Access and Livability: Re-establishing Urban Fabric: Spaghetti Junction

This Urban Design / Graduate Diploma Project Studio sought to re-establish the urban fabric in the emerging “gateway” neighborhood of East Nashville. The studio explored the question of what constitutes urban design and development: innovation, excellence, and best practices in the constituent elements of urban fabric: the urban block and its spatial corollary, the urban street.

The site studied is equivalent to a 16-block area, flanked by the elevated I-24 to the west (the boundary between downtown and East Nashville), the CSX depressed railroad tracks next to Ellington Parkway to the north, the historic Edgefield neighborhood to the east, and MDHA managed/owned housing to the south. It is bisected by two major east-west streets, Main Street and Woodland Street, that link Downtown to East Nashville. Main Street is anticipated as a future bus rapid transit route between East Nashville’s Five Points and West Nashville’s Hill Center at White Bridge Road. One full block is currently occupied by an ambitious mixed-use condominium development (Fifth and Main). Most of the acreage is consumed today by cloverleaf interchanges that tie Ellington Parkway to I-24, as well as provide access to Downtown and East Nashville.