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Un-inverse Knoxville

Professor Kermit Duckett makes a compelling argument in his [Dec. 6] letter to Metro Pulse regarding "Universe Knoxville." Among his strongest points are, "The opportunities to further integrate regional cultural and educational aspects of the region are immense. A strong partnership among the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NASA, TVA, East Tennessee Discovery Center and the Universe Knoxville experience can provide a valuable educational outreach for our community and further strengthen the scientific appreciation by our youth so necessary to their future."

This is strong stuff. Yet, is it possible to support all the partnerships and potential benefits Professor Duckett enumerates and still argue against "Universe Knoxville?" Moreover, are there better ways to accomplish these same goals and never break ground on "Universe Knoxville?"

Arguments always seem strongest when the options are limited to black and white. Yet, as a good friend of mine often reminds me, the problem with dialectical thinking is that it always ends up being one damn thing or another. The last thing that the area honorifically referred to as downtown Knoxville needs is one damn thing after another.

The historic center of Knoxville has been so ravaged for the last 50 years that one wonders if it will ever be, once again, a "normative" downtown. Is it possible that the area now bounded by massive-and-still-growing urbanistically deadly infrastructure will ever be a place where a critical mass of citizens live comfortably, shop, lunch in the afternoon, dine in the evening, go to movies and the theater, worship, and send their children to walking-distance-schools? I think so. Not, however, if the same kind of thinking that has brought us a convention center on the site of one of the least successful "World's Fairs" in history continues to drive the most important decisions a city can make.

Knoxville will never again have a healthy urban core if the plans for its center continue to include urban and architectural plans that are essentially sub-urban in mentality and sub-standard in design. The last thing downtown Knoxville needs is another hermetically sealed big box connected by an anti-urban umbilical cord allowing its users to drive into the city on the ever-expanding infrastructure, park their cars, enter and leave the box, while never participating in the city that surrounds it.

The city will soon have a fully functioning, albeit rather vacuous, convention center. To help fill the vacuum within this enormous collection of outdated architectural motifs sited across eight lanes of traffic from downtown, there is a proposal to build yet another big box. While this science-filled box will be located in the fabric of downtown, it is no more connected to it than is the convention center and will do for Knoxville what the Renaissance Center did for Detroit 25 years ago—suck the last breath out of a much damaged but still functioning downtown.

There must be alternatives to achieve the laudatory goals adumbrated by Professor Duckett without building a poor imitation of the Rose Planetarium attached to yet another parking garage. The citizens of Knoxville ought to be reminded that the Rose Planetarium in New York is an addition to the Museum of Natural History that fronts on Central Park. Consequently, the planetarium is an addition to what is already a thriving urban site filled with the kinds of amenities any great city should have in abundance—centrally located institutions ranging from universities to museums, park systems integrated into the urban fabric, and a building-datum filled with retail, commercial, and residential space. Does this sound even remotely like downtown Knoxville?

My good friend who is so opposed to dialectical thinking also reminds me from time to time that the half-life of missing the point is forever. I do not know if the convention center will last forever, but it and the "not-the-Rose-Planetarium" will have a long-felt impact on what is left of the urban core of this westward-spreading metropolitan area. Is it possible that a collection of carefully planned and integrated small ideas could re-animate an often-lifeless urban center, and that this collection of good-but-modest ideas will add up to more than one big box of science? It is a question worth exploring, especially when the half-life of missing the point is forever.

George Dodds
Knoxville