Lauren Thomas

The Future of Nashville: Considerations for Nashvillian Gentrification and its Impacts on Populate Class, Economic, and Real Property Realities

Started Oct. 11, 2024

Abstract or project description

Once referred to as the humble “Volunteer State”, Tennessee has seen catalytic changes in recent years: staggering increases in population, heavily strained economics on both the individual and local level, and an almost unrecognizable real estate landscape. Whether these occurrences be by way of healthily controlled state growth of classic gentrification (or a combination of the two) Nashville, Tennessee's former, well-known reputation of a down to earth, southern hospitality woven community has been wholly shaken—replaced by one that reverberates consumerist pandering and urban modernity. Despite the city holding a rich, dynamic history running for 229 years, the past 25 years alone have proved to be some of the most historically heavy and impactful years to date. With the new millennium causing instances such as the Nashvillian metro area to see a 170% increase between years 2000 and 2023 to be conflated with both normalcy and gentrification indicators, increased pressure has been added to Nashville’s three central spheres of population, economics, and real estate. Such pressures have coalesced since the early 2000s, spontaneously bringing other detrimental facets that range from abrasive politics to housing instability into the city’s limits. All in all, uprising gentrification factors and impacting impacts to Nashville’s central core since the early 2000s to the status quo prove harmful to the city and its residents. Ultimately, understanding the trends and truths woven in the metropolitan's antiquity since the start of the 2000s may be the key in understanding the conception of gentrification within Nashville’s borders and reversing it. In The Future of Nashville: Considerations for Nashvillian Gentrification and its Impacts on Population, Economic, and Real Property Realities, I explore and approximate the conception of the alterations seen within Nashville’s population, economic, and real property landscape across a span of 25 years. Additionally, I’ll twine the impacts of these spheres to craft a modern, comprehensive picture of Nashville’s status quo, marked by an air of unstable controversial dynamics, uncharacteristic visual and architectural real estate developments, economic imbalance, social and classist divisions, and a disbalance in housing and placement. With a case being made for the current reality of Nashville, I’ll draw similarities with its reality and that of megacities New York and California have not alleviated the inflammatory markers of gentrification and are currently experiencing the consequences of letting the seeds of gentrification and urbanization germinate for too long without intervention. Finally, I conclude this dissertation by twining the opinions and perspectives of those seeking to remedy Nashville’s gentrification, such as myself, in hopes of drafting a plausible future for Nashville that, if implemented, can soothe the pressing symptoms of gentrification and shift the city’s tomorrow that proves to be inhabitable for all residents regardless of racial demographic, economic class, and housing address.