Spillover really needs contiguous urban fabric in order to work.  There's so many barriers that can block it, from highways to railroad berms to housing projects.  It's hard to find that in Cincinnati, especially with the neighborhood business districts being so nodal.  Hyde Park spillover to Oakley is about the only good example we have.  Hyde Park and Mt. Lookout aren't much different.  Mt. Lookout and Columbia-Tusculum is a smaller example, and also Walnut Hills to East Walnut Hills.  So many neighborhoods have hillside barriers and/or industrial corridors, like Red Bank separating Madisonville from everything else. 

 

Actually, flippers are trying to expand "Northside" to include West Fork Rd. over to Putz's Creamy Whip.  I think we'll see a continued push up the hill to the side streets near the U Haul dealership before we see a full-scale jump over the cemetery to Spring Grove Village and Gray Rd. 

Speaking of Northside creamy whips, the old creamy whip at Colerain and Blue Rock has been purchased by Dojo Gelato. So a neighborhood creamy whip is being replaced by a high end gelato stand. I just think this is funny because Northside always gets a free pass when it comes to gentrification. The anti-gentrification activists go on and on about gentrification in OTR but they seem to ignore the very real gentrification happening in Northside.

I think we'll see a continued push up the hill to the side streets near the U Haul dealership before we see a full-scale jump over the cemetery to Spring Grove Village and Gray Rd.

 

Gray Road is one of my favorite corridors in Cincinnati. I hope it doesn't get developed. The landfill might keep speculators away.

Speaking of Northside creamy whips, the old creamy whip at Colerain and Blue Rock has been purchased by Dojo Gelato. So a neighborhood creamy whip is being replaced by a high end gelato stand. I just think this is funny because Northside always gets a free pass when it comes to gentrification. The anti-gentrification activists go on and on about gentrification in OTR but they seem to ignore the very real gentrification happening in Northside.

 

That one didn't even have a name.  In the 80s, it was the home of The Clyde, a cone where they made a face on a scoop with hard candy. 

 

 

A typical scene in Nashville:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1538412,-86.8266786,3a,75y,53.07h,93.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMDn7s2Zykf_RU_obb3e6mA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1538068,-86.8241701,3a,75y,120.35h,86.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6-OjNo1pwm1dkWPEZlDXlw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

Wow, that is pretty terrible. Both the infill and the crap it's replacing is awful, and not a sidewalk in site. I really don't think I would like Nashville.

The last time I was down there I listened to a local radio show with a local infill home builder as a guest.  He said the prevailing Ikea or "Swedish" style is happening because demand is so intense that they're building many of the homes offsite and trucking them in already framed.  They're also doing a lot of concrete floors because even though the material is much more expensive than wood, it shortens the time on the site by several days (the foundation and ground-level floor are poured together in one step).  So with these more expensive methods, a crew can put up 5 or 6 houses in a year instead of 4 or 5, which makes a big difference overall to a company with a dozen crews. 

 

Nashville had very little charm to begin with and much of it is being flattened and replaced by stuff that doesn't look Southern at all.  It is quite depressing that it is growing at a much faster rate than Cincinnati or Columbus.  Look at this thing, probably over $1 million, with a "view" of DT Nashville obscured by power lines and the constant hum of an interstate highway:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.154337,-86.8236927,3a,75y,60.28h,90.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCxRjPlEp95HMnUrK3siYpg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

That's some pretty serious terrain. 

That's some pretty serious terrain. 

 

Kind of like North/South Fairmount in Cincinnati, with the steep slopes and curbless 1-lane streets.  But with $1 million houses. 

 

 

Terrain-wise yes, but the houses in Nashville that are being replaced look more like what you find in Fairfax, Madison Place, or Bridgetown...late 1940s early 1950s capes and proto-ranches. 

Spillover really needs contiguous urban fabric in order to work.  There's so many barriers that can block it, from highways to railroad berms to housing projects.  It's hard to find that in Cincinnati, especially with the neighborhood business districts being so nodal.  Hyde Park spillover to Oakley is about the only good example we have.  Hyde Park and Mt. Lookout aren't much different.  Mt. Lookout and Columbia-Tusculum is a smaller example, and also Walnut Hills to East Walnut Hills.  So many neighborhoods have hillside barriers and/or industrial corridors, like Red Bank separating Madisonville from everything else. 

 

Cincy and Pittsburgh are unique situations given the hills and more importantly, erosion. They also have large-scale losses resulting from Rust Belt decline, just more concentrated in certain neighborhoods. They are going to be more multi-nodal for a while.

 

With that said, barriers don't matter in healthy economies. They don't matter whatsoever if the demand is there among the prime demo of rich folks. Look at West Oakland. It's a pathetic neighborhood of trust fund hipsters/burners without a single redeeming feature, and it is completely snuffed by freeways. Not to mention those freeways like I-880 and the Bay Bridge approaches have the worst gridlock in America, which contributes to West Oakland's shorter life expectancy and high rates of lung disease. The pollution is terrible there. West Oakland has no good access to anything of interest in Oakland, and even its BART station is an anti-urban joke (the worst one in the Inner Bay). Given typical gentrification models, West Oakland should have been Oakland's last neighborhood to gentrify. There are plenty of superior, safer, cleaner, more functionally urban East Oakland neighborhoods with better transit that still haven't reached second wave gentrification like every part of West Oakland has. Eastlake for example annihilates West Oakland in terms of urbanity and amenities, yet it's cheaper. Fruitvale is way better than West Oakland too, and it always has been.

 

*The key difference between hyper-gentrified hipster hubs like Oakland and the Rust Belt cities is crime (or the fear of it). Rich kids in the Bay don't care about living in high-crime neighborhoods in Oakland. If anything, their extremely sheltered 1% upbringing makes them oblivious to issues of the 99% like crime, joblessness, poverty, etc. A lot of these rich kids in Oakland are shocked the first time they are robbed or their car is broken into. To someone from a real city, these are just standard urban ills, but the rich kids moving to Oakland have no understanding of it since they've lived such sheltered lives. By contrast, kids from the Rust Belt have an acute understanding of these societal ills after seeing their cities and regions decline. This makes Rust Belters more hesitant to invest in Rust Belt urban neighborhoods until there is a consistent crime reduction. Oakland never had anything like a Rust Belt economic decline. Its problems are self-created due to extreme racism and destructive politics. Its population barely declined, and it has access to the best jobs on earth.

 

Rich Oaklanders will invest early in a high-crime neighborhood as people are still being regularly shot in the street. In the Rust Belt, this doesn't seem to happen. People wait until crime is reduced.

 

In Silicon Bay, high levels of crime did nothing to stop investors from flooding San Francisco's Tenderloin (great location, urbanity, and amenities, but absurd crime and homelessness for most of its history) and West Oakland (terrible everything, but the hub of rich hipsters and burners). People actually take much bigger investment risks on the West Coast. Oakland crashed harder than almost any other city on earth during the housing collapse. It could easily crash again, since the fundamentals of real estate investment aren't there. San Francisco is where the stability is at in the Bay. Yet no amount of random murders, shootings, street assaults, armed robberies, street rapes, or poor urban planning can stop hyper-gentrification in Oakland's slums. Everyone knew San Francisco's Tenderloin would come back due to its urban structure and location, but the level of hyper-gentrification in low density slums of Oakland with no amenities is truly shocking. West Oakland is entirely an island cut off from Oakland's Downtown/Uptown (where what slight amount of nightlife in Oakland is at). It is completely cut off from everything by freeways (and this was clearly done on purpose for historic racial reasons given the pointlessness of I-980). West Oakland defies traditional gentrification logic. Vastly superior and safer urban neighborhoods in Oakland are now cheaper than West Oakland. BART does not explain it at all. West Oakland station has the second lowest ridership in Oakland after Rockridge. Even Coliseum station in deep East Oakland has higher ridership! Not many of those trust fund kids in West Oakland are working in SF. A huge chunk are young retirees who used their money to buy a home in West Oakland. In fact, most of them wouldn't be caught dead in sexy, clean cut San Francisco. They don't need to work and they hate San Francisco's mainstream culture.

 

This is also why Oakland = West Coast Brooklyn is such a stupid comparison besides the obvious fact that Oakland = Newark with Manhattan housing prices. Brooklyn is urban and well-connected to Manhattan. Oakland is mostly streetcar suburban (even rural in the hills), and loosely connected to San Francisco. Oakland's gentrification patterns make no sense. Fruitvale actually should have gentrified long before inferior neighborhoods like Temescal and West Oakland. All I know is that a lot recent home buyers in West Oakland could be screwed if the tech bubble ever blows or Oakland's trust fund scene moves somewhere else (say cheaper, superior cities like Portland, Seattle, or LA). There are no anchor institutions in West Oakland and virtually no amenities. It is barely streetcar suburban at this point, and its low density coupled with entrenched crime makes it a bad long-term bet. And honestly, with the endless supply of urban prairies in West Oakland, if NIMBYs are ever overcome in Oakland (unlikely), West Oakland will see tons of infill, which will reduce home prices (or at least slow down appreciation to human levels). That housing is incredibly needed, and West Oakland has the most space for it in the entire Inner Bay. No other part of the Bay has that many empty lots. It makes a lot more sense to invest in undervalued high density neighborhoods if appreciation is your goal (like SF's Tenderloin circa 2008-2012). West Oakland is an overvalued low density neighborhood. Burner and hipster culture is the only reason its prices are so high. Many West Oakland and North Oakland neighborhoods are on second and third wave gentrification without the fundamentals to justify it (same situation in South Berkeley too). People keep pouring money into high-crime, low density slums with no amenities and low quality architecture that are surrounded by freeways. The East Bay housing market is total insanity. Crime and gridlocked freeways producing choking air pollution should be a deterrent, but they aren't. It doesn't matter how suburban, crime-ridden, and isolated the neighborhood is, people will line up for blocks to outbid each other for housing in West Oakland.

 

By contrast, Toledo is just now experiencing first wave gentrification in its core after substantial reductions in crime. Downtown and Warehouse District redevelopment spilled over to Uptown, and substantial urban infill is likely just a few years away. In 5-10 years, Vistula and East Toledo could come back. Redevelopment in the Rust Belt tends to follow reductions in crime. People don't take as big of risks in cities like Toledo and Detroit, hence why so much focus is on the Downtowns right now. That makes perfect sense when you consider what happened to the economies in these cities. It's the same story in Cleveland, Buffalo, Cincinnati, and even Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh still has a lot of vacant land and bombed out areas. They've just been better at contiguous urban development since its economic decline leveled off earlier.

 

Toledo is the Rust Belt's best comparison to Oakland since they are nearly identical cities in size, scale, density, and geography (excluding the Oakland Hills). However, Toledo's urban bones and culture are superior to Oakland. Toledo has more surviving pre-WW2 architecture, more Victorian housing, and a much better Downtown core. Toledo also has fewer freeways and better urban planning despite being much grittier and more abandoned. On top of this, Toledo is more racially integrated and has strong Eastern European and Middle Eastern ethnic culture that is entirely lacking in Oakland. Oakland's success and extreme flood of wealth is why I think the Rust Belt cities will eventually come back. The worst city on the West Coast now has the second highest rents after San Francisco! This is unsustainable, and rich people are going to start looking at other options...

 

Provincial ignorance about real America is why Oakland is seeing so much gentrification and investment. Nothing about Oakland itself is fueling this flood of money. If these rich kids knew anything about the Rust Belt cities, they would be moving there...

 

The thing is they don't know anything about the "flyover country" they deride. Many of them have never even been to Chicago! They think it's some small manufacturing town on a prairie, not the second best city in America and arguably our best coastal city (just on fresh water). Never underestimate the ignorance of elite coastal hipsters. The economic and cultural divide in the United States has never been greater. But how long can these rich hipsters in Oakland stay ignorant? Eventually they'll figure out they are being ripped off and will look at better cities for less money. Keep in mind I'm talking about people rich enough to not worry about work. This is where the Rust Belt's gentrification will come from. It will start with Chicago and Detroit, since those are the Midwestern cities in national/international conversation, and it will spread to other Rust Belt cities.

 

Now is a great time to buy housing in Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Cincinnati!

The last time I was down there I listened to a local radio show with a local infill home builder as a guest.  He said the prevailing Ikea or "Swedish" style is happening because demand is so intense that they're building many of the homes offsite and trucking them in already framed.  They're also doing a lot of concrete floors because even though the material is much more expensive than wood, it shortens the time on the site by several days (the foundation and ground-level floor are poured together in one step).  So with these more expensive methods, a crew can put up 5 or 6 houses in a year instead of 4 or 5, which makes a big difference overall to a company with a dozen crews. 

 

Nashville had very little charm to begin with and much of it is being flattened and replaced by stuff that doesn't look Southern at all.  It is quite depressing that it is growing at a much faster rate than Cincinnati or Columbus.  Look at this thing, probably over $1 million, with a "view" of DT Nashville obscured by power lines and the constant hum of an interstate highway:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.154337,-86.8236927,3a,75y,60.28h,90.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCxRjPlEp95HMnUrK3siYpg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Oh yeah, Nashville is insanely overpriced compared to Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo. I can't believe so many people are still moving down there! Its housing is mostly low quality and its urban structure is weak.

 

*I guess the people are nice, but I've never felt comfortable with Southern hospitality...

I think at some point people are going to realize that Nashville sucks and its irrational boom is going to taper off.  My parents have lived there for 21 years.  I have never had a single moment in my innumerable visits to the place where any feature of the city or surrounding countryside, cultural or physical, struck me as anything other than woefully mediocre.  It's a shockingly nondescript city.  There is a reason why not a single visual is synonymous with Nashville -- there is not a single iconic structure, not a single iconic neighborhood.  New Orleans has Jackson Square, Bourbon St. and the French Quarter, and the Garden District, which might be the single greatest historic district in the United States.  Nashville has nothing.  It's all car dealerships and strip malls just 1 mile from the downtown, which has less "there" there than Ohio's third-tier cities.  I'm talking Hamilton, Middletown, Lancaster, Zanesville, etc. 

To each his own, but I enjoyed Nashville when I visited and could see myself living there. The music scene, the parks, the affordable prices, the weather... it's a very appealing city

 

Better barbeque than Texas too.

It's not affordable thanks to large number of people moving there from Los Angeles.  Apartments and homes or condos are 2X-3x as expensive as similar housing in Ohio.  Plus, no basements. 

Nashville to me seemed a bit overgrown compared to it's infrastructure.  There was a nice neighborhood around one of the Universities there, not Vanderbilt but whatever the other one is.  But it was more or less small and not a lot of traditional neighborhood that ran into sprawl right away. 

 

I work in East Walnut Hills and have noticed now more than ever a lot more activity around the DeSales Corner area.  In Cincinnati, I think this area will really bloom especially if or when they redevelop the Anthem headquarters site.  There is a massive area of parking lots surrounding that whole area, though the neighborhood changes quick once into Walnut Hills proper which is going to be a slow go IMO of trying to turn around that neighborhood.

 

I also think that area of Evanston I believe it is by O'Bryonville may re-develop as well.  I am surprised there isn't more activity on the side streets lining Madison Road going into Evanston though I could be wrong about that, wonder if crime is still an issue there driving re-development away?

I also think that area of Evanston I believe it is by O'Bryonville may re-develop as well.  I am surprised there isn't more activity on the side streets lining Madison Road going into Evanston though I could be wrong about that, wonder if crime is still an issue there driving re-development away?

 

There's been a bunch of infill and tear-downs on Lavinia and the end of Paul Street.  I think streets like O'Bryon, Cinnamon, and Cohoon are a bit harder because the lots are smaller and may require buying two houses in order to put one back.  Doesn't mean it won't happen though, much of the stuff on Lavinia is duplexes. 

The last time I was down there I listened to a local radio show with a local infill home builder as a guest.  He said the prevailing Ikea or "Swedish" style is happening because demand is so intense that they're building many of the homes offsite and trucking them in already framed.  They're also doing a lot of concrete floors because even though the material is much more expensive than wood, it shortens the time on the site by several days (the foundation and ground-level floor are poured together in one step).  So with these more expensive methods, a crew can put up 5 or 6 houses in a year instead of 4 or 5, which makes a big difference overall to a company with a dozen crews. 

 

Nashville had very little charm to begin with and much of it is being flattened and replaced by stuff that doesn't look Southern at all.  It is quite depressing that it is growing at a much faster rate than Cincinnati or Columbus.  Look at this thing, probably over $1 million, with a "view" of DT Nashville obscured by power lines and the constant hum of an interstate highway:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.154337,-86.8236927,3a,75y,60.28h,90.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCxRjPlEp95HMnUrK3siYpg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Oh yeah, Nashville is insanely overpriced compared to Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo. I can't believe so many people are still moving down there! Its housing is mostly low quality and its urban structure is weak.

 

*I guess the people are nice, but I've never felt comfortable with Southern hospitality...

 

Me neither because it *way* crosses the line to intrusiveness and, all to often, religious prosletyzation.

Yeah pretty soon the conversation turns to the Good News.

Yeah pretty soon the conversation turns to the Good News.

 

And as Dave Berry famously said, those who want to "share" their beliefs aren't interested in you sharing yours.

Nothing going on anywhere in Ohio (even everything in Ohio combined) compares to the machinery tearing down and rebuilding Nashville.  It's a spectacular sight to behold.  Hundred and hundreds of houses being torn down and being replaced by thousands.  The form-based code + small minimum lot size has set off a feeding frenzy of tear-downs and construction of 2-4 houses where one stood 12 weeks earlier.  This is going on in every corner of the city, not just 2-3 neighborhoods.  Strip of gravel behind a Midas?  Here come six houses.  Triangle of land between railroad tracks and highway off-ramp?  They're jamming a few in there, too. 

Doesn't Nashville have no real transit to speak of? Sounds like traffic is about to get shitty.

Doesn't Nashville have no real transit to speak of? Sounds like traffic is about to get shitty.

 

Correct.  Their meager bus system is funded by an arbitrary allocation from the combined city/county government.  Until last week, it was not possible for a dedicated funding source to be created (similar situation in Kentucky).  The Tennessee state legislature just changed that and it's anticipated that a large transit tax will be on the November 2017 ballot.  They are pushing for a $6 billion light rail system. 

 

The traffic in Nashville has always been horrible.  Worse than anywhere in Ohio because the city is not generally organized around radial avenues or a grid.  The major streets don't enter DT Nashville in an orderly way (certainly nothing like High or Broad!).  It's a total mess. 

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn't Nashville have no real transit to speak of? Sounds like traffic is about to get shitty.

 

They do have commuter rail but no LRT or BRT.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_City_Star

C-Dawg[/member], It is crazy how people from the coasts have no idea about the difference in the cost of living in "Fly Over Country".  My wife and I own a house and a boat.  All her (she works for PwC) coworkers from the East coast (she mostly gets eastern US projects) just find it amazing that these things are possible.  But when you are living in Cleveland and can boat on Lake Erie (probably one of the cheaper places to keep a boat) all kinds of fun is possible.

They do have commuter rail but no LRT or BRT.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_City_Star

 

The light rail system is going to be primarily an in-street system like Houston or Seattle's MLK section.  There really aren't any abandoned rail ROW's other than the one already occupied by the Star commuter rail.  They can't dig subway tunnels in Nashville because of the super-hard rock. It is apparently even harder than Manhattan's.  The geologic formation is known as the "Nashville Dome" and is known to be some of the oldest rock on the planet that is right there at ground level.  Go down 3 feet in Nashville and you're hitting bedrock, stuff that is like 4 billion years old. 

 

C-Dawg[/member], It is crazy how people from the coasts have no idea about the difference in the cost of living in "Fly Over Country".  My wife and I own a house and a boat.  All her (she works for PwC) coworkers from the East coast (she mostly gets eastern US projects) just find it amazing that these things are possible.  But when you are living in Cleveland and can boat on Lake Erie (probably one of the cheaper places to keep a boat) all kinds of fun is possible.

 

Yeah house prices are ticking upwards in Cincinnati but you can still find a great house in a decent neighborhood for $200k.  That doesn't buy you anything in most cities.  If you're willing to rough it in a C-quality neighborhood, you can still get a move-in condition house for $75,000. 

 

 

 

 

Most of the anti-gentrification crusaders in Cincinnati who throw around that term have no idea what it means. I see example like this all the time on social media.

C-Dawg[/member], It is crazy how people from the coasts have no idea about the difference in the cost of living in "Fly Over Country".  My wife and I own a house and a boat.  All her (she works for PwC) coworkers from the East coast (she mostly gets eastern US projects) just find it amazing that these things are possible.  But when you are living in Cleveland and can boat on Lake Erie (probably one of the cheaper places to keep a boat) all kinds of fun is possible.

 

People in the NY metro are nuts about The Market. They don't buy boats, race cars, dirt bikes, guns or any of that. It's all The Market, all the time. When I was an investment advisor and went to NYC for training it was obvious that my NY-metro-based associates had things easier since they didn't have to compete with boats for business.

Most of the anti-gentrification crusaders in Cincinnati who throw around that term have no idea what it means. I see example like this all the time on social media.

 

That's hilarious. I've said it before and I'll say it again, real gentrification doesn't happen until middle class renters are being evicted. Lol, that Cincy townhouse looks like it's about to collapse! Would they rather see it collapse into the street or burn down in an arson fire?

 

*I am 100% for historic preservation, but I know abandoned housing can reach the point of no return a lot faster than larger commercial buildings. That's a beautiful example of classic Cincinnati housing, but it looks beyond the point of no return. It's caving in on itself. I'm guessing there are foundation problems too given Cincy's well-documented erosion issues. I hope it can be saved, but I'm guessing it would take a labor of love with no ROI. :oops:

 

I understand the frustration, but demolition from neglect is certainly not gentrification. In wealthy cities with real population growth and real gentrification, historic properties are the first to find investors, no matter the condition. That place would fetch $1-2 million in Oakland and $2-3 million in San Francisco. I wish Ohio cities could get some Silicon Bay wealth to save more historic properties like this...

^ Yeah, this sums up anti-gentrification activists in Cincinnati:

 

Crumbling house is demolished

 

"Gentrification!"

 

Crumbling building is saved and turned into new apartments and retail space

 

"Gentrification!"

A typical scene in Nashville:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1538412,-86.8266786,3a,75y,53.07h,93.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMDn7s2Zykf_RU_obb3e6mA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1538068,-86.8241701,3a,75y,120.35h,86.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6-OjNo1pwm1dkWPEZlDXlw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

 

Gross. That's awful looking, and appears to be cheaply built.

*I am 100% for historic preservation, but I know abandoned housing can reach the point of no return a lot faster than larger commercial buildings. That's a beautiful example of classic Cincinnati housing, but it looks beyond the point of no return. It's caving in on itself. I'm guessing there are foundation problems too given Cincy's well-documented erosion issues. I hope it can be saved, but I'm guessing it would take a labor of love with no ROI. :oops:

 

Most of the old homes that would have been damaged by slipping hillsides have already died.  Most of the buildings you see in bad condition are from water damage, and a lot of that stems simply from not cleaning gutters.  If you don't unclog gutters for five years, the building will sustain serious damage since water will leak in along the walls and start rotting the joists.  After about 10 years the exterior walls will start pushing in or out (joists will swell, water in basement will freeze) and then you're in trouble. 

 

So much of this just comes down to cleaning the gutters.  It stops happening when a building owner gets old, the building is transferred in a divorce or probate to an out-of-town owner who does not care, or a landlord tries to get the building declared a nuisance so that the city tears it down at its expense.  Occasionally someone will take off the roof hatch or leave the windows open to accelerate the process. 

 

 

Yeah I'm pretty sure that the roof on that building has been caved in for quite a few years now on Taft, I drive by it every day going to work.  I don't think anyone could have fixed that without spending an absolute fortune

I think at some point people are going to realize that Nashville sucks and its irrational boom is going to taper off.  My parents have lived there for 21 years.  I have never had a single moment in my innumerable visits to the place where any feature of the city or surrounding countryside, cultural or physical, struck me as anything other than woefully mediocre.  It's a shockingly nondescript city.  There is a reason why not a single visual is synonymous with Nashville -- there is not a single iconic structure, not a single iconic neighborhood.  New Orleans has Jackson Square, Bourbon St. and the French Quarter, and the Garden District, which might be the single greatest historic district in the United States.  Nashville has nothing.  It's all car dealerships and strip malls just 1 mile from the downtown, which has less "there" there than Ohio's third-tier cities.  I'm talking Hamilton, Middletown, Lancaster, Zanesville, etc. 

 

 

yep, this is the god's truth, just as it is there is no way it can change. i think the rich millenials and whoever moving in are just hooked on the vul's music history, certainly not the look of the place, because there isn't one. it's very charlotte like that. nothing against it, but long ago i spent a couple semesters around there and its not for me. in those days all the younger locals wanted to do was move to atlanta, but i bet that allure has dropped way off now that nashville is the new austin.

I think at some point people are going to realize that Nashville sucks and its irrational boom is going to taper off.  My parents have lived there for 21 years.  I have never had a single moment in my innumerable visits to the place where any feature of the city or surrounding countryside, cultural or physical, struck me as anything other than woefully mediocre.  It's a shockingly nondescript city.  There is a reason why not a single visual is synonymous with Nashville -- there is not a single iconic structure, not a single iconic neighborhood.  New Orleans has Jackson Square, Bourbon St. and the French Quarter, and the Garden District, which might be the single greatest historic district in the United States.  Nashville has nothing.  It's all car dealerships and strip malls just 1 mile from the downtown, which has less "there" there than Ohio's third-tier cities.  I'm talking Hamilton, Middletown, Lancaster, Zanesville, etc. 

 

 

yep, this is the god's truth, just as it is there is no way it can change. i think the rich millenials and whoever moving in are just hooked on the vul's music history, certainly not the look of the place, because there isn't one. it's very charlotte like that. nothing against it, but long ago i spent a couple semesters around there and its not for me. in those days all the younger locals wanted to do was move to atlanta, but i bet that allure has dropped way off now that nashville is the new austin.

 

The four people I know who have moved to Nashville in the past couple of years are ex-burb car centric types who really have no interest in the urban vision we cherish on this Board.  My guess is that this is the type of person fueling the growth overall and it might not end anytime soon as there are plenty of those types in these United States of America. 

 

From limited reading it also seems to me that Tennessee over all would be a horrible place to live as it's legislature makes Ohio's seem like a bastion of left wing radicals.

^ true, but that doesn't stop texas from booming. at least they have oil, and actual product we all need, down there. and cattle i guess. tennessee has what? moonshine? oh yeah, country music. can that fuel a boom? i just don't know what else could be doing it. obviously we are all missing something here, they must be doing something right? i dk what though.

Is Nashville even the hub of the country music business anymore? I'd say Silicon Valley has taken over all genres completely.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that the roof on that building has been caved in for quite a few years now on Taft, I drive by it every day going to work.  I don't think anyone could have fixed that without spending an absolute fortune

 

Any that sums up exactly why gentrification is a good thing in massively underpriced cities like Cincinnati. There's no reason to invest a fortune into restoring a historic building in a place where land values are low and there aren't many businesses within walking distance anyway. So it ends up getting bought and torn down for a Rally's or a Marathon station. We are seeing historic preservation finally catch on in OTR because land values are high enough and the neighborhood is desirable enough that it makes sense to invest in preservation. Now we just need other neighborhoods' values to increase too.

Is Nashville even the hub of the country music business anymore? I'd say Silicon Valley has taken over all genres completely.

 

Nashville seems to be attracting a lot of musicians, not only in the genre of country, but in adjacent genres. A lot of blues-rock and alternative rock bands are setting up shop there as well. LA is the hub of the pop music industry though.

hmm, yeah come to think of it i do notice that, that the music business has expanded in nashville beyond country. is that enough for it's boom?

Is Nashville even the hub of the country music business anymore? I'd say Silicon Valley has taken over all genres completely.

 

Nashville seems to be attracting a lot of musicians, not only in the genre of country, but in adjacent genres. A lot of blues-rock and alternative rock bands are setting up shop there as well. LA is the hub of the pop music industry though.

 

Black Keys and Jack White relocated there for whatever reason. The place does have a youthful sort of energy going on, though I wasn't too impressed with the culture or downtown. And I have always hated the country music industry. 

^ well, if that's the case examples, its where once popular music goes to die lol!

^ true, but that doesn't stop texas from booming. at least they have oil, and actual product we all need, down there. and cattle i guess. tennessee has what? moonshine? oh yeah, country music. can that fuel a boom? i just don't know what else could be doing it. obviously we are all missing something here, they must be doing something right? i dk what though.

 

Both Houston and Dallas are expected to blow past Chicago in size in the 2030s.  So the Top 5 U.S. cities by 2040 will be New York, Los Angeles, Houston/Dallas, then Chicago.  Also, Austin is expected to double in size from 2 million to 4 million.  Nashville is not growing nearly as fast as any of them -- they will be lucky to get from their current 1.8 million to 3 million at any point. 

 

The Texas cities can grow in all directions because there are no topographical features to speak of.  That has kept land prices low and the cost of living and cost of doing business low (certainly as much as any lack of a state income tax -- which incidentally is made up for with much higher property taxes).  Compare either to Chicago -- also a flat city, but can only expand in 180 degrees because of the lake.  So a city of the same size situated on a coast or lake will always have much more of a land crunch than a city in the middle of nowhere like Dallas or Houston. 

 

Both Dallas and Houston have huge international airports whereas Nashville doesn't have any international flights.  It never had a hub like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc., that up and left.  The only way it's going to get international flights is if it grows to 3 million but I'm skeptical that it will.  The land prices are getting out-of-control because unlike Texas it does have topography that creates very acute pinch points.  It's not as obvious as Pittsburgh or Cincinnati but it is definitely there.

 

The loss of the Delta Hub at CVG could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Cincinnati.  The enormous unused capacity of the airport first landed it the DHL hub and now Amazon Prime.  Freight operations will soon dwarf the combined UPS and FedEx hubs in Memphis and Louisville.  In 10-20 years we could end up with much more e-commerce in Cincinnati than any other metro -- totally by chance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ The one thing Nashville has going for it is the entertainment industry and also being a state capital. Giving the wealth that Country music throws off and the stability of state government jobs, it gives Nashville some strategic advantages that other peers cities do not have.

They also have a lot of healthcare related jobs and a few Universities.  Meds and Eds are the biggest job creators these days, so I'm sure the music scene is a perk, not a driver of Nashville's boom.

well if you are talking texas growth into the 2040s, nashville has doubled in size in the 20 or so previous years since i was there, so that's about the same rate.

 

i understand the stability of being the capital and a college town to some extent and also it's longtime music business, but i still don't see where the current boom is coming from. it just seems like out of nowhere.

Rural Tennessee might be emptying out as seen in much of the rest of the country.

well thats true, the back to the city movement might be enough in and of itself to explain it.

 

^ Meds and Eds are right. That is leading to the boom, coupled with the state capital effect, plus the wealth from the music industry is serving as anincuabtor for capital.

All of Nashville's schools combined are significantly smaller than Cincinnati's or Columbus's, so that's not it. 

 

According to this list, the Big 3 schools in Nashville are:

 

Vanderbilt - 13,500

Tennessee State - 10,500

Belmont - 7,700

 

That barely equals Dayton.