by Rod Williams, March 31, 2025- The Metro Planning Commission has released its
Housing and Infrastructure Study summary and preliminary recommendations.
If you recall, last year several Metro Council members, led by Councilmember Quin Evans Segall, introduced legislation to substantially overall Metro's zoning structure to allow more housing density. Among things the proposed legislation would have done is replace single-family lots with quadruplexes in some cases.
The proposal was met with anger and went nowhere. The Council then commissioned a comprehensive study to examine Metro's zoning policies to see how zoning changes could lead to more affordable housing.
The Housing and Infrastructure Study recommends a change in codes regulations and zoning rules to allow more dense housing on Nashville's main transit corridors and nearby streets. We can expect more study and neighborhood meetings before any proposal goes before the Metro Council.
I am pleased to see this development and a recognition that the way we zone property is a problem leading to unaffordable housing and segregation, long commutes, and urban sprawl. This recognition is not only taking place in Nashville but across America.
There is a lot of hypocrisy among people about a lot of things, and that certainly applies to affordable housing. A lot of people say we need more affordable housing, but they do not want it in their neighborhood. They say they oppose urban sprawl, but they oppose more density in the city. You can't have it both ways; you can't logically oppose sprawl and also oppose greater urban density.
There are several things I would like to see. I think neighborhoods should have different size lots within the same subdivision, so different people of different incomes could live in the same neighborhood. I want more density generally. We should expand the places where people can build DADUs, that is detached dwelling units, often garage apartments build behind the main house and facing an alley. I think we should make it easier to build mobile home parks and allow more manufactured housing and mobile homes. I want more neighborhood scale commercial throughout the city. While it may be wise to prohibit commercial developments in residential areas, a corridor zoned commercial should not preclude residential.
For those interested in the issue of urban development and the role zoning plays in making housing unaffordable and contributing to segregation and urban sprawl, I recommend the book Arbitrary Lines.
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