How Did You Get in Here?

Middle Tennessee isn’t just growing. It’s sprawling. View the Greater Nashville Regional Council's Regional Transportation Plan Growth Forecasts 2050.

Recent data proves Davidson County continues to add residents, but the region’s impressive growth is happening beyond its borders. Wilson, Rutherford, Williamson, and Sumner Counties are seeing some of the highest percentage increases in population, driven by affordability and the quest for a better quality of life. Read the article.

This isn’t surprising. It’s a pattern seen across growing regions: people move outward in search of affordable housing.

What happens next, or how we manage that pattern, defines us. Growth alone doesn’t guarantee progress. Remember what Del Boyette taught us: garbage piles grow, but artists develop.

It's how we develop that will define us.

Our Growth Is Showing

The Nashville region added more than 136,000 people between 2020 and 2024, a 6.4% increase, outpacing the national average. That growth stretches across a region home to over 2 million residents.

Here’s the tension: People are spreading out faster than our systems and infrastructure are scaling up.

When growth lands in low-density patterns without coordinated infrastructure, the result is familiar:

• Longer commutes

• Increased congestion

• Higher household transportation costs

• Pressure to convert farmland and green space into fragmented development

• Rising property taxes (low density doesn't mean low cost)

In other words, we will get bigger. Will we opt for better, more efficient options, or will we exacerbate today's challenges further?

Not-So-New-Tool: High-Capacity Corridors

There’s a different path. And it’s not theoretical. Growth works best when it aligns with high-capacity corridors, the places where transportation, housing, and jobs intersect intentionally.

These corridors:

• Support frequent, reliable transit, lowering transportation costs for individuals and cities

• Enable walkable, mixed-use developments fostering active, healthy, and environmentally sustainable communities

• Concentrate growth where infrastructure already exists or can be efficiently expanded, effectively managing long-term costs of operations and maintenance

• Reduce the need for costly road and parking expansions

This is the quiet math of good urban development: density where it makes sense creates space where it matters.

Without it, growth disperses, stretching infrastructure thin and turning maintenance into a constant game of catch-up. With it, growth is organized into systems that are more efficient, more resilient, and ultimately more sustainable.

Density Is Preservation, Not a Four-Letter Word

There’s often a perception that there is a tradeoff in growing regions: density vs. green space. But the reality is more nuanced.

When we avoid density everywhere, we end up consuming land everywhere.

Middle Tennessee is home to unique landscapes from rolling farmland to rare ecosystems like cedar glades that are increasingly at risk as development spreads outward. If we want to preserve those places, we have to be more intentional about where growth goes.

That means some of us will need to make some uncomfortable adjustments in our urban core areas to protect our farms and green space. These growing pains will look like allowing more housing near transit corridors. Higher density protects existing single-family home lots while adding much-needed housing stock without putting more strain on infrastructure and services, water, sewer, solid waste, schools, and other municipal departments, like safety.

Density supports compact, mixed-use development that further supports long-term economic resilience by facilitating a wide variety of businesses, large and small. Aligning land use with transportation investments is the foundation for building a higher quality of life and access to opportunity.

Growing pains we will all weather together. Done well, density is not crowding. It’s conservation in disguise.

R-E-S-I-L-I-A-N-C-Y

To put it plainly, we can continue on a path where growth behaves like a water pipe defying gravity, spewing outward in every direction. It spreads unpredictably, worsening congestion and driving up transportation costs. Infrastructure is forced to chase demand, resulting in rising costs for both households and governments.

There is a different approach available to us. We can choose to focus growth along key corridors, keeping infrastructure costs reasonable. Invest in transit and mobility options that support affordability and manage congestion. Preserve the landscapes that define Middle Tennessee by encouraging strong density along those established corridors.

Both paths accommodate growth. Only one leads to long-term resilience.

Address it, or Nah

The suburban growth highlighted in recent data isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a reminder that we need to respond.

It tells us that people want to be here and that our region is economically strong. For now, thank goodness, demand isn’t slowing down because that would be a whole other topic.

The question isn’t whether we grow. It’s whether we take control of that unpredictable water pipe. We are the only ones that can shape that growth in a way that preserves the character that keeps drawing people here in the first place. To do that, we need to focus on improving the existing regional public transportation system to expand access to opportunity.

In the end, growth is inevitable. Development is a choice.