Changing the culture of planning from within

Education, outreach, interdepartmental coordination, and charrette-based community planning are among Rick Bernhardt’s chief tools for transforming Nashville’s planning department. Ayear after new urbanist planner Rick Bernhardt took over the helm of the Metropolitan Planning Department, the first visible signs of change are emerging. The Gulch Neighborhood, a major downtown infill project, is under construction, and Lenox Village, Nashville’s first new urban greenfield project, is moving through the review process (see sidebar). More important, however, are the structural changes taking place behind the scenes. In a nutshell, Bernhardt is working to move the department out of its traditional mode of passive administration and into a role of pro-active leadership. A Nashville native, Bernhardt began his career as a planner for the city, but left in the mid-1970s, dismayed at the lack of neighborhood-based, participatory planning. As planning director in Orlando, Florida, from 1982 to 1999, he oversaw the approval of several new urban projects and worked on an overhaul of the city’s zoning code, a project that is not fully realized. Bernhardt left for a job in the private sector in 1999, but was soon approached by colleagues urging him to return to Nashville. Skeptical at first, Bernhardt changed his mind when the newly elected mayor and city council displayed an interest in rethinking the city’s growth patterns. Convinced that he would have a foundation of support from elected officials, Bernhardt took up the challenge. His experience so far suggests how new urbanists in the public sector can begin to steer a planning department in a new direction. Educate the staff and the community The first item on Bernhardt’s agenda was staff training. Planners viewed the comprehensive video course in traditional neighborhood development (TND) techniques based on architect Andres Duany’s lectures, and some staff members went to the Seaside Institute for further education. Armed with the basic principles, the staff could begin to step into a new role that goes far beyond crunching numbers and administrating individual development projects. “To me, the process of New Urbanism is the entire process of the Charter. It starts with an understanding of the region, then goes to the neighborhood, and then to the block and street level,” Bernhardt says. Some staffers were not comfortable with the new direction and have left the department. But Bernhardt has brought in reinforcements from the outside. Ann Hammond, until recently the planning director in Huntersville, North Carolina, has now assumed the same title in Nashville. Hammond was instrumental in the adoption of Huntersville’s new urbanist zoning ordinance and has extensive experience in retooling a department. As planning director, her responsibilities are primarily internal, while Executive Director Bernhardt focuses on reaching out to the community. “I immediately got into a fairly aggressive speech mode,” he says. Once or twice a week, Bernhardt speaks about the principles of New Urbanism and smart growth to Rotary Clubs, neighborhood groups, and whoever else wants to listen. He uses public access television to reach an even wider audience. The department has provided about 20 videos on smart growth to the cable service, and these are shown at all hours of the day. To reach the community’s decision-makers, Bernhardt had to go beyond speeches and images. “Obviously, you can go into older neighborhoods and illustrate the points you are talking about — interconnectivity, mixed land uses, pedestrian-oriented development — but we also put together a trip to Orlando, so people could see that we are not talking about a monster, but something that can fit in,” he says. A group of council members, developers, and designers were invited on a tour of new infill and greenfield developments in the Orlando area. The examples convinced one Nashville developer, David McGowan, to try his hand at building a new urbanist project. “He was a critically important person to win over,” Bernhardt says. “He used to own the largest local home building company, so he enjoys a lot of respect, but he is also currently the president of the Middle Tennessee Homebuilders Association.” McGowan hired the Nashville office of Looney Ricks Kiss to design his project, and the result is Lenox Village. The plan is a good model, Bernhardt says. “You are always a little bit leery when you get your first project, because you can get a developer that’s right but hires the wrong designer, and vice versa.” In this case, the combination worked. Talk to the other departments As in many other municipalities, government departments in Nashville have tended to work in isolation from each other. The planning department did not interfere with the work of the sewer department or public works. Bernhardt set out to change that. “If these departments are never asked what their opinion is and never given an opportunity to be part of the process, it’s no wonder that they might just go off and do their own thing,” he says. Bernhardt now leads regular interdepartmental meetings, where the fire chief and the planning director, for example, can work out issues of mutual interest. The interdepartmental cooperation also extends to large-scale planning efforts, such as the creation of neighborhood plans for Davidson County’s 14 subareas. This community planning process is undergoing radical change. Instead of the traditional method in which planners would work internally on a neighborhood for eight or nine months and end up with a land use plan and some maps, neighborhood plans are now shaped during charrettes. After a few months of studying the community and understanding its basic values and expectations, the department leads a two- week intensive planning workshop, which involves residents as well as other city departments. “I tell the other departments that someone has to be present at all time to make decisions for their department, otherwise we will make the decisions for them,” Bernhardt says. The planning department’s new design studio is an essential part of this new approach. By reorganizing the department, Bernhardt freed up resources for this permanent studio, which is not only involved in the departments own neighborhood plans, but also helps developers to understand new urbanist concepts and refine their ideas. Support external initiatives Bernhardt has also placed his department’s support behind the creation of Nashville’s Civic Design Center, an independent nonprofit that has been up and running since June 2001. The center’s mission is to preserve and promote a high-quality public realm, to be a resource for residents and government alike, and to raise the level of design skills in the community. In addition to monthly forums and workshops, the center gets involved in specific neighborhood projects and provides advice to communities. “It was my desire to have this center be completely separate from government,” Bernhardt says, “It will have more capacity to speak out on both public and private projects if it is not seen as part of the regulatory infrastructure. And developers will not feel as threatened coming into an independent entity funded primarily by foundations.” On the regional level, Bernhardt is active on the organizing committee of Cumberland Region Tomorrow, a group which is advocating regional planning in absence of an effective regional governance entity. Vanderbilt University has taken the lead in getting the group up and running, and it has now hired regional planner John Fregonese of Portland, Oregon, to do a vision plan for the Nashville region. Use the available tools Ultimately, the Metropolitan Planning Department seeks to make it much easier for developers to get approval for new urbanist plans, but it has been restrained by Nashville’s conventional zoning code, adopted in 1998. The code severely limits the use of planned unit developments (PUDs), the tool most often used in the absence of a specific TND ordinance. However, the code does include a so-called Urban Design Overlay, originally intended to guide the redevelopment of old neighborhood commercial centers. Hammond and Bernhardt discovered that the code language did not preclude the application of the overlay in other locations, including greenfield sites. The Urban Design Overlay works in ways very similar to a PUD, allowing a mix of uses and housing types. “It’s a rezoning process,” Bernhardt says, “so its not as easy as what we want to get to eventually.” In fact, the next major step for the department is convincing the City Council to amend the current subdivision regulations. “Let’s get the administrative bureaucracy out of the way,” Bernhardt says. “That’s what a planning director can do and a private consultant can’t. The inertia of the system will kill a good project, so in order to do what we need to do, we have to be proactive.”