Neigeville2

Exactly. It's not about any one building, there's a tight mass (seen from the East especially) of buildings ranging radically in scale and style and age which form a very pleasing shape. When you're there (rather than just looking at a picture) it creates the impression of a dense urban area waiting to be explored.

I like the green signage...

Not me, I'm afraid we'll lose the current, mountain-like massing around the Batman bldg. if the skyline is evened out. I like the gap and am perfectly happy to have several separate massings of buildings.

I like the fact that Chattanooga is considering elevated trains, an idea that doesn't seem to have been considered for Nashville at all.

It's hard to understand, at this distance in years, what the mentality behind this was. At any rate, yes, thank God it failed. Paris is unique, I think, among world cities in the scale of redesign and rebuilding it underwent during the 2nd Empire, and it serves as an example of how a well thought out design can succeed for the long term. Interesting aside: part of the intention in the way Paris was redesigned was to mix together people of different socioeconomic classes (mandating six story buildings before elevators means poor people are going to be upstairs, affluent people downstairs, as they were in ancient Rome). The idea was if they saw each other every day they would hate each other less, an idea I think a lot of modern urbanists endorse. Of course it didn't work...

Nobody knows what it is. I think it's where they breed the space alien babies pending the takeover.

If the Jim Cooper Center for Effective Governance can't be built, what I think would suit the site is a mixed use project on a scale with that beautiful Beaux Arts building across the street with lots of street activation, up to the sidewalk for 2 stories then with a little step back for a terrace with restaurant/bar seating, some apartments above but not too tall. I really think the area needs more activation and the courthouse might bring more people but it's not that...activating. And the design doesn't lend much of a feeling of enclosure to the street. And its ugly.

If you go to Google and type "Joel Kotkin is" the first suggestion is "Joel Kotkin is an idiot" which pretty much sums him up as far as I'm concerned. Don't know this Cox guy.

I'm having a hard time believing you really think this way. What would you do to London or Paris? Can you not appreciate different periods of architecture? Can you not appreciate the city as a living thing with a history? You would turn the city into a downtown version of those spic and span, treated lawn Stepford wives subdivisions in Williamson County, which totally creep me out. Concrete is my favorite building material, but in my opinion it doesn't become beautiful until it has streaks and stains on it. A little moss or algae is nice as well. The problem with the historical people is that they have an ahistorical view of the city. They're upset that if the new hotel on lower Broadway is built, there will be modern buildings next to old ones! I want modern buildings next to old ones. And while I'm not especially fond of very tall buildings, the best thing about them, to me, is that they will be around, and representing their time periods (hopefully without too much "updating") for a long time, most likely centuries. I don't think people appreciated this fact when they started building them. I have a lot of concern for buildings like the Stalinist Dorms @ Vanderbilt, and the L&C belongs a bit in this category, that are old enough to be out of style and not old enough to be appreciated as historical. I hope the cost of destroying the dorms is high enough to protect them, although I imagine Vanderbilt's budget is pretty close to infinite.

They move. I don't see this as a problem, I think they look great.

Of course this is all a matter of opinion, but this seems to me a uniquely American and automobile-centric idea, that buildings should be spread out with lawns in between, instead of clustered. I personally prefer the clustering effect, this odd way of spreading buildings out with lawns everywhere looks ugly to me, and seems impractical as well. In Europe (at least in England and France) even purely rural communities traditionally consist of a tight cluster of buildings surrounded by fields. Farmers often live in rowhouses with shared side walls, near their fields but not in them. Incidentally, Neigeville2 is the same poster as Neigeville, I just don't want to sign in through facebook anymore because this site demanding more access (and I believe, violating facebook's TOS).