Joey Garrison

jgarrison@tennessean.com

Middle Tennessee’s rapid growth, anchored by the breakneck pace of Nashville, is no secret to longtime residents who have watched farmland become residential subdivisions and downtown lots turn into new condo high-rises.

And yet the region has changed so quickly that it’s even surpassed forecasts by planning experts more than a decade ago just as the boom began.

Consider this:

In 2003, Middle Tennessee, which was around 1.45 million people at the time, was expected to grow to 1.86 million by 2015. It instead grew by 43,025 additional people than was projected (an extra influx that matches the size of Smyrna) to 1.9 million. Middle Tennessee is now on course to grow to 2.9 million by 2040.

Nashville’s expected population for 2020 came in 2014 instead.

Middle Tennessee is nearing the regional populations of the peer cities of Austin, Texas and Charlotte, N.C. (around 2 million people and 2.4 million people, respectively) and is on track to hit Denver’s current regional population of 2.8 million before 2040.

120,000 open space acres in Middle Tennessee have been developed since 1999 — 55,000 of those acres (roughly twice the size of Murfreesboro) were either farmland or forests.



These trends — and how the region can tackle them — will be the focus of the land-use nonprofit Cumberland Region Tomorrow’s annual Power of Ten Regional summit set for Wednesday at Music City Center in Nashville. The name refers to the 10 primary counties that are part of the Middle Tennessee region.

Power of Ten summit to discuss regional collaberation

The goal of the event, which will include leaders from across Middle Tennessee: advocate for effective regional collaboration to solve issues caused by the population surge — the loss of open land, infrastructure needs, economic competition and transportation challenges.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, Franklin Mayor Ken Moore, Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto and Sumner County Executive Anthony Holt are among the headliners. U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, will also deliver remarks.

Leaders from Dallas and suburban Denver will tell lessons of collaboration in their regions.

“We all know that the region is growing at a rate that we are both proud of but concerned about,” said Carol Hudler, CEO of Cumberland Region Tomorrow and former publisher of The Tennessean. “I think if there’s any surprise, we grew faster than a lot of people who got together even realized.

“At the end of the day, I think folks still try to solve everything within their own county,” she said, adding that the summit is one of the few opportunities for the region's leaders to come together.

Density lags peer cities

Wednesday’s Power of Ten summit comes 13 years after Cumberland Region Tomorrow commissioned a renowned planner from Portland Ore., John Fregonese, to review growth scenarios for the 10-county Middle Tennessee region as well as an alternative growth plan. (The growth projections that Middle Tennessee has now surpassed were benchmarked by Fregonese's firm.)

The alternative model sought to measure effects from land use policies favored by Cumberland Region Tomorrow and other recommendations that came out of focus groups at the time — more compact new development, for example, to protect the region’s farms and green space.

The study was called “Report to the Region" and it helped lead to some of the first comprehensive land use plans in Middle Tennessee.

But best practices still aren’t wholly embraced in the sprawling region.

This summer, Fregonese returned to Nashville and delivered an updated report to Middle Tennessee leaders that compared the 2003 report to new findings and comparisons.

Middle Tennessee's new growth was occurring at 1.13 persons per acre in 2003. The report recommended greater density in new development to match 5.7 persons for acre. Instead, the density of the new increment of growth was 2.7 person per acre.

Though density has increased in Nashville, the cities of Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., Denver, Colo., and Portland, Ore. each has greater populations per square mile.

Nashville developed 32 percent more land than what was recommended in the 2003 report. As a result, the main commercial corridors of Davidson, Rutherford and Williamson counties are starting to merge together. That’s counter to a goal in the 2003 report of keeping community separation.

"The biggest thing is the amount of growth that is occurring, the pattern of growth and the lack of coordination," Fregonese said, pointing to housing and transportation challenges that have resulted. "But I think there's enough common ground, that if you can come up with a way to coordinate and cooperate, you would be much better off."

'Culture clashes' complicate land use

Spurred by the new development, 260,000 acres of farmland — the traditional bedrock of the region’s rural economy — went out of production since 2003. It has reduced farming down to two main sectors: very high-production farms or small craft farms.

Sam Hatcher, a former journalist and newspaper publisher from Lebanon and a member of Cumberland Region Tomorrow’s board, said Wilson County has had to work to meet demands of the growth. He noted the multitude of schools built in just the last five years there.

“We’re struggling to keep up, and it’s because of the residential growth,” Hatcher said.

“What worries me is the next ring of counties outside of our 10 counties,” he said. “The growth that we’re seeing as a neighbor of Davidson County, they’re beginning to see this growth in Trousdale County."

Metro Nashville, which adopted a planning roadmap called NashvilleNext last year, has embraced more urban-inspired and dense planning — although it hasn’t been without controversy. There are some examples of residential developments elsewhere in Middle Tennessee that reflect these same tents, but other cities and counties have done little to stop the trend of having one-acre per home.

NashvilleNext: A Future Roadmap

Middle Tennessee faces a number of “culture clashes” when it comes to land use, Cumberland Region Tomorrow leaders say.

Some rural citizens want to be left alone as Nashvillians expect regulations to control growth. Suburbanites still seek large single-family homes on one-acre lots as young families in Nashville have increasingly started to value walkability in their neighborhoods. And the pressure of development have led some farmers to sell their land for development.

These clashes are on top of political divisions between the region's rural areas and Nashville, complicating how land use issues are addressed.

Keith Simmons, vice chairman of the board of directors of Cumberland Region Tomorrow, said the region is in a period of transition and that growth is likely to accelerate, not slow down.

“You’ve got an urban-rural sort of clash,” he said. “A lot of people want to hold on to a more rural form of life, and I think that’s fine for some people. But you have a million people coming here. You've got to put them somewhere.

“I think you've to think through each one of these counties on how to manage that,” he added. “We are becoming more urbanized. It’s just a fact — we are in this region. How you manage that urbanization is going to be one of the big issues that everybody has to face over the next several years here.”

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.

This story has been updated to correct the populations of the metro areas of Austin, Texas and Charlotte, N.C. An original version of this story cited a report commissioned for Cumberland Region Tomorrow that said the populations of both cities is 1.7 million.