Changes [Meditations on New Nashville]

Typically, the show is one where I talk with a relatively new Nashvillian about something I’d like to understand further, then I talk with someone who’s been here longer and presumably an expert in that arena. I wanted to produce this as a means of getting to know the city, and to know its history and culture.

In this the fifth episode—it’s a comparatively short one, but it’s sort of a check-in. I don’t know if I am going to make this a regular occurrence throughout our first season, but I wanted to check in on the things people have said specific to modern Nashville—New Nashville, as it were.

When you get here, you hear over and over how Nashville is changing. That sentiment is not especially new. I opened the show with Nashville because it’s one long meditation on a changing city made at a time when the country was starting to reconcile how much it was changing at the same time. And while “Nashville” is changing has long been a constant refrain, it is safe to say that the rate at which it has changed since the recession is truly next level. Nashville’s rate of development is in the top 5% of the country, putting it on the same tier as New York City. In a documentary about Nashville’s urban and inner city areas called Cashville, I heard someone refer to it as becoming the LA of the South.

I wanted to check in with my guests so far to hear how they’ve described the city. Almost everything here, with a few exceptions, didn’t air in the episodes each guest originally appeared on. If this were the 90s, this would be the kind of supplemental material that comes on the second DVD in a special edition box set.