Music City’s Changing Tune Displaces Long-Time Residents
Community Post by Emmett McKinney
Nashville is changing fast – and not in the same way for everyone. America’s “Music City” has experienced immense growth, which has also driven gentrification and displacement, particularly in communities of color. Amazon, Whole Foods, and several Wall Street finance firms have taken up residence in the city, sparking real estate speculation and development of luxury condominiums in once-affordable neighborhoods. As the city continues to struggle with its history of structural racism, lower income areas with large communities of color have shown some of the greatest shifts.
The changes are evident in the built environment. Nashville, like many other cities, was divided in two during the urban renewal era of planning the 1960s. Jefferson Street, which supported many famous music venues and connected downtown to Fisk University and Tennessee State University, was disrupted by the construction of an interstate through North Nashville.
It is no coincidence that this part of town was, and remains, predominantly African American. However, this enclave is also experiencing social shifts as well-heeled, mostly white, residents move into lower-income areas with large communities of color, and drive up the price of real estate.
At the same time as the city has experienced unprecedented investment (and with it, increased traffic), the city council has doubled down on auto dependence, cutting transit service and several key bus lines. This increases hardship on low income and communities of color, who have been pushed out to suburbs by rising real estate prices, and face longer commutes as a result.
This auto-centric focus heightens the risk for pedestrians, with 33 killed by cars in 2019 – an all-time high. One activist from the grassroots group Music City Riders United drew the connection between pedestrian death and systemic inequality. Drivers observe that pedestrians crossing the street at night are wearing all black, making them less visible to drivers.
Victims are often wearing black because they are servers in restaurants, or working lower-wage, hourly jobs. Their uniforms are designed not to be seen, which aligns with a much longer pattern of erasing the experiences of communities of color. As the activist summarized, “black skin, black clothes – can’t see ‘em.”
The Nashville Civic Design Center’s Design Your Neighborhood program takes a participatory action approach to support local students to engage with and change their built environment. As part of the 2018-2019 curriculum, which was delivered to 2,500 students in Metro Nashville Public Schools, students commented on the changes they noticed in the city and brainstormed policy and design changes they would make to preserve their neighborhoods. Following is a selection from the focus group interviews conducted by a research team at Vanderbilt Peabody College, which demonstrate the profound and nuanced knowledge that young residents hold.
On changes in the built environment
“Yeah, like East Nashville. […] If you go into like, little communities or whatever, you'll like see, like on one side, like, houses that's a little older, and it's not like all the way kept up, and right next way is like a giant tall new house that's super big and it looks like really expensive. So like, it's definitely changing.
“I read a thousand new families, or like a hundred, moved here per day. And it's already like a lot of stuff here you know they tearing down houses maybe pushing people out, lots of construction […] my dad used to stay on Edgehill over there. And they just tearing down the houses down houses and they making them condo and they run for like a lot of money as the new families just buy them and buy them and buy them.”
“What they did in my neighborhood, is they took the abandoned houses all down. And my sister and I were like, they should put the park there, you know, that would be really good for our neighborhood to turn that problem into a solution, but they ended up just rebuilding another house there.”
On new residents and displacement
“They're not going to want to live around a whole bunch of, in their words, ghetto people. I don't think they will. So mixing us in one neighborhood change anything. It's just not going to be a comfortable environment. For us.” “Gentrification is where the rich people push the poor people out. They are moving us out of the place we call home into a place we know nothing about, and we feel unsafe because of it. “
On different ways of valuing the city
“I really enjoyed the building part. The process of just constructing stuff. Using your own creativity that could be created to help someone.”
“I feel like the big houses and everything is getting rid of the culture. So I wish they would like recognize the fact that we lose so much culture and diversity in Nashville when we get rid of houses and help that, and help the people that create the culture and diversity instead of just plowing over them like their new big houses that nobody can really afford.” “I really like how there's sometimes like, whenever we're driving to school or anything, we'll just see like sculptures everywhere and just art and buildings that are not just regular brick buildings they are designed to be beautiful.”
On their position in society
“I honestly feel like everyone should kind of go through a struggle. For some people it's like nothing is being handed to you. But to some other people, they have no idea what it is because they've never gone through it or they kind of dismiss it. Unlike if you actually know what it is and like you know it's a problem and you have people who you know that go through it then you will want to try to make a change.”
“Like you said, it brought up different perspectives and stuff, because no one is the same. Because people got different interests, different jobs, different ways to like pay, different amounts they can pay or they want to pay. Because like not one person is exactly the same. Like, sure, they may have the same job. But that doesn't mean they get paid the same.”
“The idea of making something like a DADU, like even in your backyard. If we did, we can just build something and just make it for somebody else. Yeah, and that would just be like, life-changing for someone else.”
On their vision for the future
“I just feel like, before they go to change this stuff, they should really have a meeting of like, what would we want in our community? We should have an opinion because basically that's really our community we grew up in since we was kids like, like little kids, we went to elementary there, and now we here. And it's kinda, I don't want to say sad, but like, it's really driving my nerves that they want to take something from us that we've been having all our life.”
“I hope Nashville becomes more welcoming. Whether that's through affordability, or diversity, or whatever. Just that we are more welcome to anybody that wants to come here.” (Bellevue Middle)
These insights reveal the psychological toll the experience of displacement, or fear of one day being displaced, exacts on residents. At the same time, these students let their optimism show, affirming their power and right to shape a more inclusive and healthy future.
In Root Shock, Mindy Thompson Fullilove notes the importance of each and every individual in the process of healing communities. “In the psychiatric hospital,” she notes, “any member of the unit — staff or patient alike — can promote the common good. Similarly, each and every one of us has the power to improve the places we hold in common, whether we are concerned with the neighborhood, city, nation, or planet."
As these students reconceive Nashville’s built environment -- the places they all hold in common – they also affirm the ideals of self-determination that CoLab promotes. DYN’s success speaks to the power of participatory action research methods in transforming students from passive recipients of rote knowledge to engaged citizens, acting upon and changing the systems that tie us all together.
About the Author:
Emmett McKinney is a Producer for CoLab Radio, where he works to amplify community narratives. As a Master in City Planning student (2020), Emmett works to ground policies aimed “sustainability” and “resilience” in communities’ lived experiences. His current research focuses on transportation and water infrastructure, and how equity and justice are integrated into data-driven planning. Outside of CoLab, Emmett can be found running, drinking coffee, and dancing to reggaeton.