burned, Augustus Woodward looked east for inspiration and found this new vision for the city called Detroit:
In the two centuries that followed, this city grew to nearly 2 million residents and has now shrunk to a little more than 700,000. It’s easy to look at Detroit today and marvel at its losses. But we have to remember that fire. When Detroit lost everything, before the world knew her name, one person rose to draw this vision. He found inspiration in another great American city and drew a plan that became the backbone of an empire. It remains mostly intact to this day.
While bulldozers roam the city demolishing abandoned buildings by the 10,000s, as the earth returns to prairie as it was found over 300 years ago, residents of the city are wondering what could possibly become of this place. When I visited in 2013 I met so many people excited to tell me about the recent improvements: new jobs, new businesses, arts and culture. A few months later, the city declared bankruptcy and Kevin Orr took control of the city’s fate.
I’ll be going back to Detroit this summer and I can’t wait to see what has happened in a year: to walk around and experience it for myself. There’s so much to learn in that place: inspiration, caution, fuel for my endless curiosity, and context for the situation in Richmond and other American cities.
Until then, I’ll be wondering how a Shinola watch can cost $950 while this house was recently listed for $100. Until then.
As I flew out of Richmond last week, I got a rare glimpse of the city at dusk:
I just stared at that settlement on the banks of the James River and wondered what the next 400 years might bring. In the city of Richmond, there is the past, the present and the future. That makes us fortunate and it makes us complicated.
To move forward, we will have to make some sense of ourselves and our story.
In the past few months I’ve travelled all over the country: from Philadelphia to Dallas, to San Francisco. With each trip I’ve found new perspective on this current phase of the development of the city of Richmond. I’ve also found some clarity for myself and settled into four areas of focus for my writing:
1. Current events in context: If I ever write about current events, it will be to analyze and contextualize the story. I spent three years studying the debates in Richmond regarding the construction of the Richmond Petersburg Turnpike. That work left me particularly interested in economic development strategies and plans for improving the American city.
2. Drawings for the future: Like many of us, I’m constantly imagining new uses for old spaces and I’ve decided I’m finally going to get these on paper. I’m actually planning to draw them out. It will probably be pretty ugly at first, but I’m hoping to read a little on technique and improve over time.
3. The psychology of the city: I’ve been noticing for years that the city of Richmond has a certain personality. This personality comes out in furious debates as well as mundane daily life. Since college I’ve also entered the world of cognitive psychology, therapy, management, and organizational behavior. I’ve read books, met with academics, and watched every video I find. Insight from these fields will be my lens for understanding what’s going on in this crazy place.
4. The history of the history: There are so many stories being told about Richmond. I want to take those stories and study them to understand the different ways that we describe ourselves. I’m obsessed with historiography and excited to dive back into that field for a series of posts about the different ways we talk about our past. This is connected to the psychological perspective as well: how we talk about Richmond says a lot about how we think of ourselves.
I want a future for this city that is unique and authentic. I want Richmond to develop a maturity as a place that takes all of it’s qualities and integrates them into a coherent whole. As with personal development, this will require a lot of work. In a way, collective therapy. And all because we believe there is a best possible future for this city and that future must include a coherent, honest, and accepting understanding of the past and present.
Dear friends, colleagues, and activists in Richmond,
For the past several months I’ve been hearing an “access to jobs” argument for regional transit in the Richmond Region. This argument proposes to connect poor residents in Richmond with entry-level jobs in the surrounding counties.
I’m afraid this approach will not be received well.
I believe the statistics and I understand the need for jobs in Richmond on a very personal level. I just don’t think the current approach is savvy. When I see Powerpoint slides depicting the number of people in Richmond who need jobs and the number of entry-level positons in the counties, this is what I hear:
“Hey Henrico and Chesterfield, look, we have all these people that need entry-level jobs and you have all these entry-level jobs. Wanna pay to transport our least-well-off residents to your strip malls and corporate offices so they can take work from your growing poor and immigrant populations?”
Wow. Is that how they managed regional public transit in other cities? By shaming municipalities into investing into something that their own residents don’t yet desire? Is that how we make decisions in Richmond? Do the counties even need Richmonders to fill those jobs? Something tells me that if the entry-level jobs in the counties weren’t being filled employers in the counties would be pressuring their local leaders for regional transit. I have heard no such demand.
I am 100% committed to advocating for a more efficient system of transportation in this region. I am open to the idea of BRT being the model for that system. I want more density, more connectivity, and healthier communities in Richmond. But I don’t think that framing this particular initiative as a social justice issue is going to get us anywhere. Is it a social justice issue? Of course. People should not have to own a car to get a job. Is that the best way to approach the topic with our more conservative and flighty neighbors?
By all means, no.
Busses in America are already stigmatized. Let’s stop exacerbating the problem. Instead, let’s find and emphasize more reasons why our neighbors could benefit from regional public transit. Here are a few to start: safe and reliable transportation for the young and elderly, a chance for residents to work with WiFi on their daily commute, and an option to travel downtown quickly without the stress and hassle of parking. I also read a great article a while ago about the therapeutic qualities of the D.C. Metro and I LOVE this piece by a man who wrote and illustrated a book while riding the train to work. Here’s a video from NextCity with countless more: “God Created Transit.”
The one benefit that I’ve heard mentioned, economic revitalization, should be more celebrated and emphasized! Transit-oriented development has incredible potential in this low-density region and streets like Hull and Broad are full of vacant lots ready for new development. Also, in order to make transit viable we’re going to need the density of nodes along the BRT corridor so it’s integral to the success of the project itself.
I don’t want us to see public transit as an indulgence that the suburbs have to buy in order to cover their sins of wealth and security. Public transit is a relaxing, efficient, and social way to travel. In the past year, I’ve made new friends, reconnected with acquaintances, and laughed with my coworkers on the bus to and from work. I love the bus and I invite the rest of the region to consider whether more of our neighborhoods should enjoy access to public transit as I do.
In short, public transit is a party and everyone’s invited. It’s just that some in this region are going to have to drive to get there.
As a resident of Richmond for the past five years, I have had the privilege of living through an exciting and dynamic season of change. It seems that after about 60 years of condescension and loss, it’s becoming a good time to be an American city. It’s a good time to be Richmond.
So, with that in mind, I was a little surprised when I read three editorials recently published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch addressing the “issue” of the view of Richmond from the highway. As I read each article, I felt that importance had been placed, not on the city, but on the opinions of passersby. This editorial is a response to those articles and perhaps generations of similar articles that have come before them. I believe that before we have a conversation about Richmond, we need to have an understanding of how the city changed during the twentieth century and more importantly what changed about the way we talk about cities in general.
My undergraduate education on the urban crisis in America presented changes in the city as a process of politics, prejudice, and technological advancement. More recently, I have come to understand the urban crisis as a gradual shift in investment and perception that took the American city, a source of pride, and turned it into a mark of shame. Furthermore, I understand the urban crisis as a rhetorical war between old and new. The goal of the war, as with any, was to frame the other as “backward” and the self as “progressive.” While Richmond attempted to maintain dignity, new technologies seemed dissatisfied with older cities: You’re too compact, too dilapidated, too prone to riot and rot.
As each new suburb was developed it became yet another statement to the American people pointing toward the promise of new, more civilized places with room to roam and play. Within this promise there was also a clear distinction being made from the archaic, dark city where most Americans at the time resided. As with all major shifts, the new way of doing things had to work to undo the more traditional ways of life. Many believe that the post-war zeitgeist of modernization, on a national level, did much to shift popular opinion. But on a local level, citizens of the Richmond metro-region still had to prove to residents that there was a more abundant life to be lived on the other side of the city limits.
This was accomplished through a series of events: The celebrated opening of Willow Lawn Shopping Center (1956), the construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (1959), the failure of plans for consolidation with Henrico (1967) and other semi-related moments along the way. Each of these also had their corollary effect on the life of the city exemplified by events such as the closing of Miller and Rhodes/Thalhimers, the destruction of urban neighborhoods, and the political isolation that conclusively trapped and humbled this once-proud American city.
As money and people continued to migrate to the suburbs, local officials turned their attention from annexation to urban renewal. “If we can’t have the suburbs,” I imagine them thinking, “we have to do something about this city.” But rather than invest in what already existed, they fixated on dreams of what could be. “We get it” they tried to say “and we’ll fix it,” just don’t move your family to the suburbs.
As Silver writes, the city then “embraced urban renewal with a sense of urgency unprecedented in Richmond … Consolidation would have afforded vast new areas for growth and would have enabled the city to continue its policy of neglect toward inner-city areas” (254). Now left to embrace the demands of reality, Richmond’s city fathers sold out and destroyed much that today would protected as historical. They were always looking to what the city could be rather than accepting the city as is.
To me, this moment of urban renewal was a sign that the suburbs had won the war. This was the point in the story where it was finally decided that new was in fact better than old: Look! Even the city hates the city. In the decades that followed the tumultuous 60s and 70s, much has been said of the potential of cities, but almost all of it with the understanding that cities have something to prove. To this day, the standard to which Americans hold their cities is strangely high while their commitment to funding urban institutions and infrastructure is remarkably low. As Kunstler might argue, this is because we are no longer a nation of citizens; we are a nation of consumers.
Additionally, it seems that many of us have a powerful aversion to cities because we’re still trapped by the negative stigma established all those years ago. While local boosters proclaim, “Richmond is a city of art and great food!” critics reply, “Parking lots! Potholes! Prostitutes!” And regardless of their merit, these conversations do little to change the paradigm.
In this sadly familiar conversation, the subject is always “the city.” The place that needs to change is the city. The place that we want to love is the city. But this is not the perspective of an insider. Instead, we need to recognize that this critique is one of suburban condescension. The suburbs are still trying to prove their worth and their legitimacy and they are still quick to do so by orienting themselves against the “corrupt” and ” inefficient” locality they are ashamed to call neighbor, but delighted to visit for a basketball game.
We cannot have a productive conversation about Richmond until we move past the negative stigma that outsiders have placed on the city and begin to see Richmond as good once again. We should welcome visitors to come and enjoy themselves in the city, but our ultimate concern must be with the needs and desires of existing residents. Developments in Richmond should be for the city, not at the city’s expense, because that is what we can sustain and appreciate. And no longer should we consider developments for someone else to enjoy.
A couple of months ago, I posted a quote from MacBeth that included the phrase, “this ignorant present.” I posted it because, for some reason, the idea really struck a cord with me.
Everywhere I go, I am asked variations the same question, “What’s in store for next year?” When I was a senior in college, I was asked this question. When I was a senior in high school, I was asked this question. I think before every big transition I have been conditioned to receive this question with either evasive answers or a scattershot of ideas and possible directions. Rarely (besides the college acceptance) have I been the sort of person to have an answer. Now, because I am currently working in a one-year program, the questions about the future have sort of carried on right through college graduation and into this year.
And I’ve noticed two things about this process: 1. Questions about the future make me uncomfortable and 2. I find myself asking these sorts of questions all the time. And then I started to wonder if maybe we are sort of all collectively making each other feel uncomfortable or unsatisfied with the present. Am I simply hoisting my discomfort onto my friends by asking them the same question that I myself am tired of hearing? Often, rather than enjoy the present, I am thinking about the future and I find that this ignorant present doesn’t seem to deserve our time in the context of the grand future we are supposed to be planning for ourselves. I know that lots of times these questions are well-meaning (or maybe an attempt on my part to make casual conversation), but I’m tired of the question and I want to respect the present.
I want to appreciate the present.
I also intend to put in serious work getting to the next step of my life … and I understand that I will always need to prepare for the future. But maybe I’m telling myself this as much as anyone else: the present is what we have. Conversations about the future, regardless of their intent, seem a bit assuming. This is, after all, the human experience we’re talking about so no matter what answer I give you when you ask the question (you know you want to) it’s with the understanding that life is going to happen regardless of what I say. So at this point, that seems like the only legitimate answer about what the future holds in store.
Last Saturday I was thinking about Paul Gauguin’s painting “Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we?” So as I thought about the questions, I wrote them out in some random fonts and scanned the page. I got one good scan, but I think I prefer the image below where the scanner randomly cropped it:
I moved back to my hometown of Tyler in May to begin a brief, post-grad-limbo summer. Since I arrived, I have made it my hobby to explore the city, imagine its potential, and write a series of posts on my ideas. I called this, “Connecting-the-Dots,” because I believe that Tyler (like many cities) suffers from a lack of cohesion and identity. On the micro level, we lack special places (“dots”) fully enhanced with the cultures, traditions, and organizations that comprise our civil society. On the macro level, we lack the connections of transportation and urban design that unite the disparate pieces of what we consider to be a singular unit. I’ve been primarily guided by the question, “Where is Tyler?”
In my attempt to answer this question, I’ve spent my time looking for what I believe makes this city unique: what someone can find here that is not anywhere else in the same way. The places that I love the most are sometimes the places that are most unloved. In other words, the Rose Garden may not be as sexy as Chuy’s right now, but it is unique to Tyler unlike the Austin import. Business in North Tyler might not be as lucrative as its cousin on South Broadway, but it’s more creative, local and artisan. It’s the difference between Janie’s Cakes and the WallMart bakery, Stanley’s and Spring Creek, the Rose Garden and Faulkner Park, Balance and World Gym, La Favorita and Pasado’s.
Unfortunately, all of those places that I believe represent Tyler do not reside together in one awesome, dense, and diverse place. In my opinion, a visitor to this city needs a guide to properly experience what this city has to offer. But suppose there were such a singular place comprised of all the unique Tyler attractions. It would be remarkable. People would come from all over the region to be a part of it’s energy and excitement. Now, suppose there were two. Or three and a street car connecting them. Suppose you could go to one for dinner, the next for a concert and the third for coffee, dessert and drinks and never get into a car or leave your friends. Suppose everyone in East Texas heralded this as the “Tyler experience.” Suppose we leveraged what makes us unique in order to make us uniquely great.
Our city is positioned as a regional leader in oil & gas, the processing of roses, healthcare, higher education, retail, banking, legal and financial services. Suppose we were also known as a creative and innovative community that supports new ideas local aspirations. That is a dream many in this city have been fighting to realize. I believe it’s a dream worthy of this place called Tyler.
There are many proud Tylerites who love the Tyler Rose Garden while also thinking that it needs some work. It’s heralded as the largest municipal rose garden in the nation (impressive), but for some reason it just doesn’t do it for people. It doesn’t have pull. For the past few days I’ve been thinking about the garden and wondering what Tyler could change to make it a more desirable destination. When I drove there myself, I realized something: The Rose Garden can’t be significant on it’s own.
While there are several components of “The Rose Garden Complex,” they don’t form a cohesive destination. They’re essentially separated from each other by roads and parking lots. As it is, this expanse of asphalt ruins what could be a really cool Rose Garden Complex experience. I wonder if Depave would be willing to help us take it out because it’s got to go. It does not draw you towards anything or direct you to go anywhere. Most of the parking lots don’t even have lines marking individual spots … it is truly formless space.
If you look through the photo album at the end of this post, I think you’ll notice what I’m talking about. I was even impressed and I was expecting a lot of asphalt. I found myself thinking that we patterned our parking lot design after the ship harbor design. It might be because the huge Rose Festival floats need a place to sit and maneuver before starting the annual parade. While that may be the case, I think we can find some parking elsewhere in Tyler … their waiting area on one day of the year shouldn’t hold back the entire space. Besides, wouldn’t it be more fun to parade through a beautiful space?
Fortunately for Tyler, a blank slate is a great place to start. My mind has wandered for hours these past few days and it finally arrived at the place pictured to the right. It looks like the Tyler Rose Garden Complex, but the center of the picture is grass (light green), trees (dark green dots), and rose bushes (dark green squiggly lines). And a water feature! (blue dot where the paths converge). In this place, the view from Harvey Hall is grand: Down a path bordered by trees, across a great lawn and toward the old fairgrounds and the Rose Garden. There is nothing but trees and grass between Harvy and the Rose Garden so that people can walk from one to another in the cool shade of trees. The Rose Garden itself hasn’t changed much except for the addition of an amphitheater (!) for live converts. (Big shout out to fellow visionary Tom Ramey and others for the idea of making the Rose Garden a music venue).
“Live at the Rose Garden” is the hottest tagline in East Texas because (you guessed it) the backdrop to the concert is the largest municipal rose garden in the nation and for once there is something to do while you’re looking at it. This amphitheater looks like the one from the Portland Rose Garden (to the right), but it’s better because it’s facing the flowers instead of big bushes. Every Friday night during the summer there’s a live concert here and people come from all over to fall in love with the place (and return again). When they arrive, they exit the street car at the stop just outside Harvey Hall on Front St. If they’re driving, they’re directed to park in one of the parking garages (PG) or lots (P) located on the perimeter of the complex. The roads within the complex also have on-street parking and handicapped spots closer to the center of the site. They all meet at the new roundabout in the middle.
Once they’ve parked, they walk down a number of brick paths (red) or bike in the bike lanes along each street (black) to get to the amphitheater. Every Friday night during football season people come early before the games to walk to the lawn that is lit up with lights from the trees. The Rose Garden is even open on these game nights with special events to keep people in the area. All this visiting is great business for the bars and restaurants that opened up in the former fairgrounds buildings! That whole area was rezoned to allow mixed-use infill development so there’s even a small community of people living in apartments with a view of the lawn and garden. They go on walks down the brick paths and do stair runs up the amphitheater in the mornings to stay in shape.
Whew! That place is so alive and engaging that people (even locals) don’t have to have a reason to visit. They just want to be there. Stay tuned for the next place my mind wanders to! I’m thinking it might visit a place that’s more urban … in the meantime, enjoy these photos from the Tyler Rose Complex! It’s ripe for redevelopment.
Imagine if Tyler decided to take a few areas, increase their eminence, and connect them to each other. My latest concept, Connecting the Dots (C-T-D), outlines a long-term process of public and private investment that I’ll complete in the next three followup posts.
The basic idea is often called Transit-oriented development. It’s the idea that we need to begin considering land use and transportation as one unified city function. You see, for the past century or so we have built our cities without considering how people will travel because access to a car was generally assumed. And, I might add, those without cars were not usually considered valuable (i.e. profitable). Cities have grown rapidly and died gradually with this sort of development because 1. The roads cost too much, 2. New developments make older ones obsolete, and 3. New developments often have difficulty maintaining lasting significance past their prime. This paradigm is the Gander Mountain, it’s the church my family goes to, it’s the Hollywood Tyler Rose theater, and it’s the majority of this city.
But it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief time in history somewhere between horses and cars that we travelled on fixed tracks. During this time, (often) private corporations ran street cars through a partnership with municipalities in order to provide transportation for locals or visitors when they entered the train station, “Welcome to Richmond.” Now, it seems that the main city function is to facilitate transportation through the building of roads rather than to provide transportation for the general public. “But,” you say, “Tyler has a bus system already.” Yes it’s true, but in this post I want to argue that the bus system has not succeeded in unifying our city. Besides, we don’t have many significant areas to visit. What we have is a lot of stores, schools, restaurants and other businesses scattered over 49.3 square miles of asphalt, concrete and St. Augustine grass. Where, I wonder, is Tyler in all of this?
C-T-D seeks to revisit that earlier era of development for a 21st Century application. I have decided to start macro with this first piece (perhaps a look at Tyler 10 years down the road) then followup with more micro concepts for each individual node that I’ve proposed: The Rose District, The Square (with my Urban Valley), and a New Node that I haven’t named yet (ideas?). Each of these locations will be connected to each other with complete streets. This will also provide an alternative to cars and increase their viability as destinations. Completing streets will finally reconnect our asphalt to our buildings after decades of disconnected drives. Also, a recent report promoted by Smart Growth America shows that sidewalks and bike lanes increase the economic vitality of a region. That means more jobs! Eventually, we would add light rail trains (or BRT) to these streets in a circuit in order to properly move citizens from one location to the next.
I personally prefer light rail (yes, in Tyler) because it makes such a statement of commitment to a given space. Light rail is also not as stigmatized as busses. Besides, it’s just plain cool. Check out the loop (below) I’ve devised for the light rail and complete streets:
Of course, in order to connect the dots … we first need dots to connect. This process involves developing three high-density, mixed use, cool (this is not a joke), and interesting nodes. These nodes are special, they have names and unique characteristics and an eminence that draws people to visit.
Check out my other Tyler projects at my Tyler, TX page.
P.S. I recently returned from a trip to Seattle and Portland and I brought back ideas, the book 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and a Leuchtturm1917 journal with dots instead of lines. Let the games begin.
On November 3, 1951, Robert LeRoy Shepherd wrote an opinion article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch titled “Freedom, Independence, Taxes and the Freeway.” I found this article 60 years after it was written and was struck by the candor of his voice and the content of his message: Plans for the future must respond to reality.
At the time it was written, the city was in the midst of a highway battle over the plans for the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (what is now a section of I-95). As was common practice at the time, Richmond politicians contracted large firms to develop plans for this expressway without significant input from the residents of the city. As a result, the thought of destroying the city for a highway divided citizens and outraged residents. Many conceded that the city fathers had already decided what would be best for Richmond, but fought to make their voices heard during the second public referendum of the highway plan.
Uncertainty filled the minds of Richmonders who were unsure whether their city would be completely transformed by this idea proffered by huge national planning firms and local politicians. The highway plan would result in the destruction of large sections of the city and would forever change the way people move throughout the region. On a more philosophical level, the plans for the highway also seemed to fundamentally question the legitimacy of the physical structure city. After 210 years of individuals shaping the built environment, an outside idea was being presented as more legitimate. At this moment of crisis in the battle for Richmond’s future, Shepherd wrote a philosophical piece that questioned the idea of a highway in Richmond and made a simple, yet compelling argument for democracy in the midst of the American highway era.
At this point in time, the Richmond Times-Dispatch was not new to articles and ads related to the expressway. Leading up to the referendum on November there were dozens of references to the highway including political ads, cartoons, editorials, news articles, and opinion submissions. Many of these references simply recycled the same ideas and arguments for or against the highway plan. In these arguments it was too expensive or it was the ultimate solution to traffic, either not the will of the people or a well-developed plan vetted by studies and experts.
Amidst the banal arguments, Shepherd’s article called Richmonders to think critically about the process of planning a highway in the 50s. He was not enamored by the professional firms that planned the highway or their ideas for the future of Richmond. Instead, he writes, “Inflexible plans result in a fixation of mind. Steering them becomes an obsession kindred to a driver’s headlong dash above or over a freeway.” To Shepherd, politicians in Richmond were trying to make the plan fit an unwilling populace. To Shepherd, the future was not so easy to predict.
While many framed the highways as American progress, Shepherd framed the highway plan as megalomania. He compares the politics to Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hitler, Hirohito, and the British Empire. The one thing in common was the concept of invasion and empire, but more philosophically the empires were imposed and forced on unprepared societies. The empires constantly developed their ability to transform the life of citizens in order to complete the assimilation of diverse societies. The highway was no exception. Plans for the city of Richmond were meticulously developed before being presented to the people of Richmond and expected to impress and amaze. The highway was an idea from the outside that was forced upon cities in America and unwilling to change or shift to fit the will of the people.
To Shepherd, these plans did not make sense in context because they weren’t democratic. “Taxes and plans?” writes Shepherd, “Yes.” In some instances it is wise to plan for the future and prepare for potential changes and developments, “But [while] some lead to the freedom of men, others lead to a fixation of mind and bondage just a binding as chains.” Today we are living the legacy of these plans and I believe we finally beginning to understand the captivity of which Shepherd spoke. While the highway seemed like an opportunity for growth, it has become a fundamental aspect of American life. What was once vehemently opposed has now become part of routine commutes and shopping trips.
Many people look at cities without any sort of historic lens or context, but a deeper understanding of the politics of a place will give us a better understanding of the place itself. As we continually struggle to recover our buried past we will likely find similar instances where democracy failed and voices were silenced. Uncovering these voices will further illuminate our nation’s past and present and allow us to begin to right our future.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 