I live in
Royal Pines, which started life in the 1920's as a residential development, and, mapped boundaries notwithstanding, also includes the area between Sweeten Creek Road and Hendersonville Road. That area is the originally platted Royal Pines area, while the areas on the other side of Sweeten Creek were called Mount Royal. Mapped boundaries also notwithstanding, the heart of the neighborhood is centered around the intersection of Royal Pines Drive and Sweeten Creek Road. The neighborhood was built on the grounds of the former Blake estate, and the Blake House, dating from 1847, still stands and is now a bed-and-breakfast inn. Meanwhile, only a handful of other houses got built in Royal Pines/Mount Royal before the stock market crash in 1929, and the neighborhood filled in after World War II. That being the case, I would preserve every pre-war house that did get built in the area between Sweeten Creek and Hendersonville, demolish everything else, and densely rebuild the entire area according to new urbanist principles. I would make Jake Rusher Park the centerpiece of a small neighborhood commercial district with shops at ground level and apartments above, then redo the rest of the neighborhood in brownstone-style rowhouses.