NASHVILLE — WHILE millions of Americans tuned in to watch the twists and turns of ABC’s “Nashville” this fall, the city itself was in the grips of a different kind of drama. In July a developer bought Studio A, a famous but, of late, underused recording venue near downtown, with plans to replace it with luxury condos. Studio A, where Dolly Parton and B. B. King recorded many of their best songs, is a local shrine of sorts, and a storm of protest followed the announcement, led by the musician Ben Folds, a longtime Studio A tenant.

Finally, in October a local nonprofit came forward to buy the place and promised to keep it as a working studio — but not before the whole episode brought to a head a long-simmering debate about gentrification, local culture and the fast-changing face of a city that, until the last decade or so, seemed frozen in time.

Nashville long prided itself on being a big small town. A common refrain around here, from the mansions of Belle Meade to the working-class neighborhoods across the Cumberland River, was “we can’t become Atlanta,” by which folks meant bloated and out of touch with history and Southern traditions.

And yet, starting about 20 years ago and picking up pace over the last 10, Nashville has moved inexorably in that direction. Money, especially from the entertainment industry and health care, has poured in. We built a 78-mile, sprawl-inducing ring highway instead of investing in mass transit; we built not one but two massive stadiums downtown; we spent a half-billion dollars on a convention center the size of an aircraft carrier.