For the first time in almost 20 years of visiting Nashville, the city no longer strikes me as an attractive place to move. Don’t be surprised if the buzz starts fading soon.

Nashville has been a boomtown for over 25 years, and on previous visits I’ve been known to kick myself for not moving there and buying in earlier. Not that I really wish I’d done it, but I felt the pull. While a city with low quality urbanism and architectural bones, it had a great vibe and seemed to be leaning into its uniqueness with music, hot chicken, and anything else they could figure out. It felt like you were part of something when you were there.

First the good: the city continues to boom. I’d estimate they’ve built somewhere between five and ten times as much urban infill as Indianapolis. This is transforming the city. In a place notable for its paucity of walkable urbanism, it’s created a number of new nodes basically from scratch. The 12 South district, for example, was basically built from nothing.

But the 12 South district also illustrates Nashville’s conundrum. What’s been built is extremely generic. There’s essentially no vernacular architecture. And what’s gone into the buildings from a commercial perspective is also generic. 12 South is basically chains. And the things that aren’t chains might as well be because they are independent shops that are just implementing a formula.

Some of this is not Nashville’s fault. American urbanism is more commodified than I can remember it. Amenities have spread out such that every city basically has the same suite of high quality but very similar amenities. The unbearable sameness of the independent coffee shop has been talked about for over a decade. But this has metastasized to almost everything.

The net result is that Nashville feels more generic now, even to an outsider. This is the same complaint about every city that gets hot. People wanted to keep Austin weird, but it didn’t happen. Just because the complaint is common doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of truth.

Housing prices have also gone through the roof there. Anything proximate to a walkable district is now priced at insane levels. In East Nashville, prepare to spend $1.4 million on a craftsman. For that money, you can buy a two bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side of New York. There are houses in the 12 South area pushing $4 million.

I like to compare Nashville to Indianapolis. Both are overgrown small towns. Nashville has some chains and items that Indy doesn’t have yet (e.g. Rag & Bone). But I’d estimate the lifestyle in Nashville at this point maybe 20% better while the prices are at least double. And even Indy’s price/value is a bit out of whack at this point compared to say, Chicago. It’s hard to see the appeal unless you’re trying to make it music or something.

Nashville’s urbanism is improving but still generally low quality. The city passed an infrastructure tax, but it’s made little progress in fixing things. In fact, it’s remarkable how little the infrastructure of Nashville has changed in the last 20 years. The state is starting to widen I-65 north to the Kentucky border, and there’s a big widening project underway on Nolensville Pike, but those are the only two major highway improvements I can remember in the last 15+ years. Traffic is terrible. Much of the city lacks sidewalks, etc.

And don’t get me started on the suburbs. I’ll do a separate thread on Williamson County, but the lack of attention to the public realm is astonishing. Nashville is a city that is almost entirely about the private domain, not the public one.

Add it all up: the genericizing of the city, the big runup in costs, and the poor infrastructure and public realm, and you have a recipe for a fading of the city’s draw.

I would not be surprised if we start seeing articles about Nashville similar to the one’s we’ve been reading about Austin: people moving back to California, fading tech dreams, etc.

Of course, Austin is still a boomtown and Nashville will be too. Outside of California, I don’t think a single Sunbelt boomtown has yet stopped booming.

Nashville also has economic opportunities that places like Indianapolis does not. The vibe is still very different, in part because Nashville is a national draw with a different demographic base.

But cities get hot and have their moment in the sun, then the world moves on to something else. Portland is exhibit A here. I think the Nashville buzz is about to dissipate.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49091369)

I spent time surveying suburban Nashville’s Williamson County (Franklin, Brentwood, Nolensville, Leipers Fork). I’m not going to lie: it might be the least impressive wealthy, favored quarter suburban area I’ve ever visited.

Let’s talk about the good up front though:

1. Downtown Franklin is very nice. It’s a genuinely historic downtown with some great housing stock and such dating to the early 1800s. As Bill Fulton noted, it’s a tourist rather than living downtown, but still great. Includes a few chains (like Anthropologie), but it’s not chain dominated. I think having a few major national brands present is a good thing and wish we had some in Carmel. Has a nice Hilton Curio collection hotel called the Harpeth Hotel. The main problem they have is that there’s too little in terms of residential within walking distance of the commercial core. They’ve obviously chosen not to build many apartments that might scale this up. But there’s some tasteful infill, particularly some very nicely designed townhouses. They have functional shutters, for example. A lot of places have real gas lamps, which is a nice touch.

2. Franklin also has a major new urbanist style development called Westhaven. It’s fine, but similar to others of its type.

3. The rural estates along Old Hillsboro Road and such are impressive. There’s obviously an ideal in Nashville of living a “plantation” style existence where you buy some land on a main road, build a huge, visible house with a huge front yard, and raise horses in some type of Lexington influenced setup (wooden or Irish style rock fencing) - even if you don’t actually have any horses. You see this even in parts of the city (e.g., along Franklin Pike)

4. The small town of Leipers Fork was cutesy, and gives easy access to the Natchez Trace Parkway, which is very nice.

On my previous visited I had only gone to downtown Franklin and the Cool Spring corporate area, which are solid. I was unaware of what the rest of it was like.

The rural estate ideal has heavily shaped the ethos of the area in negative ways. In effect, everything here is about the private domain. The public realm is essentially an afterthought. A few thoughts:

1. Williamson County has very underdeveloped infrastructure and what appears to be no planning. It’s behind the times in important respects. For example, Carmel and Hamilton County went all in on roundabouts. We have 150+ in Carmel, with very few stoplights. By contrast, Williamson County is stoplight city. There are very few roundabouts.

Similarly, they’ve done little on sidewalk development. There are newish, very upscale subdivisions without sidewalks. I'm not even sure they are mandated. Some of the main roads have multi-use paths. But many roads don’t. And virtually all of the roads that do have them have gaps.

Unsurprisingly, traffic can be bad. I sat through a mile and a half long backup on Concord Lane at 6:30 on a Monday night.

2. Weirdly, Brentwood does not appear to have a downtown or to have tried to create any town center. It’s pure sprawl. As with the lack of roundabouts, it's another example of how this area is behind the times.

3. There’s an edge city type office/commercial district called Cool Springs, which I believe is in the city of Franklin. It’s laid out along I-65, with landscaped four lane collector distributor streets on either side. The east side has most of the office buildings, including Nissan’s US headquarters. I thought the road itself, Carothers Parkway, was nicely done. The west side along Mallory Ln. is a retail hellscape complete with a mall called the Cool Springs Galleriea. There isn’t even a lot of really high end retail here. It seems to be mostly concentrated in the city, say at Green Hills or in various neighborhoods. It doesn’t look like Williamson County even has great shopping. (In Indy, most of the high end retail is in the city, but very close to the border of our version of Williamson County).

Cool Springs is doing well because the region is booming. In fact, there’s still some empty land that is being developed, but this is an obsolete typology.

4. I surveyed half the playgrounds in Franklin and they were very dated, probably from the 2000s or 1990s. Only one I saw had a modern rubberized surface, for example. The rest were still using mulch. Paint was peeling off the metal fixtures. You would never in a million years think this was a wealthy community by looking at its playgrounds. Presumably people use private playgrounds in their subdivisions - again, a focus on private over public. Though I’m told Brentwood has some nicer playgrounds.

If you want to live on a rural estate or exist entirely in your own private domain, Williamson County might be a good choice. But for anyone that remotely cares about the public realm and amenities, it will greatly disappoint.

Williamson County may be richer than Carmel, Indiana. That’s a benefit of being part of a much stronger market. But with the exception of Franklin’s downtown, we blow Williamson County out of the water in terms of amenities and infrastructure - with much better traffic and lower costs too.

Again, Williamson County might be the least impressive suburban area of its type I’ve ever visited. It has the look and feel of a wealthy suburb from 20-25 years ago that's the land that time forgot.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49091374)

‘urban infill’

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49091546)

lol @ this bugman aghast that section 8/IT monkey hives aren’t being erected amidst the refuges of the landed gentry

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49092793)

People who enjoy their life don't care that all the buildings are glass boxes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49093179)

But don't forget, exclusivity and private amenities are not just for getting away from proles and degenerates. They're also for getting away from LMC and MMC. I've made numerous threads about this. But you're not really thriving unless you're in the private club. Being exclusively around other UMC and 1%ers is a reward that those close to the top come to really value.

We live in a culture where multigenerationl dynasty is possible if one progenitor really has their shit together. Extending yourself now to get the bag so your kids can RSF for eternity is what many are going for. And so why wouldn't you just live in a mansion in Belle Meade? Don't be a bitch, do the needful. If there are ugly prefab development communities with houses built from cheap materials and nowhere for kids to play, what does that got to do with you?

Only a few tickets to Elysium. I'm reminded of the TED talk where the guy said there's no such thing as a good job. There are shit jobs where you punch the clock, and then there are Careers. Life in America is for the winners. Go out and take the reins.

Side note: it's kooky people talk so much about cities about what other people are doing. They never talk about value propositions at different income levels. They don't talk about what living somewhere is like at a variety of income stages. They just talk about what a city looks like when you're driving around aimlessly and what they imagine other people's lives must be like. It's weird instead of saying here's what I would be able to afford and here's what my lifestyle is like if I lived here.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49092976)

enjoy your yard and fat wife and your size 40 pants

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49093114)

'Justh asthonisthing' that rich suburbs are insulated from 'the public realm'. As mentioned earlier, this is a feature, not a bug, to avoid nogs and Nashville liberals.

Shocking that people would sacrifice the pure URBAN JOY of being assaulted at a splash park in favor of driving to local "public" (read: exclusive) amenities

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49093265)

I agree it's a sad reflection of the country but these types of "analyses" from liberals kvetching about second-order effects are useless and in-line with their MO of forcing everyone to be as miserable as they are

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5748877&forum_id=2...id#49093299)