Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
What had been overlooked? The non-existent historic districts? The non-existent pre-2000 skyline (yes, Bob Dylan recorded an album titled Nashville Skyline back in the 60s, when the city had zero skyscrapers)? The non-existent dramatic natural setting?
I drove through Dayton, OH last week for the first time in many years. It reminded me of driving through Nashville in the 1990s - tiny skyline, no scenery, unremarkable river, nondescript cityscape, lots of billboards. Dayton, OH today is roughly the size that Nashville was in 1990. That someplace as banal as Nashville could suddenly become a place that people from California moved to is just really hard for those of us to mentally process who remember what it was like until very recently. I mean, imagine waves of Californians decamping for Dayton, OH. Imagine carloads of bachelorettes converging on Dayton, OH. It's like that.
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Really not trying to be snarky, but IMHO you're overthinking things here. What I meant by "overlooked" is similar to what you noted about Dayton reminding you of Nashville in the 1990s. Back then it was a very different, somewhat ordinary place, but definitely on course to take advantage of the timing when it came a decade later. Starting in the 1980s, the city and state took advantage of a string of very big corporate relocations/expansions.
Far more than historic districts or natural beauty which tend to attract lower-wage, tourist related jobs, boomtowns capitalize on their business advantages. Nashville has long had more of that than its peers and grew steadily over the past 100 years because of it.
I grew up in the DFW area, and despite its enormity, it's one of the few large cities I find inhabitable. I went to college in Austin, my first true taste of a midsize (at the time) boomtown. Why did Austin become a boom town when DFW and Houston had overshadowed it for decades? Similarly Atlanta overshadowed the cities I mentioned above. That's all I meant by the comment. The answer is usually related to timing and opportunity.
Regarding the timing, national trends go a long way in determining which cities are teed up to boom next. Nashville hit the 'sweet spot' of a city's growth curve (size and skill of its labor force) around 2000, in time to take advantage of the national (global) boom in technology. To that point, Nashville has long had a large "creative class" and it's growing fast, 35% just in the first half of this year. Don't be too quick to dismiss the effect that personal income tax rates have on corporate relocations too. Remember who makes those decisions - senior executives to whom a state income tax can mean a pay cut of 50,000 and more.
To the second point (opportunity), I believe Nashville is more progressive than you think, but not in the overused political way. True, it is known to be "center left" politically, and that actually helps its image among the influential young adult demographic. Many of them have never lived in The South. So Nashville is a comfortable place to 'camp out' for a while. It's also affordable compared to where many come from. The state and local governments are pro-business too. That brings jobs, and jobs bring people.
When people get here they tend to fall to its easygoing charms, as I have. It's simple! Clean! Compact! Beautiful (most think so anyway)! And the people here are not snobby elitists. I don't want to raise my children in that sort of place. Part of the cycle of a boomtown is they attract young adults AND young families first. Like most midsize boomtowns, Nashville has all the amenities of a large city with few of the hassles. For the many who decide to settle here, there's a diverse array of affordable suburbs. Lest we kid ourselves, even Millennials want the "American dream" of a family and house in the burbs.
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