Nashville’s Urban Development Policy Revealed: Out With the Old?

…OK, the tourist thing

Now, it turns out that the Westin project is one of at least five new hotels planned for the downtown area. Five or more new hotels. Now, the local hotel biz has actually been pretty good lately, even without Opryland, with occupancy rates running high and a going average price of about $125 per night per person, but I think five more luxury hotels might just saturate the market, even at our current level of prosperity.

I am a member of the economic class that finds the idea of paying $125 a night for a place to sleep, shower, and stash my suitcase simply bizarre. Unfortunately for the builders of the Westin, my kind of people are on the increase in this country, and their clientele is barely managing to reproduce itself, let alone grow. Where do they think all these rich suckers are gonna come from? They’re waving around impressive revenue and tax projections, but they will have no money without people to spend it, and I think they’re living in a deluded dream if they think the future is going to be just like the past. The roller coaster does not go up and up forever, guys. Don’t the dark, closed carcasses of Planet Hollywood and the NASCAR Cafe tell you anything? The party’s over. Do you think I’m a jerk for saying this? Too bad. We need to be thinking very differently about preserving Nashville if we’re going to have a liveable city in another twenty or thirty years.

The first thing we need to do is to encourage urban and suburban gardening, especially projects that feed more people than just the gardeners. Tax credits for vegetable gardens, guys. And let’s repeal the zoning ordinances that prohibit people from keeping household livestock. Yeah, feedlots suck, but if folks want milk and eggs they oughta be able to keep a cow or goat and a few chickens around without getting hassled. And, while we’re relaxing zoning laws, let’s not be so fussy about the home/business divide. Making it easier for people to work at home cuts down on automobile traffic and increases neighborhood cohesion. And parking lots…we got too much parking space in some parts of this town. I look at that colossus by the river and all the flat space around it, and I think,