Metro Pulse

Marketing unique and customized products to a nationwide audience may be commonplace in the Internet era, but it’s hardly new. At the end of the 19th century, the Knoxville-based architect George F. Barber sold more than 20,000 sets of house plans via mail order. As a result, cities, small towns, and farms across the country remain dotted with his designs. A fair number, as best I can determine, are variations of this house, Design #33 in The Cottage Souvenir #2. Full story »

The News Sentinel ran a little map graphic the other day, after the election, tracking how Knoxville voted. Not many surprises there—it looked just like the map Metro Pulse ran of the 2004 election a few weeks earlier. The center-city went strongly for Obama, while the suburbs tilted towards McCain. The map mimics similar ones printed up in places like USA Today and elsewhere, tracking how the Republicans are predominantly the party of rural America, while the Democrats dominate the dense urban centers. Full story »

“We tell people ‘keep your thermostat around 72 degrees,’ nothing too out of the ordinary,” said the nurse. It was January, not quite five years ago, and I was sitting in a room at Children’s Hospital listening to a short “take-home” presentation, preparing to bring our youngest son home from the neonatal ICU. Thermostat around 72 degrees? In January? In our drafty old Victorian? “Lady,” I remember thinking, “it doesn’t get to be 72 degrees in our house until late April, or even May.” Full story »

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is popping up all over the place these days. Not surprising, I suppose. The 32nd president is a sort of all-purpose shorthand for trying economic times, invoked whenever the Dow takes a nosedive. Lately, as the country and economy continue to stagger towards election day, the New Deal architect is everywhere: alluded to in political speeches, praised or pilloried by pundits, and even (according to a somewhat confused Joe Biden) appearing on television circa 1929 to reassure a nation on the brink of Depression. (The then-governor of New York, it seems, was what techies now refer to as an “early adopter.”) Full story »

Whether you call it a contraction, correction, or a harbinger of the coming recession, the collapse of the real estate bubble and the resulting upswing in foreclosures have left a huge amount of housing stock in the hands of lenders. A quick Internet search, for instance, reveals more than 700 foreclosure listings currently on the market in Knoxville. Not that Knoxville—largely bypassed by the bubble—has been particularly hard-hit. The similar-sized city of Fort Lauderdale, in once-booming Florida, boasts more than four times the foreclosures cluttering the real estate listings. Full story »

Filled up the car lately? Or are you, like a lot of Knoxvillians, milking that last quarter tank, hoping to ride out the crisis before your next fill-up? Or maybe you tried to fill up, only to be turned away by a “sorry, no gas” sign at the pump? Full story »

Many years ago, when I started writing this column for Metro Pulse, I always made sure to mention proximity to downtown as a plus when writing about some Fourth and Gill Victorian or Parkridge bungalow. At the time, the advantage was perhaps tough to see. Unless one was an attorney or TVA employee looking for a short commute, there wasn’t much that living close to downtown could offer: the occasional concert, maybe, a few bars in the Old City, and the promise that someday, somehow, there might be more. Market Square, other than Tomato Head, didn’t offer much. And Gay Street, other than a struggling brewpub that changed hands quicker than some folks could finish a pint, was a ghost town after five o’clock (and, to be honest, wasn’t too lively at noon). Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: While government and the media bloviate about high gas prices and what to do about them, Americans are slowly, quietly figuring out what to do about it all by themselves. Nationwide, mass transit ridership is up and total vehicle miles traveled are down (the latter leading the road-builders to hyperventilate, since gas taxes are the sole source for their slush fund, I mean, the highway trust fund). Sales of SUVs are likewise cratering, causing Detroit to tremble like a wino with the DTs. Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: In redevelopment parlance, “infill” typically refers to new buildings built on vacant lots amid older ones. Generally occurring at a late stage in a neighborhood’s revitalization, it’s a good sign that the area has matured and stabilized. “Infill,” in that regard, is also an indication that the neighborhood is running low on fixer-uppers. To see some examples, trek out to Fourth and Gill and look at the new homes at the corner of Gratz and Lovenia, along Grainger Avenue in Old North Knoxville, or Deaderick Avenue in Mechanicsville. More importantly, these are all privately developed homes, sold on the open market to buyers who could have easily afforded to live elsewhere—another sure sign that the neighborhoods they’re in have returned to middle-class roots Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: The Tipping Point,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in his influential book by the same title, is “the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” Published in 2000, the book seeks to explain a wide range of social phenomena, from fashion fads to runaway bestsellers to crime rates and the spread of urban legends. “Ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics,” according to Gladwell, who borrowed his title from the term epidemiologists use for the moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: Whether the rhetoric comes from politicians caging votes or agribusiness lobbyists shopping for subsidies, “Energy Independence” is a term that gets tossed around a lot these days. Typically, it’s invoked in the context of some transformative technology that will allow us to keep Wal-Mart’s “Warehouse on Wheels” and the cars in our garage running indefinitely. You know the jive: We’ll be able to keep puttering along as always, only without the inconvenience of having to kowtow to anyone in a turban. Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: Scientist and space exploration advocate Robert Zubrin starts his 1996 book, The Case for Mars, with a comparison between two historical expeditions into the arctic. Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: I wasn’t able to make the Knox Heritage reception last week honoring Urban Renewal’s long-time sponsor Kristopher Kendrick, but I’m glad he was. It was touch and go for a while, due to health issues. But the preservation patriarch proved as resilient as the buildings he’s spent a lifetime restoring, wheeling into the Bijou to a standing ovation. Full story »

Urban Renewal by Matt Edens: Traditionally, Memorial Day weekend kicks off what’s commonly referred to as the “Summer Driving Season.” It’s the time of year when we take vacations, burn a lot of gas, and pay more at the pump as prices spike due to increased demand. That, however, raises the question: With oil at $130 a barrel and gas already two-bits shy of four bucks, how expensive will it be by September? Full story »

It has become fashionable among certain unfashionably conservative circles to blame the whole mortgage crisis on the urge to provide more Americans access to affordable housing. Sort of the counteroffensive against pundits decrying predatory lenders, the critic shifts the blame toward government policies aimed at making more people homeowners. The resulting loosening of lending standards, according to the theory, was more or less foisted upon lenders by a meddling government. Full story »