Nashville is a very cool city. In fall 2010, I spent one of my most enjoyable weekends of travel there, which I previously wrote about in these pages. Its reinvention as a relatively hip place is well chronicled: neighborhoods have revived; a food scene bloomed; bands, not all of them playing country music, have grown popular; the population has continued to grow; and the city has rediscovered its core rather than only expand horizontally. Its urban planning and policy are an interesting microcosm. Nashville already had a long-running and clearly defined identity as a tourist destination -- "Music City," aka the home of the country music industry -- which surely draws tens of thousands of visitors every year. Marry that to all the resident-based developments that have happened during the past 20 years and one has a great place to live.
Yet in the past two decades Nashville has also been susceptible to the two classic features of "growth coalition" planning, professional sports and convention centers. The city convinced Houston's football team to move there and built an arena on spec, ultimately receiving an expansion franchise from the NHL. That team, the Predators, has struggled financially ever since, though it's had a number of good seasons, and nearly moved to other, equally unexpected locations for hockey. (Nashville is probably in the group of several markets that the NHL should never have expanded to, which is one of the reasons why the league is mired in another lockout.) Most recently, the city financed a $620 million convention square center, with 350,000 square feet, downtown. It's also spending $128 million for a new hotel next door. The chamber of commerce's president told the Times that the new convention center would "create a vitality that just radiates across downtown."
The debate is endless about whether a professional sports franchise is necessary to be a first-class city. Stadiums, except in the rarest occasions, simply don't generate their promised economic development. This is as settled in academic research as evolution is. Nonetheless, I'm willing to say that a team creates qualitative city pride that's important for a city's reputation. Convention centers, on the other hand, are practically impossible to defend. The overall business has been declining for years, yet city after city builds larger and larger ones to chase the biggest shows, which are relatively few in number. When the center doesn't do well, the city's leadership concludes this is because there's no hotel next door, so it commits millions more for a Hyatt or similar brand. (Nashville beat most places to the punch by building both at once! And the metropolitan area already has two convention centers! But they're smaller!) Lastly, they're terrible urban design, massive boxes that occupy multiple city blocks, are hostile to pedestrians outside, and dead when they're not being used. If an architecture firm ever figures out how to design one that fits in an existing urban fabric, they deserve the Pritzker.
The last comment in the Times' story, by a local city councilor, is enlightening: "The previous mayor believed that it was residents that drove economies, not buildings. The current mayor believes that attracting tourists, attracting visitors, is the key to making the city grow." I had the pleasure to meet and interview the previous mayor, Bill Purcell, when he worked at Harvard. He told me that three things mattered to him when he led Nashville -- jobs, the public schools, and public safety. If those did well, the rest would take care of itself, he said. His feelings about pro sports were mixed, as he valued the importance of the status that teams confer. I was persuaded that he was a politician who put his city's people first.
Spending $750 million of taxpayers' dollars on a convention center and hotel is the easier political option, believe it or not, because it generates headlines, campaign contributions, and fancy events. Focusing on a long-term turnaround of schools, transit and housing is more difficult. It yields an attractive place, but it also requires patience, vision, skill and a belief that everyone living in a city deserves to benefit from it. Yet Nashville's construction is in a city that already had an identity as the home of country music, a popular, durable market. Why the current mayor, Karl Dean, believes this path is the winning one confuses me, when logic points elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the rest of the city councilor's comment goes like this: "It's hard to believe that the convention center will create a particularly hospitable environment for living." That's what building-focused cities become.
Above are a few photos of my trip to Nashville. Thanks to Yo La Tengo for the post's title. If you're interested in more of my musings about downtown Nashville's development, I have a 5,000-word term paper to share.
Yet in the past two decades Nashville has also been susceptible to the two classic features of "growth coalition" planning, professional sports and convention centers. The city convinced Houston's football team to move there and built an arena on spec, ultimately receiving an expansion franchise from the NHL. That team, the Predators, has struggled financially ever since, though it's had a number of good seasons, and nearly moved to other, equally unexpected locations for hockey. (Nashville is probably in the group of several markets that the NHL should never have expanded to, which is one of the reasons why the league is mired in another lockout.) Most recently, the city financed a $620 million convention square center, with 350,000 square feet, downtown. It's also spending $128 million for a new hotel next door. The chamber of commerce's president told the Times that the new convention center would "create a vitality that just radiates across downtown."
The debate is endless about whether a professional sports franchise is necessary to be a first-class city. Stadiums, except in the rarest occasions, simply don't generate their promised economic development. This is as settled in academic research as evolution is. Nonetheless, I'm willing to say that a team creates qualitative city pride that's important for a city's reputation. Convention centers, on the other hand, are practically impossible to defend. The overall business has been declining for years, yet city after city builds larger and larger ones to chase the biggest shows, which are relatively few in number. When the center doesn't do well, the city's leadership concludes this is because there's no hotel next door, so it commits millions more for a Hyatt or similar brand. (Nashville beat most places to the punch by building both at once! And the metropolitan area already has two convention centers! But they're smaller!) Lastly, they're terrible urban design, massive boxes that occupy multiple city blocks, are hostile to pedestrians outside, and dead when they're not being used. If an architecture firm ever figures out how to design one that fits in an existing urban fabric, they deserve the Pritzker.
The last comment in the Times' story, by a local city councilor, is enlightening: "The previous mayor believed that it was residents that drove economies, not buildings. The current mayor believes that attracting tourists, attracting visitors, is the key to making the city grow." I had the pleasure to meet and interview the previous mayor, Bill Purcell, when he worked at Harvard. He told me that three things mattered to him when he led Nashville -- jobs, the public schools, and public safety. If those did well, the rest would take care of itself, he said. His feelings about pro sports were mixed, as he valued the importance of the status that teams confer. I was persuaded that he was a politician who put his city's people first.Spending $750 million of taxpayers' dollars on a convention center and hotel is the easier political option, believe it or not, because it generates headlines, campaign contributions, and fancy events. Focusing on a long-term turnaround of schools, transit and housing is more difficult. It yields an attractive place, but it also requires patience, vision, skill and a belief that everyone living in a city deserves to benefit from it. Yet Nashville's construction is in a city that already had an identity as the home of country music, a popular, durable market. Why the current mayor, Karl Dean, believes this path is the winning one confuses me, when logic points elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the rest of the city councilor's comment goes like this: "It's hard to believe that the convention center will create a particularly hospitable environment for living." That's what building-focused cities become.
Above are a few photos of my trip to Nashville. Thanks to Yo La Tengo for the post's title. If you're interested in more of my musings about downtown Nashville's development, I have a 5,000-word term paper to share.
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