News from a Sustainable Shelby

Chatting last Thursday night in the Bridges cavern with several people who were part of Sustainable Shelby's creation, I heard 2 pieces of good news:

• MLG&W is collaboratively and successfully resolving its issues with the Unified Development Code. As our utility was the only public voice of opposition to the UDC at the Land Use Control Board, this hopefully means passage in the near future of this progressive development toolkit.


• Rebuilding of the Greater Memphis Greenline's Wolf River bridge will start this fall and the Greenline should open, from Tillman to Farm Road, by spring 2010.

The Greenline and the UDC are just 2 of the many organizations and efforts that Sustainable Shelby has federated into a single plan. Movement sustainability comes from these orgs' independent devotion to an environmentally sustainable, urban future for Memphis and Shelby County. If the umbrella organization were to disappear tomorrow, the forward push into that future would not.

Beauty == Utility

The only voice of opposition at the Land Use Control Board's affirmative vote on the Unified Development Code a few weeks ago came from Memphis Light Gas & Water.The utility had a problem with several sections of the code, especially

A. New electric utility services shall be placed underground where functionally feasible...

(section 5.3.4)

I seem to remember the MLG&W rep stating that the aesthetics of the code would be a drag on functionality for utilities. A utility's utilitarian argument.

Yet the mass disruptions whipped up by last weekend's storms (mostly by trees and branches falling on above-grade power lines) and the historic storm data exposed by this NOAA map (hat tip Naomi)

show the impracticality of this opposition. Storms will cross the Mississippi, branches will fall from the sky, above-ground electric lines will get knocked out. But happily, safely, beautifully, increasingly buried electric lines will keep on humming.

Good aesthetics in tree-rich, storm-happy Memphis is good utility.

It Matters

As Memphis and Shelby County prepare to take up the Unified Development Code, we should take to heart and law fearlessvk's wisdom, based on her first trip to Memphis:

...the physical landscape of space matters. It affects first impressions - and sometimes it's exceedingly difficult to put aside those first impressions. When you drive aimlessly around midtown for the first time, you can't tell how cool and creative the people are or how interesting some of the places are. You come to discover that later, but none of it is apparent from the window of your car. Coming from a dense city with a lot of pedestrian activity, midtown feels like a suburb. Its physical landscape doesn't do justice to its countless virtues - it sells itself short. They say you can't polish a turd, but perhaps you can do the opposite: midtown is like a golden nugget coated in shit.

The space created by Memphis' built environment matters.

That's why you need to come down to show your support for the UDC

By the way, I've discovered a summary of the code that might fill the void between the code itself and a brochure.

A Vote on Unified Development Code This Thursday

In what could be the most important civic breakthrough for Memphis' built environment in 100 years, the Land Use Control Board will vote on the revised and long-awaited Unified Development Code this Thursday, May 28th, at 5 p.m., in the Memphis City Council chambers at 125 N Main – City Hall.

If you, as a citizen, neighborhood, developer and/or leader, want better tools to rebuild a greater Memphis, or just want a better built Memphis, please show up to show your support.

If you're not up to inspecting the toolkit, 424 pages of development code, the Office of Planning and Development has created a short document which lists the organizing principles of the UDC. Given the importance of citizens and neighborhood groups to its real success, how-to's, case studies, mailing lists, websites, etc. would also be very useful auxiliary tools moving forward.